Diet culture is everywhere.
Everywhere.
This includes inside us. I’m writing this on the eve of my 38th birthday, and I can assure you, that I’ve been internalising diet culture for at least the past 28 years. (I’m fairly certain that’s an underestimation, but just go with me on this).
28 years of trying to shift my weight, to very little success. Some people have drastic weight cycling (yo-yo dieting) journeys – times when they’ve lost all the weight and felt awesome… only to gain it back a short while later. I am not that person. I’ve dieted all my life, and only lost roughly 10kg or less each stint – but I’ve always, always, managed to find the weight again afterwards.
This has had two main side effects. By “side effects”, what I really mean is that these are the lasting impressions that stay with me, regardless of diet plan or “lifestyle change”.
Food obsession
I will say that this one at least lessens slightly (slightly!) when I’m not actively “on a diet” (*cough* “lifestyle change”). When I am, however, I think about food every waking minute – no exaggeration. I can be reading a book, and wanting a snack, and feeling deprived, because I “can’t” have the snack. I am thinking about the calories – how many I’ve had, how many I still have left, how many I can ‘add’ with exercise, how many I may or may not be over by, what that might look like in terms of numbers. I am thinking about potential lunch or dinner options – and yes, even ones with built-in meal plans have had this effect. Some of this stems from actual hunger. Mostly though, it’s a hyper fixation with food that makes it top of mind all the time. It makes everything harder. By everything I mean everything – food choices are harder, but so is every decision that’s not food-related. It’s having a voice in your head yelling at you, constantly, and trying to tune it out to focus on anything at all.
Self Hatred
This may seem obvious, but hear me out. Diet culture perpetuates self-hatred all the way through. Obviously, it plays on self-hatred to get you to “buy-in” in the first place. Sign up to this meal plan or that diet of this slimming club, etc, and be the “slimmer, healthier, newer you!” Diet culture tells you that any problems you have in your life will be solved by being slimmer. “Slimmer” here means overall more attractive, problem areas gone, a suddenly successful love life, financial success, social success. Obviously changing your appearance affects all of these, and the key to doing it is merely whatever product is being sold.
More insidious than that is that diet culture relies on self-hatred the whole way through. Gained weight today? That’s your fault, you must not have followed the plan. Clothes not looking like you’d hoped? That’s your fault, you’re not doing the right exercises. The plan is too expensive? That’s your fault – you’re making poor financial decisions. The plan is too rigid and doesn’t integrate with life? That’s your fault – you’re clearly not committed enough. Anything that doesn’t work, or isn’t ideal, about diet culture is “you”, not “it”. After all, that’s how they draw their customers in, again and again, including those who have tried and failed before.
Diet culture is like a Multi-Level Marketing scheme (MLM).
Both diet culture and MLM’s promise you the world – change your entire life, be free of all your problems – and both take no ownership in the reality. Both see their believers fail drastically more frequently than they succeed, and both wash their hands of that entirely. If either of these things gave report cards, they would always read: “Could try harder.”
Wonder Revisited 