Diet culture is a belief system that focuses on and values weight, shape, and size over well-being.
This often means that you evaluate your self-worth by how much you weigh and what you look like compared with others
This may also include rigid eating patterns that, on the surface, are in the name of health, but in reality are about weight, shape and size.
Many diets claim to be helping you get healthier by losing weight but this is not always the case.
Diet culture is difficult because we can’t always see it. When everyone talks about good or bad food, bonds over dieting and celebrates weight loss no matter what it took- it can be difficult if not impossible to know that this isn’t healthy.
Diet culture includes:
labelling foods as good/bad. eliminating food groups ie. carbs. following external rules about what, when and how to eat. avoiding foods high in carbs, fat, calories. feeling guilty about eating. not knowing or feeling anxious about what to eat. ignoring internal cues such as hunger. avoiding social situations. believing you are better than others because you eat a certain way OR feeling worse because you don’t. feeling unworthy because of your shape or size. exercising to ‘burn off fat’. letting the scales dictate your mood …I could go on …
But if any of this resonates that the chances are you are stuck in diet culture and it isn’t doing your mental or physical health any good.
So why do you feel guilty for not dieting?
Because diet culture wants you to feel that way.
Choosing not to engage in the diet cycle doesn’t mean that you give up or let yourself go. It means that you prioritise you over the number on the scales or the size of the dress you are wearing.
There is a difference.
You like the sound but are not convinced, right?
That is understandable, letting go of dieting, that has become so engrained, is scary and not easy.
So let’s have a chat, just click the link below comments to book a call xx