Ramblings on Diet Culture

The most enduring relationship in my life has been the tumultuous relationship I’ve had with food and exercise.

I’ve tried to write about this multiple times. The first draft I wrote almost 8 months ago was long and cathartic. It charted out a journey of a young girl who grew up in constant judgement of herself and her body, who entered her teenage years and a cycle of overeating, under-eating, hating exercise, over-exercising, losing weight and gaining weight.

And I wrote that draft and sat with it for a while. It didn’t feel right. After re-reading it a few times I realized I didn’t like it because it didn’t have an ending. It didn’t have an “and it’s all better now” ending line to leave off on.

And that’s because removing diet culture thoughts and feelings from my brain and my life isn’t a linear story with a clear beginning, middle and end. Because living in a society where diet culture is the norm means there will never be a definitive end.

You can get to a place where you stop counting calories and stop telling yourself you have to burn off the food you eat. You eat what you want when you want. You start to appreciate exercise and movement for how it benefits your mental health and overall wellbeing and not how much weight it allows you to lose.

But those old thoughts and feelings still linger in the back of your head. They’re there when you instinctively think of the calories in a muffin when you pick one up as a snack. They’re there when you go out for dinner and workout a little bit harder the next day subconsciously to burn it off.

These thoughts aren’t always easy to pinpoint and you don’t always want to recognize them. It’s that small feeling of pride when you notice signs of weight loss, even though you tell yourself you don’t care about it anymore. It’s that lingering fear of your body or weight changing.

And because diet culture is everywhere, they can’t go away. It’s engrained in magazines, in Instagram captions, in food calorie labels, in calorie deficits, in casual comments from friends and family members being fat or gaining weight like it’s a sin, it’s demonizing of people with bigger bodies, its comments on certain foods being “good” or “bad”

And blocking out that noise is hard. And reminding yourself that it’s all bullsh**t is harder. That one day you’re going to die so eat the damn brownie. It can be a daily struggle for me that sometimes I win and sometimes I lose.

But this is the closest I’ve been to ignoring it and being comfortable with myself and my body in a long time. I’m able to move and eat in ways that make me feel happy and fulfilled. But those thoughts still creep in and they’ll continue to do so probably for years to come.

And I know my story dealing with diet culture isn’t unique and that far too many people have had the same experience.

And hopefully one day we’ll move to a place where these struggles won’t need to exist anymore.