While I have been quieter here on the blog and on my social media channels the last few months, it has been one sided. I’ve been doing “research” for some upcoming things. And I’ve noticed something. Something that I want to bring to your attention and call out.
Diet Culture has gotten really loud. Again. I have a pretty carefully curated Instagram feed because I don’t suffer fools. And I’ve noticed that I’ve had to re evaluate some things. Now, to be fair, I think if you are consuming social media period, there should be a regular re-evaluation of what you are following and what your algorithm is primed to show.
I feel like for awhile some progress had been made. Diet Culture and the value we place on weight and size is so ingrained that it will take decades and generations to undo. But I feel like there was a beat there where people were at least hearing the message that the BMI is a poor measure of health and weight is a trash determinant of worth.
And then we got a perfect storm of Ozempic, biohacking, and the 90s era fashions coming back in style. In 2022, Americans spent $30 billion dollars on diet products. Diet Culture is not just going to give up that kind of cash. They will continue to tell us we are not good enough until we conform to a certain weight, size, or standard.
And this is all to keep us funneling money into whatever Diet Culture tells us is the next “cure” for something that isn’t actually wrong. Now, yes, there are instances when weight is impacting health and wellness. But losing weight is not the cure all, especially when the methods are unsustainable, untested, and potentially unsafe.
It’s like looking at impressionist paintings. Think Monet or van Gogh (ok, van Gogh is technically post impressionist but he used a similar style and is recognizable). The impressionists painted very quickly to capture the light and essence of a scene. This resulted in large brushstrokes and big blobs of color on the canvas. I promise I am going somewhere with this hard left I’ve taken into art history, bear with me. When you look at impressionist style work up close, it’s a mess. Especially very close up, it’s just a bunch of random colors in dots or small stripes that don’t seem to make much sense.
And this is what Diet Culture does. It changes the focus. It comes in with a microscope and focuses on two dozen paint blobs and then proceeds to tell us that they are wrong. Wrong color, wrong orientation, wrong size and it creates a mess for the whole composition. Problem is, Diet Culture blocks out the rest of the painting so we aren’t able to see it.
Hyperfocusing on those two dozen paint blotches without allowing us to realize that the total composition consists of thousands of paint blotches is what Diet Culture does best. We are only able to see one minute fraction of the whole, but we are convinced that we should be spending all our time and money to “fix” just those blotches.
We are missing the full composition of life because Diet Culture tells us there is something wrong with those few blobs. What if we took several steps back and focused on the actual whole painting? We’d see that the blobs and swirls are beautiful in their messiness. They create light and shade and life in ways that traditional painting techniques don’t. They allow us to experience a bridge with water lilies or a starry sky in a unique way.
In my time working with clients and students, I have seen how weight is in fact impacting overall wellness negatively. But it very often isn’t in the way Diet Culture wants us to believe. In other words, it has nothing to do with those few paint blobs.
I have seen weight have the most impact on Mental, Emotional, Social, and Environmental Health. The mother of the bride who is more concerned with fitting into a certain size dress than about celebrating her new family. The mom who is never in family pictures because she doesn’t like the way she looks. The coworker who begs off the party because they are more worried about controlling themselves around food. The friend who doesn’t want to book a beach vacation because they are concerned about how they look in a swimsuit.
Diet Culture is bullying us into fixing a few paint blobs while it robs us of the beauty of seeing the whole unobstructed painting. It is important that we step back to take in the whole thing. It is important that we remind ourselves that our bodies are the vessels that allow us to experience our life and that can’t be right or wrong. It is important that we remember we want these bodies to last and last well and that the way we do that is by treating them with respect.
Quick fixes, will power, and punishing workouts may “fix” a few paint blobs, but what does that do to the rest of the painting? What price are we willing to pay to focus on just what someone else assumes is a mistake? After all, mental illness aside, van Gogh himself couldn’t see what the rest of us see in his most famous painting.
Take a step back and until next time, be well friends!
