How Diet Culture Disconnects You From Your Body

Firstly, what is diet culture?

Diet culture is a system of beliefs that ascribes “goodness”, morality, and beauty to some body types and behaviors, and the opposite to others. It’s why you think you’re being “good” when you eat kale and “bad” when you miss a workout. It instills guilt and shame in all of us, and is particularly dangerous to anyone living in a marginalized body which is you if you are female, not white, non binary, disabled, larger than a size 6 etc— it harms us all.

How Diet Culture Weakens Your Self Trust & Intuition

Diet culture trains you to ignore physiological cues and signals from your body

I’m sure you’re all tired of hearing people say “listen to your body”. That can seem really nebulous and esoteric if you’ve been in the habit of disassociating or straight up ignoring physiological cues your whole life. Ever had a double espresso instead of a full 8 hours of sleep or worked through lunch even though you were starving? We all have. Life happens, and it’s impossible to be perfect at responding to your body’s signals the way our society is set up, so disclaimer: it is truly counterproductive to beat yourself up about it. However, when we do this consistently, the more and more we ignore direct cues, the harder they get to hear.

For instance, when I was a dancer, I got 3 unnecessary stress fractures in my left foot. Stress fractures are a common dancer injury, because dancers are indoctrinated to work through pain at any cost. Had I been more tuned in to my body, I would’ve known I needed rest the first day my foot started bothering me, rather than dancing on it for a month of 6 days a week of 8 hour rehearsal days until the day the pain became so great I couldn’t walk, let alone perform. This is an extreme example, but it personifies the problem quite clearly, no?

Diet culture trains you to trust external validation over your body’s wisdom

Wellness in general has a guru problem. As a society, we are much more comfortable listening to and adhering to a doctrine prescribed by a stranger than we are taking the time to listen to what our bodies are saying. How many times have you worked out even when you were tired because of some 7 day challenge or skipped a meal even though you were hungry because of some fad diet? No judgement, I’ve been there too! Yes, it can be helpful to seek guidance from experts who have studied and worked professionally, but when putting their ideas into practice comes at the expense of taking care of yourself, you’re going in direct opposition of what your body is asking of you.

Diet culture draws attention to your perceived flaws

Toxic positivity is not my jam- but when we fixate on the things that we view as “wrong” with us, we tend to continue to fixate— body anxiety and dissatisfaction tends to breed MORE body anxiety and dissatisfaction, despite the fact that diet culture makes us believe if we just shrink enough, tone enough, eat clean enough, we’ll be happy. Anyone who’s ever been to a “goal” weight , or gotten the botox, or airbrushed their photos (and no shade, I’ve done all those things) knows that while it feels good to get closer to the beauty standard because it makes us feel more worthy, it never fulfills you. If your sense of worth is tied to what you look like, you’ll always feel like it’s not enough— because the diet industry is designed to elicit these ongoing feeling to keep up spending out hard earned moolah.

Conclusion

Diet culture makes a lot of promises, but the thing it’s most effective at is sowing distrust of your body’s physiological cues, dissatisfaction about your appearance, and getting you stuck in a cycle of focusing on perceived flaws. I created Helen Phelan Studio to be a space for people to move their bodies and focus on how exercise makes them feel: powerful, alive, grounded, strong etc, instead of the traditional diet culture soaked fitness culture. On the platform there are over 250 pilates, cardio, and restorative classes + workshop replays and guest practitioners to help you feel your best— and there’s a free 10 day trial to begin!

Other articles you might like:

What Is Intuitive Exercise?

What Is Intuitive Eating?

Dieting Is Not As Good For You As The Wellness Industry Claims

How Fitness Trackers Can Sometimes Be Bad For Your Health

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