Diet Culture consumes us on a daily basis. We are bombarded with diet plans, best and worst food articles and ads constantly through all advertising media avenues, but especially social media. The food industry, health industry, and fitness industry thrive on us buying their marketing slogans and trying their “quick fixes” for health, and have changed how we even define the word “diet” in our minds.
Not sure, let’s play a game: When I say “I’m on a diet” what would you automatically assume I mean by that statement?
- I’m restricting certain foods to achieve health and lose weight
- I’ve picked a certain food program to follow to lose weight
- It will be hard for me to eat out because most foods will be restricted
- All of the above
How did we get influenced to think all of these things for the word diet? The original meaning of the word diet is the same today as it was in the 13th century: food and drink regularly provided or consumed, habitual nourishment. This all stems from the Greek word diaitasthan: “to lead’s one life”. Merriam Webster Dictionary
The food and health industry have shifted our thinking of the word diet from being a lifestyle we cultivate to being a quick fix to lose weight as fast as possible. When we talk about “going on a diet” rarely are we implying “I’m changing my eating habits for good to live a healthier life”, usually we are saying “I’m changing my drinking and eating habits for the next few months to lose weight.”.
How often have you decided to try a new diet to focus on your health and lose weight, and your friends or family say “How long is this for? How long do I have to wait until it’s fun to eat and drink with you again?”. Unless it’s a serious health condition causing the diet change, it’s hard to actually find supportive friends in this arena. Oftentimes people will start a diet with friends as each other’s accountability buddies, and even then, if they aren’t going for a lifestyle change, it’s really easy for everyone to fail out in one way or another. I call this the DIET TREADMILL.
The diet culture fails us (with an 80% fail rate, it’s not working) and our daily health for 3 critical reasons:
- It typically uses weight loss as the motivator
- It uses a timeline to prove successful, not transformational
- The quickest way to make money is promise fast results, so that becomes the goal of the diet, not longevity and living in vitality
Why Weight Loss is a Bad Motivator for Your Health:
Our body’s “ideal weight” is some number given to us by a doctor or ourselves, that has nothing to do with how we feel in our body. We end up constantly chasing a number on a scale, being told, or telling ourselves, we will feel so good when we hit that ideal number. When we start a diet with this motivator, it’s not strong enough to keep us going. When we don’t see results after an overhaul in our lifestyle (which is usually what we must do to successfully complete a diet) we get disheartened and quit. What’s the point of doing something that isn’t getting us to the number we need to see on the scale? We don’t feel good on the diet, we usually feel less energetic, sick, and cranky, so why continue? Ultimately, it’s about getting to a number on a scale as fast as possible (in a healthy or unhealthy way), and that number changes constantly as we age (we really shouldn’t be the same weight at 50 as we were in high school). Simply put, numbers don’t really motivate us, feelings do. Diets tend to focus on numbers, not feelings.
Diets Have a Timeline:
Whether it’s in our minds or the diet itself, we usually give it a timeframe. For example, there’s no timeline on the very popular KETO diet, but once people hit their goal weight, they tend to exit the diet because it’s so restricting to their lifestyle. In this case, the number on the scale creates the timeframe. In other cases, like WHOLE 30, the timeframe is given in the title. Get to those 30 days and you did it, now choose how you want to start eating whatever you want again. Both Keto and WHOLE 30 talk about the weight loss results quickly from their program as a benefit, not the goal, the goal is technically a lifestyle change. However, weight loss becomes the main selling point for trying that food program, because it fits right into our current diet culture – weight loss quickly. Hence, we jump into the diet for weight loss, associate it with a timeline of restrictive eating, and not a genuine lifestyle choice.
Even with Good Intentions, Health is Not a Charity:
At an 80% fail rate, coming up with the next quick results diet “that actually works” is a money maker. This gets us in the yo-yo diet cycle. We didn’t go into the diet with the goal of changing our lifestyle, so we keep trying unsustainable diets for our lifestyle to get to the goal on the scale. It’s a gold mine for health gurus, the fitness industry and the food industry. You’ll keep cycling through as the consumer to get to that number on a scale. Why would the huge lobby groups want to change the diet industry, our failure pays them.
Stop Dieting, Start NOURISHING:
Even with well intentioned food programs (which I think most are extremely well intentioned), we need to get out of diet culture in our own minds and start setting ourselves up for a healthy lifestyle, the true definition of diet. An easy way to start doing this is focusing on nourishing your body, and cultivating a nourishing lifestyle. To nourish something is to: nurture, rear, promote the growth of, furnish or sustain, maintain, support.
Since how you feel in your body every day comes directly from your lifestyle choices, you open yourself up to looking beyond what you eat and drink as the reasons for unsatisfactory health. If you set the intention to start feeling great in your body every day, to figure out what nourishes your body to feel good, you open yourself up to all the other areas of health outside of diet and exercise that could be affecting you. It becomes much easier to ditch diet culture and the scale, and start enjoying every day knowing you are making progress towards a happier and healthier YOU.
Most people struggle to switch from diet culture to nourish culture because they can’t identify where to start. That’s where Feliz 3 Health comes in. We’ve been told for so long it’s all about food and exercise, when in reality, it could be a change to other areas of our life that gets us on track to feeling great. At Feliz 3 Health, we are able to help you identify where to start in your health journey, implement new learned skills along the way, and get to vitality. There is no cookie cutter solution for health. Every single body is unique.
We recognize this easily in other areas of our life, like fashion for example: we would never show up as a Bridesmaid or Bride to a wedding without having our dress tailored to us perfectly. Yet, most of us don’t recognize in our efforts to be healthy, we aren’t doing anything genuinely cultivated for our body specifically. We can change that!
Let’s ditch the diet culture and start the nourish culture to be happy, healthy, and thrive.
