Sheet Pan Cod with Chermoula, Potatoes, & Carrots

The Culture of Dieting

Weight loss will lead to all great things.  A new happier you, right???

Have you stumbled across diets, wellness plans, weight loss products, fitness programs that make you feel like yes this it!?  This is how I’m going to lose 15 pounds! Or this is the path to finding the body I want!  And once I find these things, then I’ll find peace and all my dreams of happiness, health, success, acceptance, love, admiration or confidence, will come true.  And how often does that thought to have a different body show up in your life?  With the excessive amount of influence that surrounds us on a day to day basis from ads, social media, movies, magazine articles, the list goes on, it’s not surprising how normal it is that those feelings can motivate us to want to change and jump on board with the latest ‘yes this is the answer!’ band wagon.  But why do we find these external sources so motivating and what exactly is fueling this desire to change?

Diet culture, what is it?

Diet culture is exactly that, a culture.  It’s a system of beliefs, values, customs, practices and social forms.  In a nutshell it is:

• A culture that creates a hierarchy that puts value on certain body weights, shapes, and sizes.  It’s the idea that thinness or toneness automatically puts a person on pedestal and our worth is measured by our weight and size.  This can make someone feel like they’ve been inadequate or ashamed their entire lives because they don’t fit the ideal body shape and can make us fearful of being anything other than the ideal.  It also equates thinness as an indicator of health.  It’s the misunderstanding that you can assume someone’s health by looking at them or by the size of their body.
• The belief that weight loss will help us to achieve higher status and moral character.  It makes us feel like we should constantly strive to lose weight or “improve” or “fix” our bodies.  And if we are striving for thinness or fitness then we are good, acceptable and worthy.  It glorifies and applauds people who have lost weight and at any cost, whether it be time, money, energy, environment, relationships, mental health and so much more.  
• The belief that being on a diet is good while other ways of eating are demonized.  It places moral value on foods, where certain foods are good, and others are bad.  It’s the belief that a person is either inferior or superior based on their food or exercise choices.  If someone is on a diet and restricting their eating with rules, they are praised for having discipline, will power and self-control, which are all character traits.  So when we violate the diet or are not sticking to a gym regimen, it’s seen as having “no willpower” or “no self-control” or “lazy” or some other character flaw.   It makes us feel fearful for eating any other way than what is believed to be good.  And when we do, it’s shameful, makes us feel guilty and makes us feel like we need to seek atonement.  It puts pressure and stress around food and eating and takes away from the pleasure and purpose of eating.

Whether or not you’re actively trying to lose weight or on a diet, at some point or another, we’ve all been influenced by the exposure to diet culture.  It’s pretty impossible to avoid considering it exists all around us.  Whether your first exposure was at the family dinner table, or watching your friends go on diets in high school because of the pressure to look a certain way or seeing a magazine in the checkout line with a front cover that reads “Get the body you want and drop 10 pounds fast.”  Whatever that first exposure might be, we all have a different story and many of us continue to be negatively influenced by diet culture. 

It’s also important to note diet culture is shape shifting.  It can be pretty sneaky and can take on many forms.  The diet industry has realized that “dieting” has become a social stigma, punitive and short-lived and well, not as cool or sexy.  “Dieting” is being repackaged and labeled as “lifestyles” or “ways of living” or “wellness” or “clean eating” or “detoxifying” or “whole living”, which can all come in the form of an all or nothing approach or may still moralize foods as good or bad.  It’s easy to be seduced by these guises that blur the lines between eating for health and eating for weight loss.  

Diet culture is the norm. 

Diet culture is so deeply embedded into our society and into our daily (yes daily) lives we’ve become desensitized to it.  We subconsciously recognize diet culture values, beliefs, messages practices as normal. 

Its normal to comment and applaud the success of someone’s weight loss and note how great they look.  Its normal to be fixated on changing your body. It’s normal for someone to constantly pursue weight loss.  It’s normal to comment on someone’s lunch, “you’re being so good” or “looks like you’re treating yourself today.”  It’s normal to see someone wearing a t-shirt that says, “will workout for tacos” or “workout now, wine later.”  It’s normal for diet and weight loss to become a part of regular conversation, so much so that for some, it’s about as common as it is to talk about the weather.  It’s normal for a fitness instructor to encourage you to “burn off those weekend calories.”  It’s normal to see messages that the expectation for women who give birth is to “get their body back,” the faster the better.  It’s normal to see a meme where it shows someone with a large amount of food with the tagline “diet starts tomorrow” or one that says, “might go to jail so I can focus on gym properly.”  It’s normal to be told you need to lose weight to be healthy.  It’s normal to live in a world where gaining weight and being fat should be avoided at all costs.  It’s normal to see the gobs of magazine articles that tote latest fitness and nutrition trends.  It’s normal to hear comments like “I need to get back on track” or “I’ve earned this cake.” It’s normal to have a “cheat day” or take a “day off” and eat what you want to eat.  It’s normal for someone to tell a thin person “I’m jealous how tiny you are!”  It’s normal for beauty pageants to give crowns to beauty queens whose bodies are an unrealistic expectation for the average American woman.  It’s normal to hear someone say they are being “naughty” or “sinful” when eating something that is sweet or fatty.  It’s normal to get your body bathing suit ready.  This one really gets my goat because guess what?  EVERY BODY is a SWIMSUIT BODY!  I could honestly keep going because once you see diet culture and realize it doesn’t care about you and its actually causing a lot of harm to you and everyone around you, it can’t be unseen.  And if any of this resonates with you or ticks you off then know you are not alone.  And on the other end, if you read any of these statements and you think “what’s the big deal?”, then please stay tuned for future posts about the harms of diet culture or even feel free to reach out.

Diet culture has hijacked over our values, our everyday thoughts, our subconscious, the way we think about our bodies and really the whole idea of change and health.  All the while exploiting insecurities and our human desire to feel successful, accepted, loved, admired, confidant and happy.  It’s time to wake up and realize diet culture exists all around us and recognize that it’s harmful in terms of how we value and feel about our bodies. Not to mention harmful to those who are young and still forming their relationships with food or those who are mending their relationships with food. It’s time to evaluate what we believe about health, food, weight, and our bodies and question why we believe it to be our truth.  And once we understand that those truths are actually tearing us down, then we can begin to move on and come to know and trust our bodies.

First steps towards ditching diet culture. 

Step 1: Realize diet culture is not on your side.  We are being set up to believe that losing weight or being thin is the best thing ever.  It’s going to make all our dreams come true and make us so much happier than where we are now.  Think about the place where those messages are coming from, question what role they have in your life and evaluate how they are going to serve you. From there we can begin to understand their influence and begin to unlearn those messages.

Step 2: Find love and happiness and acceptance in yourself now.  For one, life is too short to be unhappy in our bodies.  Not to mention the amount of time and energy spent thinking about meticulous diet plans or how you’re going to make up for the days where diet rules weren’t followed.   Maybe you find a little happiness when a target goal was reached, but for how long and at what cost? That happiness feeling after achieving a goal can be fleeting.  Maybe that happiness only comes at certain times and in certain situations.  And maybe you feel depressed or lonely or stressed the other times. 

When we find acceptance in ourselves in the present, the desire to take care of our bodies and give it the nurturing it needs becomes much greater.  And when we nurture and listen to our bodies and give it what it needs, our bodies naturally fall into a place where they are meant to be. We can’t assume happiness comes at a certain weight or a certain body shape, because thinness does not equal happiness, no matter what diet culture tries to tell you.  Love your body now.

One of the ways I show myself love is through my cooking. I get excited to try new flavors and try new exciting foods.  Chermoula is one of those things.  It’s a bright, herby, and pungent North African marinade made with fresh herbs, lemon, garlic and warm spices.  It’s traditionally used on fish, but let me tell you, I’d put this dream sauce over ice cream it’s so good.  Ok, maybe not ice cream but it’s definitely versatile and packs a flavor punch.  Use it to brighten up any kind of seafood, shrimp, shellfish or use it as a marinade for chicken or steak or lamb.  Stir it into couscous or rice.  Slather it on some roasted vegetables like cauliflower or winter squash for a side.  You could even thin it out with a little olive oil and lemon and toss with some chickpeas, carrots, greens, a little feta, and a few almonds for a quick salad or use it in a chicken salad.  And definitely try it on this sheet pan cod recipe!   The sauce is about as easy as it is to make pesto.   It’s traditionally made by hand but for quick and speedy preparation just toss the ingredients into a blender or food processor and there you go.  Instant flavor town sauce.  You could make a big batch and freeze into cubes or in a freezer bag for a quick solution to punch up a weekday meal.  It can also be made in advance and stored in an air tight container in the fridge for three to five or so days.  Use it as a marinade, a finishing sauce, a condiment, or dressing.  There are seriously so many ways to enjoy this sauce!  It’s herbalicious so delicious! (in the Fergie-est way possible).  Just couldn’t not close on that note 🙂

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