Recognizing Diet Culture-Part 1

The Global Wellness Institute defines wellness as “an active process of being aware and making choices that lead toward an outcome of optimal holistic health and well being.”

At first glance that makes sense but I have learned to step back and look at a much bigger picture of what true well being feels and looks like and how difficult that is too attain for many people. Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian and intuitive eating counsellor, emphasizes that “wellness is defined by the things we DO. But the ability to do those things require a fair amount of economic privilege.”

Diet Culture aka Wellness Culture

When I started working as a personal trainer I didn't think of fitness and exercise as being a part of diet culture. While working in the fitness industry it was normal and acceptable to be focused on exercise and nutrition, to be optimizing our workouts and our diets. It did not feel unhealthy or harmful at the time because everyone was talking about those two topics, they were the focus of my work as a trainer.

Harrison explains that “diet culture is a system of beliefs that equates thinness, muscularity and particular body shapes with health and moral virtue; promotes weight loss and body reshaping as a means of attaining higher status; demonizes certain foods and food groups while elevating others; and oppresses people who don't match its supposed picture of health.” She goes on to say that “wellness culture downplays or ignores the social determinants of health that have a far greater impact on people's well being than individual behaviours." Interestingly, in the 90's it had pretty much become accepted, because of a large body of good scientific evidence, that diets did not work so the diet industry had to pivot, they re-branded and adopted Health and Wellness as their new guise.

Harrison explains that “Both concepts (diet and wellness culture) are often exclusionary, but wellness has an added layer of elitism to it, because it is about the relentless pursuit of the apex of health, in a way that only people who are rich in both time and money can truly afford.”

WELLNESS CULTURE DISGUISES ITS FAT PHOBIC BELIEFS AS CONCERNS ABOUT HEALTH.

Health at every size and BMI

Doctors are people too so they are not immune to diet culture as this article explains. Our current approach to health care is weight-centric and because of this doctors are often the worst offenders of fat shaming. The BMI is still used in health care even though it is widely acknowledged to be very flawed because its origins are racism and oppression. Sabrina String's book Fearing the Black Body traces the racial origins of fat phobia. So, is there an ideal weight? At what point does weight become a risk to health? Is weight important when we adopt a broader definition of Health? There is plenty of evidence showing that weight stigma and fat phobia do far more damage than being "over weight" as this article and this article explains. Health at every size (HAES) addresses these issues. HAES "emphasizes having respect for and empowering persons in bodies of all sizes. It promotes health policies that give better access to care and reduces weight stigma. It encourages people to engage in intuitive eating and enjoyable movement practices while promoting body positivity." Click here to read more about HAES.

Defining health

What does health mean to you? How do you feel, physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, economically when you are “healthy?” As a society when we talk about health we tend to think of our physical health. Within diet culture, "Health" means weight loss, cardiovascular exercise, strength training and a bit of (Western) yoga. But, mobility, flexibility, agility, coordination, balance, play, joyful movement and rest are all part of being physically healthy.

Optimizing Health

I hear the word optimize a lot and I started to wonder if it is in line with an endless pursuit of perfectionism. I am uncomfortable with the idea of optimizing health especially when we adopt a broader definition of health and when we accept, that what feels healthy to us will probably change throughout our lives as we change and age. I wonder if “optimizing” feeds preoccupation, stress and a feeling of "not enough." When I consume diet culture content I tend to become hyper focused on, one part, of my physical health. I get preoccupied with optimizing my workouts. Harrison's work has taught me to pause and tune into my body's needs.

I stopped dancing

When I start focusing on optimizing my workouts I tend to lose sight of the big picture, for example, our finished basement is a big open space, I deliberately did not want to furnish it because I wanted it to be a space where I could MOVE. I love going dancing, I spent many a happy year going out to dance with my girlfriends. It is one of the things I miss deeply as an adult. I decided to start dancing at home in my beautiful spacious basement. I put on my playlist of songs that make me want to move and I go for it. I love it! As well as dancing whenever I hear a good song I have integrated dancing into my exercise routine. I dance as part of my warm ups and cool downs and one of my cardio workouts is dancing for five minutes, climbing the stairs for ten minutes and then dancing for another five minutes. Twenty minutes that gets my heart rate up and does my body, mind and spirit a lot of good. Then I read two books; one on longevity and one on managing menopause. I noticed that once I had taken in that information I started to change my workouts. I stopped dancing. I stopped doing something that improved my emotional and mental well being. I became focused on getting the most out of my workouts and ended up sacrificing my emotional health for optimizing, one part, of my physical health.

Diet culture is sneaky, it creeps into our lives in ways that tend to go unnoticed because it is still so prevalent and normalized. Harrison refers to diet culture as The Life Thief, she states, "It's a sneaky, shape-shifting thing that robs people of their time, money, health, happiness, and so much more." I had an "aha" moment when I realized that I did not think about exercise or nutrition until I started working in the fitness industry.

In Part 2 of Recognizing Diet Culture, we will discuss Intuitive Eating (IE), what it is, what it isn't and can we apply the principles of IE to exercise?