Anti-Diet Doesn’t Mean Anti-Health
Let’s be clear: making the conscious decision to say “F*** Off” to diet culture in NO WAY means that you do not care about your health. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Diet culture says “thinner is better, one way of eating is morally superior to another, spend half your day in the gym, count points, count calories, count macros, count steps…count, count, count!” An anti-diet approach to health (yes, HEALTH) simply removes dieting for the purpose of weight loss. It encourages eating and moving with joy. Joy, friends! Joy is never ever ever bad for your health!
What does that look like? First and foremost, stop worrying about weight. Stop doing killer workouts that you dread. Eat foods that your body needs (hello, fruits! hello, veggies! hello, white foods!) and those that also make you happy and satisfied and bring you comfort. It means eating what sounds good right now and stopping when you’re comfortably satisfied because you know you can have more later. But it also means eating until you are stuffed simply because your mom made your most favorite meal.
There is a happy place that exists between one extreme (diets) and the other (donuts). It allows for birthday celebrations with cake and time spent in nature with your loved ones. It also allows for rest.
It it easy? Hell No. But neither is constantly jumping from diet to diet. This sh*t is hard. Some days the diet culture creeps in and grips tightly. We forget that diets fail…every single one of them. Isn’t it time we jump off this merry-go-round??
Life is about good food, comfortable movement that gets your heart pumping and those endorphins going, laughter, rest, and maybe even, self-acceptance.
I can guarantee that your loved ones wouldn’t change a thing about you. They accept you and love you for who you are. Isn’t it time you did? Stop dieting and start living. There’s life #beyonddieting.
2 Comments
Dani
This is some misleading indoctrination. We live in a society where food products are quite literally created to be addictive. So no, we cannot eat whatever we “feel like” in the moment, out of any of the so-called foods existing on grocery shelves, and expect that we will somehow end up healthy. Added sugars, for one, are more addictive than some drugs. Sitting down to cake and thinking that stopping when we are full is not the move. It’s still a literally dangerous amount as established by disease organizations. And highly addictive. Health in this modern day of toxic food items means making WISE choices. Learning to enjoy foods that don’t cause cancer and heart disease and are dangerous even in small amounts, learning to be joyful with foods that don’t erode our dopamine receptors and make us come back for more toxic even if we stop at fullness. How we feel in the moment does not take into account the bigger picture which is how our choices affect us overall and in the long run. It’s possible to be long term healthy and still love the food we eat, but “eat absolutely anything when we have the urge” is not the way that happens.
Jenn
Dani, thank you for your message and for your thoughts. It’s the perfect opportunity to share more information about how turning one’s back on the dieting industry does not mean one is turning their back on health. There is absolutely nothing misleading in this post above. You quote the words “eat absolutely anything when we have the urge” and I’m not sure who you are quoting here? There is nothing in my post that states that. The message is clear, you can live a healthy life without being on a diet. Most “diets” are based in the pursuit of a smaller body. People do not have to be small to be healthy. In fact, research has shown that dieting and weight-cycling are more harmful to a body than just remaining at a consistent weight, where your body most naturally wants to be without attempting to change it. This is a wonderful research article that you can check out to learn more. In fact, I referenced it often when I wrote my thesis on weight bias in society for my Graduate degree in Health. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9
You note the ability to make certain choices about the foods we purchase; the “so-called foods that exist on grocery shelves.” This is an assumption that every single person has the ability to make the same choices you do when you are shopping in a grocery store. Does this mean that those (and there are many on this planet) who live in food deserts where access to fresh fruits and vegetables is not available to them are not healthy or not permitted to be healthy? What about the people who simply cannot afford to buy items that are deemed by society as “more healthy” than others? This is a very privileged view of food and eating.
Additionally, you reference how some foods and ingredients can be addicting. To date, there is little to no scientific evidence that supports this theory, although many headlines would have one believe that it’s true. It has been found that certain foods light up the same neural pathways as drugs, however the research concludes that food “addiction” lacks substantial evidence and could likely be a result of disordered eating. While there is little doubt that many have had the feeling of being addicted, research continues but has not been proven. Please see these posts for more information: https://marcird.com/sugar-addiction-summary-science/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cravings/201909/is-food-addiction-real-thing
Lastly, this entire post and the messages I share about my life, life after dieting, and recovery from Orthorexia, truly are about taking care of one’s health. And it can be done in a myriad of ways that do not include just eating certain foods or attempting to control one’s eating. Taking care of our mental health is just as important as nutrition and physical activity. As I state in this post: move and eat with joy in the body that you have.
If you’re curious and would like more information, I really invite you to check out Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. https://www.amazon.com/Intuitive-Eating-4th-Anti-Diet-Revolutionary/dp/1250255198