Getting off the Weight Loss Hamster Wheel and Repairing Your Relationship with Food and Exercise

Do you find yourself prioritizing the number on the scale over your wellbeing? Diet culture tells us to control everything we eat and do in order to feel accepted and worthy.  If you live in the US, every day you are bombarded by the implication that thinner is better.  These limiting beliefs have been shown to affect children as young as three as well as every segment of our population.  Six out of ten women regularly avoid social interactions due to a poor body image. Contrary to popular belief, you can be fat and healthy as well as thin and unhealthy.

Despite diet culture messages, weight loss is not a path to worthiness.  If you are stuck in a perpetual dieting pattern, you are doing yourself more harm than good.  Diet-culture-driven habits are detrimental to your mental and physical well being.  An obsession with food choices and compulsive exercise interfere with a fulfilling life.  They can also lead to eating disorders.

There is no one ideal, perfect or normal body size or shape.  The key to a healthy lifestyle is to focus on your overall well being rather than obsessing over being thin.

For many people losing weight is a decision that will lead to better health. Lowering your risk of disease and lengthening your life are two great motivators.  Maintaining your independence as you age, getting stronger, avoiding injury and pain, getting off of medication, being able to participate in sports and keeping up with your kids are a few more.  

What Is Diet Culture?

Diet culture is subconscious messaging that equates being thin with being healthy, and being fat with being unhealthy.  This mindset attributes thinness with positive traits such as kindness, and obesity with negative ones such as laziness.  

Diet culture causes feedback loops of shame that lead to abnormal behaviors.  It can cause disordered eating and eating disorders.  Diet culture means unnecessary anxiety, depression and body image issues for much of the population.  It also leads to discrimination.  Many overweight people avoid going to the gym or to the doctor’s office out of fear of being judged and mistreated. 

Why Is Diet Culture a Problem for Every One of Us? 

45 million Americans diet every year. At least half of New Year’s resolutions have to do with losing weight.  $33 billion dollars are spent annually on diet products.  Unfortunately diets only work long-term for 5% of people.  35% of dieters become obsessive, and a quarter of those end up with eating disorders.  The truth is diets don’t work for most people.  The best diet of all isn’t a diet at all.  It’s a variety of nutritious foods eaten mindfully, paired with an active lifestyle.

Focusing only on weight loss can lead to never feeling good enough.  It can be harmful to your physical and mental health.  You can make beneficial changes and also accept and love your body exactly as it is today.

Most of us have experienced diet culture throughout our lives.  The problem is self-perpetuating.  Children’s perceptions are affected by diet culture from a very young age.  More than half of six to eight year old girls, and one third of the boys in that age group, wish they were thinner.  Eighty percent of ten year old girls have already been on a diet.  We have the power to stop this kind of degradation and discrimination.

Top Ways to Battle Diet Culture

Stop labeling food as being “good” or “bad”.

Stay active to feel good and not just to look good.  Appreciate everything your body and mind can do rather than fixating on your physical appearance.

Educate yourself about health.  You can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t tell if a person is healthy just by looking at them.

Disengage from media platforms that perpetuate diet culture myths, or disregard their negative messaging.

Don’t look at fitness and nutrition with an “all or nothing” mentality.

Focus on your health and wellbeing rather than on weight loss.

Allow yourself to eat intuitively.  Listen to your body’s hunger and fullness cues.

Compliment people on their efforts rather than on their appearance.

Focus on healthy goals and actions rather than on the number on the scale or on your jean size.

Look out for signs of diet culture/ fat phobia in your own interactions with yourself and with others.

Think about how you feel during and after exercise rather than about how many calories you burned.

Don’t think of your workouts as punishment or “payment” for food.

Learn to love yourself right now, whether you are thin or fat, on a fitness journey or not.

Focus on avoiding disease, injury and dysfunction rather than on looking good in a swimsuit.

Engage in physical activities you enjoy such as dancing, roller skating, surfing and hiking in addition to, or in place of, more traditional workouts.

Try adding more nutrition to what you eat, rather than eliminating food groups and calories. 

Avoid negative self-talk  –you’re not “good” or “bad” based on your food or activity choices.

The Takeaway

At Golden Home Fitness we want to be part of the solution, not the problem.  Our mission is to empower people of all ages, abilities and sizes to live long, healthy and happy lives.  We have helped all types of people succeed at obtaining their wellness goals.  Our Personal Trainers are available whenever and wherever you are, and will customize a plan that fits your values and lifestyle.  You can comfortably work out in our state-of-the-art studio or in the comfort of your own home.

Your size should not determine your self-worth. Why not rethink how exercise and food fit into your life?  You can develop a better relationship with food, exercise and with yourself.  Focusing on your overall health is better than obsessing about your looks.  Eating a variety of balanced and nutritious foods and staying active improves your wellbeing.  While society at large might value thinness over health, you don’t have to.  As pervasive as diet culture is, together we can work towards a more positive mindset and a happier tomorrow for all of us.

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Verywellfit.com;  npr.org;  webmd.com;  refinery29.com;  self.com;  mashable.com;  wunc.org;  medium.com;  acefitness.org