Understanding Diet Culture is an Essential Part of our Conversations about Mental Health

During #BellLetsTalk we can expect to see widespread conversation about depression and anxiety. This is understandable, since such a significant portion of the population deals with either one or both of these illnesses. 

There’s immense value in these conversations. However, they’re not an excuse stay silent on other illnesses and disorders—specifically, the ones with the highest fatality rates of any mental illness: eating disorders. 

I’m no stranger to the battle against disordered eating. For more than a year of my life, 80 percent of my daily thoughts consisted of the calories I was eating, the number on my scale, and other people’s bodies. I spent hours a day on YouTube, trying to watch every single “What I Eat in a Day to Lose Weight” video that had ever been posted. I tried not to eat any carbs for four months, and when I did, I would punish myself with more restrictions. I found joy in the feeling of hunger, because I thought the pain of it meant that whatever amount of fat–from my arm, stomach, hips, I didn’t care–was slowly going away. It was all so exhausting, and even more inescapable.  

These thoughts, feelings and behaviours aren’t uncommon, especially among young women. Many of my closest friends have battled them as well. Disordered eating is often a sign of an eating disorder like anorexia nervosa or bulimia, but it is also an all-too-common response to diet culture. 

Diet culture is the societal paradigm that dictates most of our understanding of bodies and eating. It tells us that small bodies are better and more valuable than larger bodies. It makes fatphobia and thin privilege a part of our relationships with others and ourselves. It tries to justify disordered eating in the name of ‘beauty’ and social acceptance. 

There are three main lies that diet culture tells us, which when coupled with the anxiety and insecurity we are already prone to, create a breeding ground for disordered eating and eating disorders. 

Here are those three lies:

The most important value in our bodies lies in its aesthetics.

I most loved my body was when it recovered from a serious illness that had put me in the hospital. But during my recovery, which included a regular dose of a steroid that make my face round and puffy like a Care Bear, I went back to hating it. Instead of continuing to love and appreciate my body for saving my life (with the help of modern medicine of course), I reverted back to hating it because of the way it looked. 

Diet culture teaches us that the main purpose of our bodies is to look a certain way. It tells us to ignore the amazing and wonderful ways they are able to support our health and keep us going, day after day. 

It’s so harmful to only see our bodies as aesthetic objects, especially because the ‘ideal’ aesthetics are blatantly fatphobic and largely unattainable. 

This isn’t to say that it’s wrong to enjoy the way your body looks. It’s actually great! But we need to recognize that its value and purpose reach far beyond that

Health is directly correlated to body size.

Put simply, this is a load of bullsh*t. The number on the scale or inches around your waist does not determine your health. For many, myself included, when I am the thinnest is when I am the least healthy, both in my mind and body. Believing in the direct correlation between body size and health perpetuates restriction, which leads to serious nutritional deficiencies and illness. On the same coin, higher numbers on the scale do not necessarily indicate a lower level of health. Overall health is complex. Make sure you’re treating it as such. 

Eating should involve morality, judgement, and guilt.

Eating pizza—whether it’s one slice or seven—is not a morally bad act. Diet culture tells us to make normative moral judgements about our own, and others’ eating habits. It tells us to feel guilty if the number of calories we just ate is higher than what our My Fitness Pal app said we were allowed to have. Then, it tells us that restricting our eating is an appropriate way to punish ourselves for this ‘mistake.’ 

At the end of the day, food is just food. It’s energy and enjoyment. The lack of it should not be punishment, and the enjoyment of it should not be a reason for guilt. There’s no reason you should be feeling bad about what you eat- unless, of course, you’re a murderous cannibal. 

It’s crucial to bring eating disorders and disordered eating into the conversations we have about mental health, and acknowledging diet culture and its harm is a necessary part of this. During this year’s #BellLetsTalk, let’s expand our understanding of mental health for the benefit of us all. 

• BellLetsTalk
• health
• mental health
• wellness