DITCHING DIET CULTURE
Diet culture: the worship of thinness and equating it to health and moral virtue; spending one’s life thinking that you are irreparably broken just because you do not look like an impossibly thin “ideal.”
Have you lost
weight? You look
so good! Ugh, fml, I
One year ago, I spent three hours a day, five days a week in an intensive outpatient treatment center working on recovering from an eating disorder.
just ate a whole bag
But first, rewind to Spring of 2018. My second semester of college. Running across campus to class, to practice, staying up until 2:00 every night doing homework. Yes, it was a lot, but the stress of school did not even compare to the stressful nature of the culture I found myself in – one characterized by diet culture.
see him. It’s not a
of hot Cheetos. I
really need to lose
five pounds before I diet—it’s a lifestyle.
I never really had issues with food insecurity before college; I ate what my mom provided for me, and I danced and danced and danced. And I loved moving my body in that way. Naturally, going to college is a difficult transition. Mom is not there, your extracurricular schedule is non-existent in the beginning, and you have to start your life from scratch again. I wasn’t really sure how to feed myself or how to exercise outside of dance class (I had literally never set foot in a gym), so what did I do? Followed those around me. I observed the girls around me, and self-consciousness started to sink in. 16
Art by Sadie Paczosa
