Ditching Diet Culture

Have you lost weight? You look so good! Ugh, fml, I just ate a whole bag of hot Cheetos. I really need to lose five pounds before I see him. It’s not a diet—it’s a lifestyle.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Chasing your shots? Better be zero calories.Didn’t work out today? Eek, better not get that soft serve from the dining hall.

I became really impressed by the girls that seemed to have complete self-control, thathad muscular yet feminine bodies, that seemed happy with their bodies.

I wanted it. I wanted to be good enough. I wanted to be happy.

I continued to participate in this culture, in the idea that thinness and being at a caloric deficit was healthy and normal – because that’s what I thought everyone was doing and that’s what everyone was talking about. But throughout the Spring, I developed an obsession.

X calories for breakfast, plus Y calories at lunch means that I can eat Z number ofcalories for dinner.

I set incentives for myself, giving myself extra food or an hour off of homework if I met my “goals.” I compared my body to everyone I saw, thinking about how the size of my thighs, waist, or arms compared to the girl next to me. I tied it to my worth – the more controlled I could be, the smaller I was, the more beautiful I was, the happier I was.

But most of all, I talked about it non-stop. Calories. Work outs. Other people. Bodies.The thoughts that I was having and the behaviors that I was engaging in seemednormal in my environment.

All I wanted was to be in control, but I wound myself into a position where I was completely out of control of my life, my eating patterns, and my mind. I isolated myself from the people I loved, because I felt as though I didn’t deserve it. I believed that I had no self-control, that I was worthless without a perfect body and a perfect mind. It was hard. I became stuck in a deep, dark hole.

It came to a point where I noticed that something was not right with the thoughts I was having and the behaviors I was engaging in. With much difficulty and shame, I reached out to the right people at the right time and got the help I needed. During my time in treatment, I began to learn that I lived, and still live, in an environment characterized by diet culture.

Many people, especially girls, have been told their entire lives to eat, exercise, and even think in a certain manner in order to achieve an ideal body. We see ads for Weight Watchers on TV with Oprah Winfrey, our favorite influencers promoting flat tummy tea on Instagram, and even our own mothers or guardians dieting when we are children.

Over and over we hear, “eat this number of calories, exercise this amount, and have this many meals each day. You’ll be skinny and happy!” But behind these voices is a $72 billion dollar diet industry. Companies that make a profit from exploiting people’s insecurities. They use our favorite celebrities and “professionals” to make us trust them. They know that the culture trickles down through families. Fucked up. I learned about the lies that I was being told by society, and I learned about the truth of the matter.

We are born intuitive eaters. We cry to our caretakers when we are hungry, and we stop when we are satisfied. We use our intuition, not the suggestions of others, to decide how to feed ourselves. It makes logical sense: our bodies tell us when we are hungry (through a cool hormone called ghrelin) and it tells us when we are full (through another cool hormone called leptin).

But when we follow the unofficial food rules established by diet culture, our hunger cues are disrupted, and we rely on the outside voices to guide us. And in this day and age, many people are scared to live without those rules, thinking that they will eat too much, eat out of control, and, God forbid, gain weight from eating intuitively. I struggled with this fear as well, but with time, practice, and help I trusted my body to tell me when to feed it and became free.

Step one was ditching the diet culture with food. Step two was forcing it out of my mentality. I started to notice which thoughts of mine were characterized by diet culture. I’d catch myself thinking, “Ugh, I probably shouldn’t have eaten that much food,” and changed it to, “I am following my hunger cues and am fueling my body for a long day of brainwork.” I started to change the narrative around food with others. If I found myself sitting in a conversation with friends talking about diets or bodies, I’d change the subject and talk cool ideas or future plans. I hid the scale that sat on the bathroom floor in my sorority house, hopefully saving many girls from the unnecessary pain of weighing oneself unhealthily.

It was liberating. Before, I felt as though I would have to diet for the remainder of my life to achieve and maintain the body that I believed would give me happiness. But through treatment and recovery, I have never felt happier, and I have never more free.

USC, and Los Angeles in general, I believe, are diet culture hot spots. Why? Each person’s relationship with diet culture varies with type of upbringing, mental health status, personality type, and millions of other factors. But I think what has created such an intense diet culture in certain communities and social circles of USC is the value that we have placed on appearance. Gameday outfits, bikinis, crop tops and shorts – they’re all around us, all the time. On our screens, in front of our eyes. And we’ve tied this value of appearance to happiness, control, and mastery over one’s life. But it’s all a lie.

Real happiness and freedom, I’ve found, is loving your body for what it is naturally. It’s shedding the layers of beliefs that society has placed on you since childhood. It’s letting go of that desire for control.

Going through treatment for an eating disorder was one of the most difficult journeys that I’ve ever encountered, but it was also one of the most wonderful adventures that I have been presented with. Though I may struggle with these issues for the rest of my life, I feel better than ever. I know how to feed myself once more, how to combat my anxieties surrounding food, and that I never need to diet again. Ever.

Though I believe that USC is a diet culture hotspot, I also know that we the people have the power to change the narrative around it. I have shared my story with many friends and fellow students, and I am always delighted to find people that share my sentiments.

So, join us. Be free. Defeat diet culture.

For more information visit nationaleatingdisorders.org

By Josie Bullen