Mental health and diet culture…wit h
Grace
Our columnist Grace Victory has experienced first-hand the alarming link between mental health problems and our insidious diet culture. But, she reveals, you won’t find real happiness and fulfilment in a smaller pair of jeans…
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ne of the many reasons for my past poor mental health has been the link between diet culture, fatphobia, and the incessant belief that I am not good enough. Do you remember the first time you saw something that made you feel terrible about yourself? I don’t. I just remember grabbing my tummy at age eight, and wanting to chop the chub off. Diet culture is so subtle, so sneaky, that we digest it subconsciously throughout our lives, especially as children. It can be the ‘Are you bikini-body ready?’ ad on the Tube, the ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ quote on Instagram, or ‘I just don’t think women with big thighs should wear mini skirts’ conversations you hear at the office. Diet culture is everywhere, and deeply ingrained within our society, because someone, somewhere, is making big bucks from making women feel like shit. Keeping us hungry and counting calories keeps us small – not
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just physically, but mentally and spiritually, too. It keeps us focused on things that don’t actually matter, so that we don’t have the mental capacity or energy to take the patriarchy down, or question the beliefs that have been programmed into us. As children, many of us inherited unhealthy thoughts and feelings towards food and our bodies. We were taught to count calories, no carbs before marbs, no eating after 6pm, and that apple cider vinegar would give us a six-pack. When Slimfast was out, Slimming World was in. When small bums were out, big bums were in. The ideals of how we should look, and who we should be, change constantly, so that we remain in a vicious cycle of self-hate. And guess what? The money keeps rolling in to the corporations who sell us the products or services that will ‘fix’ us. This is a battle we never win, because we – and our bodies – are not the problem. I remember a few years ago, after finishing treatment for an eating disorder, I was so incredibly
Keeping us hungry and counting calories keeps us small – not just physically, but mentally and spiritually, too angry. I had realised that falling into disordered eating and negative body image is almost inevitable if you simply look at the advertising and messages we see and hear. There is a narrative that you are morally wrong if you don’t conform to look a certain way. That women should fall in line, and never dare to break free from the story that no longer serves them. Diet culture is just another tool to take away our power. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that our own intuition isn’t enough, and that we cannot trust our bodies to eat well. So, we allow things outside of us to do the work instead.
