Anti-Diet Culture is touted as the solution to Diet Culture, but is it helping or hurting us? Are websites like this one that provide recipes and meal plans for keto and other diets part of the problem? IS dieting inherently bad for us? Let’s discuss.
I don’t usually do these kind of opinion posts, but I want to “weigh” in (sorry) and also get your opinion on the debate about anti-diet culture that always peaks around this time of year.
After being called out on Instagram by someone for promoting “diet culture” when I posted about my 5 Day Soup Diet this morning, I asked myself honestly if there is anything unhealthy (mentally, emotionally, physically) about promoting or using a plan like Squeaky Clean Keto, Whole30, the Egg Fast (or any diet plan) to lose weight after indulging.
According to the woman who commented on my IG this morning saying she was “not ok with this post,” I was “promoting an ideal” to lose weight “via glorified restriction.” Also that I was not “empowering women to accept themselves” and that I need to “do better for our kids who internalize these messages of diet culture.”
That’s a lot of accountability to assign to someone who is simply sharing a free meal plan for people (and not just women by the way) who want to lose a few pounds.
She obviously feels strongly about it, as do many others. But does anti-diet culture really solve the problem of diet culture?
Before I could answer that – I did a little research into what diet culture and anti diet culture even mean. There is a lot of info out there, and honestly it seems to be subjective depending on who is explaining it, but here it is in simple terms.
What are diet culture and anti-diet culture?
Diet culture is a term that refers mostly to beliefs that slim bodies are more acceptable and attractive and healthy than fat bodies, and that those social norms, perpetuated by the media, are what motivate people to punish themselves via guilt, denial, dieting, and/or over-exercising to achieve the “ideal” body and gain acceptance.
Anti-Diet Culture promotes not conforming to the belief of an ideal body size, and in defiance of that belief to not “diet” or restrict calories, food groups, or portion sizes in any way – but rather to intuitively let your body tell you what it needs to be it’s healthiest self.
Naturally, this raises some questions.
- Is going on a “diet” really self-punishment for the yummy things you ate that led to some unwanted weight gain – and are we even allowed to call it “unwanted” weight?
- Does dieting mean that you are buying into the idea that women have to look a certain way or be a certain weight to be attractive or worthwhile?
- Is going on a temporary diet to reduce your weight (for whatever your personal reasons are) an inherently bad thing?
In my opinion the answer to all of these is no.
I strongly believe that actively managing your body weight isn’t wrong, and that it is all about checks and balances in a similar way to managing your money. When you go on a spending spree it’s fun while it lasts, and then reality hits that you are broke (or at a balance below your comfort level) and you have to tighten up a bit until your bank account recovers.
You don’t decide that being broke or in debt is your right, and continue to spend however you want to because of some imagined “poor” culture.
We don’t vilify having money, and normalize being poor to make ourselves feel better about overspending and not adjusting to whatever our personal financial situation is.
That would be unreasonable and even delusional. The facts are, if we don’t live within our personal means eventually we’ll end up bankrupt, or at least in a situation that causes a lot of anxiety and unhappiness.
In that scenario, if you want to course-correct you have two choices – earn more money to support your spending habits (I realize this isn’t as simple as it sounds for a lot of reasons when it comes to actual money, but bear with me for the purpose of this analogy), or adjust your spending to meet what your current income is.
I propose that dieting is no different. Whether you make a big purchase (a few weeks of overindulgence) and need to tighten up a bit (a short plan to lose those pounds), or you’ve really been off the rails for awhile (hello pandemic weight that is still hanging around 🙋🏼♀️) and need to make some longer term eating adjustments – the checks and balances principle applies.
Maybe, instead of cutting spending, you increase your “income” by exercising and burning more calories so that you can afford to consume more, while still maintaining a positive balance.
Conversely, if you don’t check yourself at all, and simply justify it as abandoning diet culture, empowering women in larger bodies, intuitive eating, food freedom, or whatever is trending at the moment – then you may feel good about that for awhile, but eventually if you aren’t applying some checks and balances to your own eating, you will find yourself in a place you aren’t happy with physically.
And your satisfaction over championing those ideals will be small consolation when you are personally facing the challenges that come with weight gain and other potential health consequences of eating whatever you want for an extended period of time.
Our bodies are like a bank account – and the balance is different for everyone. As someone who has always struggled with my weight, I am a low earner – I can’t afford to “shop” like my account is fat – because inevitably I will be.
I have learned this the hard way, and am back to tightening the calorie/carb belt yet again in an effort to get back to a healthier weight that’s more comfortable for me.
Other people are “making it rain,” and seem to have unlimited spending potential – they can eat whatever they want and maintain a healthy weight. It’s maddening for those of us in a different “class”, but undeniably true.
We can rail about how unfair it is, blame fit people for “perpetuating the problem,” chalk it up to media for stigmatizing being fat – but none of that is going to change the fact that if your goal is to be fit and healthy, then you need to observe the checks and balances and manage your own personal account – whatever its limitations.
Which means if you choose to indulge and it results in some weight gain, if you aren’t happy with that and want to lose the weight, you’ll have to put yourself in a deficit until you do.
It’s not punishment, it’s balance.
I feel that I can speak to this with some credibility because I gave it a go during the pandemic – I “listened to my body” and “honored my cravings” as was recommended by so many influencers on social media who have abandoned “diet culture” in favor of intuitive eating.
It was easier than staying keto and saying no to foods I enjoyed – and instead of feeling guilty about it I felt righteous. I bought into the idea that if I just stopped the cycle of dieting and then indulging and the guilt that came with it, that my body would eventually even out and naturally regulate itself to a healthy weight that was effortless to maintain.
But that’s not what happened.
I slowly but steadily gained weight. I wasn’t binging, but I wasn’t tracking, and I wasn’t limiting – I ate what my body told me it wanted – sometimes salad, sometimes pasta, sometimes fruit, sometimes pizza.
I didn’t like that I was gaining, but I was assured by all these ant-diet culture people online that you just have to hang in there and it will eventually work.
Fast forward to about a year later and lo and behold, anti dieting never led to some metabolic miracle where I didn’t have to put conscious effort into maintaining a healthy weight – instead I was saddled with even more weight than I started with.
And I wasn’t willing to wait another year and possibly another 30-50 pounds gained to see if it would finally start working.
It wasn’t really a surprise in hindsight – from the moment I hit puberty I had to work hard to keep weight off. It’s my reality – no matter what the internet or popular opinion says.
But I believed it because I wanted to believe it.
So called intuitive eating let me off the hook, and I could finally just eat what I wanted to eat and everything would be ok. I could achieve a healthy weight without even trying. Because that’s the promise. That your body will default to its healthiest self on its own.
But it’s a beautiful lie for most of us.
And based on how much my website traffic has shot up in the last few days, I’m likely not the only one who fell for it and is returning to keto or whatever other plan we’ve used in the past to manage our weight when we knew and accepted that it was a fact of life.
So what’s the takeaway?
Saying no to yourself when your body is telling you it “needs” that cookie (and then next thing you know it was actually 5 or 10 cookies) is sometimes a good thing. It’s called restraint and self discipline.
Anti-diet culture tells us that food “guilt” is bad and unhealthy, but the fact is, how you feel about what you eat is irrelevant to the chemistry of weight gain. Feeling guilty about eating 10 cookies versus not feeling guilty about it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
On Guilt
The word guilt has a negative connotation, and yes, unhealthy guilt can be debilitating if it denotes failure or self-condemnation in the extreme. But some synonyms for guilt are also “responsibility” and “answerability” and that is an appropriate application here.
If that “answerability” or awareness of the cause and effect of over-indulging a bit motivates you to go for a walk or take the stairs to burn those extra calories, then how that NOT a good thing?
Maybe, rejecting that “guilt” because it’s seen as punishing yourself – and believing your body will somehow be sad about it and react negatively, is really just a rationalization for not holding yourself accountable.
I said what I said.
I realize that the notable exception to this would be someone who has struggled with eating disorders who could be at risk when engaging on a limiting eating plan. The very real issues that they are dealing with are not at all what I’m talking about here.
So is it wrong for me to be posting diet plans on my website and social media which could trigger someone vulnerable to unhealthy habits?
I thought a lot about that, and in the end I believe the answer is no. I’m not responsible for someone’s actions regarding eating habits any more than a blogger who posts photos of a delicious cocktail is responsible if it triggers a recovering alcoholic to have a drink.
But maybe I’m rationalizing because I make my living providing keto recipes and meal plans to the public. Can I really be objective on this?
Debbie says
I am an overweight 70 year old woman and I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is being diabetic. Your recipes are helping me with getting that under control. For me it’s not a diet plan, but a learn to eat better plan!
I’m not following keto but use your recipes often.
Mellissa Sevigny says
A “learn to eat better plan” is such a great way to say it! Love it Debbie, thanks for chiming in!
Donna says
What really freaks me out is that people get “triggered” or “offended “ or get their feelings hurt by looking at something mentioning a diet plan . Are people really that sensitive or weak? If you don’t agree with something or “want to look at something “ why can’t you just scroll past or or just simply NOT READ IT? If you want to follow a diet plan then read it and do it, if not then just don’t read it like you’re interested in it and want to do it.
I really don’t get how sensitive people are now.
Everyone is different, and for me just because I want to be healthy (because when I’m not I get stomach problems and have low energy) , I don’t care if someone else doesn’t want to eat the same as me .
And to me, whoever made a comment about you posting about the egg fast diet (or whatever diet you were talking about) is doing EXACTLY what she is accusing YOU of.
Really, are people really THAT sensitive?
Mellissa Sevigny says
Unfortunately this is where we are – but I agree with you that all of us can make our own choice about what to consume or read or follow and we don’t have to feel the need to have an opinion on what other people’s choices are when they differ from our own.
Suzanne Gray says
There is no one diet that will fit everyone. Our society has brainwashed the masses! I have been in the holistic field for 30 years. Just because you are skinny does not mean you are healthy. What is health? My approach is connecting body/mind/ spirit. Understanding how the systems in the body and how they communicate.
If you do not address the gut , the second brain , issues will be present. I educate my clients , get in touch with your body and how does it feel after you eat? I can go on, however; this can be a complicated area to discuss.
People need to do their research and not listen to the media all the time. Listen to your gut feelings!
The answers are within….
Megan says
Thank you for this. I think it was a really important, nuanced way to respond to the anti diet allegation. I do think one worrying aspect about “anti diet” culture that you didn’t point out is the very strong belief by many anti dieters that it is not acceptable to say obesity is bad for one’s health.
This morning I read an oped in The New York Times claiming that childhood obesity is not a health epidemic. It’s insanity to me. But the vitriol shown toward anyone who suggests that obesity is a health problem, not a protected identity, makes people scared to talk about it.
It was really obvious pretty early in Covid that obesity led to higher risks of death. This isn’t a put down. If your lungs are struggling to breath, you should not put a 20 pound weight on your chest. In the same way it’s not going to help to put 20 extra pounds of fat on your lungs.
I do think we live in a society with horrible cruelty. But we can love men and women of all sizes without encouraging their poor health. It’s not “toxic diet culture” to share recipes, support and ideas for the activity we do most, preparing and eating food.
Ciaran says
I struggle with disordered eating from a childhood of often food-related abuse and I have been on diets from the age of about 5. While I can see where anti-diet hype is coming from, I am also facing the need to lose weight to solve several health problems. The aggressive anti weight loss trend on social media leaves me feeling a lack of support when the last thing I need to hear is it’s ok to eat everything.
My advice to anyone on the same path is to block them when you see them, don’t engage just boop with the block hammer. Needing to take control of your health isn’t an eating disorder and it isn’t wrong but it’s made harder by the constant message that it is.
Mellissa Sevigny says
This is a great comment, thank you! It’s true that things have gone so far that now we are made guilty for wanting to lose weight and that makes it even harder to work towards that goal with no support and even being vilified for trying!
Susan Andrews says
Working in the mental health field, sure, I’ve met many young people, mostly women, who have absorbed some harmful ideas about how they “should” look in order to be acceptable/loveable humans. The comparisons of social media have exaggerated the problem but peel it back to its origin and often it started as a message from women in their own family. These issues are almost NEVER about health but rather all about APPEARANCE. Toxic “diet culture” teaches that you MUST be this thin in order to be loveable THEREFORE tasty food in your mouth makes you unloved and unloveable. It’s beyond toxic, hard to unwrap from people’s heads and has nothing whatsoever to do with health. Quite the opposite.
Now. Enter your wonderful keto recipes. They teach how to use vegetables rather than more carby foods. They put tasty food in my mouth. They nourish me. They delight. I feel loved and loveable as I eat my Brazilian shrimp stew (from the Squeaky Clean cook book) and serve it to guests who ALSO love it regardless of how large or small any of us are. Rather than food being the enemy that must be restricted and withheld, your recipes have helped me learn how to manage my diabetes better while STILL EATING WELL. Better living through vegetables. Your soup has more colorful veggies in it than most people eat in a week. People probably need five days of your veggie soup just to get out of veg deficit.
I know what you’re saying about using keto foods to balance overindulgence. I get it. Keto can be a tool, sure, to counter overindulgence. But Mellissa, please don’t overlook the standalone value of your recipes as TASTY UNPROCESSED FOOD, heavy on the veggies. Not sure how anyone can be “anti” that when it’s so obviously helpful in the quest toward HEALTH and feeling great.
Mellissa Sevigny says
Thanks so much Susan! You know I have to sneak the veggies in however I can to get them past my guys! 🙄😂
Susan Andrews says
Keep sneaking, friend. It’s helping lots of us. :) ;)
Suzanne says
Oh Melissa!! I have so much to say on the subject it’s hard to know where to begin. But first let me say what a welcome addition you and your recipes have been to my life this past year and a half. I’ve lost 75 lb and finally feel physically well, after struggling with chronic fatigue Epstein-Barr and many other issues. So please know how much I love and respect the work that you do and I’m so grateful that you’re there doing what you’re doing.
Having said that. If it were 30 years ago it might have been me who wrote that comment to you about diet culture, cause I get it. I grew up in a dysfunctional household with a mentally ill mother, who projected her weight issues on to me at a very young age. She put me on Dr Atkins diet at the age of 11 when I was just starting to menstruate and continued through my teen years objectifying me, and only valuing me based on my weight. Even before adulthood my relationship with food was completely askew. She absolutely refused to buy me clothes unless I was a specific size. Needless to say I was dressed like a ragamuffin.
It’s craziness like this that propels young girls, women and others into disordered eating. It took me another 20 years of swinging between anorexia and bulimia to find any sense of normalcy with food. It took a lot of therapy, and a lot of healing. For those of us who have dwelled in these waters. The diet culture is antagonistic and toxic. It absolutely is.
However, once healing occurs, (and it takes an extraordinary amount of time…..) eating plans such as keto can be embraced in a healthy way. Since my metabolism got royally screwed up by my rapid extremes of weight loss and weight gain, throughout my life, I had a particularly tough time getting the weight off, especially after menopause. It turns out keto has been the ONLY thing that has worked for me. And as I said before I feel better than ever.
I 100% agree with you about the analogy between moderation with food and moderation with finances. It’s just another aspect of life for all of us to manage. Please have compassion for those who are still in the throes of the sting of diet culture. They’ve probably been tormented either by others or by themselves over body image and size and being objectified as women and all that goes with that.
Thank you so much for your site and for your cookbooks and for all the recipes that you provide. I’m finally learning to cook in a healthful way because of you! So thank you, thank you, thank you and please keep doing what you’re doing. When the others find healing they will relax.
With love and warmest regards,
Mellissa Sevigny says
Thank you for sharing your perspective based on personal experience Suzanne – I am very sorry that you went through that, it must have wreaked havoc on your self esteem and I am so glad that you have found healing and peace over it. And that you’ve found something that finally works for you and makes you feel great! Your story is inspiring, thank you for taking the time to write it for all of our benefit! 💕
Karen Green says
I am keto for life. Keto is the only food plan that I have ever been able to stick to long term. Within 4 months of starting keto 4 years ago my diabetes had reversed itself. Yes, I’ve lost weight and yes I have regained some. My doctor says I’m in better health now than I was 10 years ago. The truth is that obese people are rarely healthy people. I say ignore the foolishness and the shamers and keto on!
Sarah says
Please do not be swayed by the criticism. Those that can do intuitive eating may not need your site or to follow you on Instagram.
I probably waffle between intuitive and some form of low carb living. I tend to always come back to a combination of Mediterranean style low grain style low carb.
I went back to school at 47 and have gained back weight that was maintained for 5 years with the stress of an extremely busy lifestyle and coping with that stress with carbs.
Eat to live not live to eat. Sometimes this will be more intuitive, sometimes this will be more planned and intentional. Without being intentional, I will be fat, and not healthy, low energy version of myself.
That does not suit my goals.
Eat to live. I’m not afraid of the word diet, any more than the word budget.
Patricia says
NOW THAT’S A MANTRA:
“Without being intentional, I will be a fat, and not healthy, low energy version of myself. That does not suit my goals.”
Ann Clarkson says
Going keto did three wonderful things for me: My digestive problems disappeared, I lost 30 kilos of body weight and have kept them off for 12 years, and I haven’t seen a diabetic blood glucose number for those 12 years. I love the food as well, and at almost 77 years old, I can go out on the local Rail Trail and do a minimum of 10km walking and running, every day.
So why on earth would I ever want to change my keto diet by going back to the foods that caused my diabetes and digestive problems in the first place? Yes, I’ve added back some more coloured vegetables, but the exercise allows me to do that and remain mostly keto-adapted.
So my heartfelt thanks go, every day, to you, Mellissa, and a few other people who have helped me with these achievements, and maintaining them, for all these years. I thank you all every morning as I pour a lot of pure frothed cream into my first cup of coffee for the day!
Mellissa Sevigny says
You are an inspiration Ann, and it sounds like at 77 you are really living your best life! Thanks for sharing!
Phyllis says
I had to go look up anti diet because I guess I am out of the loop. From what I’ve read its not anything new. Or at least not to someone who has been overweight most of her life. Beginning in grade school I was advised “just eat when your hungry and then quit when you’re full”. “If you have a candy bar in the afternoon you shouldn’t be eating as much for dinner” . I heard the same things at every weight loss group I went to. I’ve also been battling glucose intolerance all my life. So for me, this is not just about body image, its health preservation. Recently, as my glucose issues have become worse as I have aged, I was given Trulicity to try to help control my blood sugar. For the first time in my life I was able to step away from food. I thought wow this is how normal people feel. I could do intuitive eating like I had been hearing about my whole life. I’m not saying this to promote these kinds of medications but to illustrate that some of us are simply not biochemically able to do intuitive eating naturally. Unfortunately, my insurance company has cut off my funding for this drug now and I am back to my usual struggles with food. They decided that because after being on the drug for 5 months and my HgbA1c was now normal…I was cured! Obviously not but that’s a story for another day. I continue to eat low carb and use your recipes often. Thank for all you do. ❤
Elizabeth says
You are an inspiration to many! As far as your posts, they are what I need to keep reminding me of better eating habits. I try to eat keto for my health and without your posts, I don’t know that I could do it. Thank you for all you do and for sharing so much. Keep being you! You are appreciated by many.