Diet Culture and the relationship with our bodies

Good day, my love bugs.

On this blog, we focus on personal development and wellness on a more intrinsic level. However, I want to discuss conventional beauty and how societal standards can affect our relationship with ourselves.

What is conventional beauty? According to Wellness Voice being conventionally attractive means that your look is along the lines of society's ideals of what looks good. This is basically what we are fed of what beauty is whether it is at home, within culture, or in mass media. As someone who loves social media, I have watched a lot of YouTube videos on women getting dangerous procedures, very invasive procedures such as BBLs. This is no hate to women who decide to get surgery but we need to be honest about how beauty is social currency. Life seems easier for people who possess conventional beauty there are many trends on social media regarding beauty such as the 'lean girl' aesthetic or the 'hourglass figure'. That can be a blog post on its own and please let me know if you want a piece on it but on this post, I want to discuss diet culture within society.

How many diets have you heard of? How many dietary plans have you followed? Essentially according to Choosing Therapy diet culture is a belief system that worships thinness and equates it with health and moral virtue. The problem is not the meal plans they create but the toxicness that surrounds this culture. It perpetuates that health has a look and certain characteristics. This has been going on since the beginning of time, the beauty industry makes billions of dollars telling women they are beautiful but if they looked a certain way they would be more attractive Patriarchal societies often refer to this as the male gaze, which is a way of describing a woman and looking at a woman that empowers men while sexualizing and diminishing women.

Diet culture affects our relationship with food. It brings us to a point where we label certain foods as 'bad' but in all honesty if anything is not consumed in the right proportion it can be unhealthy. Remember the food pyramid we learned in school? It had all of the foods from carbs, sugar, starch, etc. The obsession we have with looking a certain way makes us cautious about what we eat and most of the time leads people to starve themselves. I often think of when I was a teenager when Photoshop was recent and being thin was the wave (if we were to call it). It was the era of Victoria Secret models with not much inclusivity. Even though I was petite and I was skinny, I did not like how I looked. There were moments where I was restricting myself to certain foods because they were 'bad' (which mostly had to do with the environment I was in) and the people who surround you also contribute to your health. Honestly, I prefer how I look now with my weight gain because I am in a much better place mentally and emotionally.

Yes, being obsessed with only eating foods that you consider healthy is a condition and it is called orthorexia nervosa, it is a food disorder. So really evaluate if you are a ‘healthy eater’ or just on the path to developing an eating disorder. It is okay to eat! It is also okay for us to look different and to have different bodies. Do not punish yourself, I beg you.

Till next time, cheers!