Intuitive Eating: How We Dig Ourselves Out of Diet Culture
“Is she the one who works out all the time?”
This is what a friend told me someone said to her, with guarded suspicion in their voice, when she asked if this person knew me. My friend was like, “Um no, I don’t think so?”
This friend didn’t know me back then, so it’s probably hard for her to imagine me as exercise-obsessed, but I had to blush in embarrassment at this story. The person she was talking to was probably exposed to me on social media somewhere between seven to ten years ago.
In 2012, I was looking for something.
We had two young children and had just moved to a new neighborhood. I wanted — no, needed — to make some friends. And I was unhappy with the number that popped up on our digital bathroom scale. I regularly berated myself for having let it get that high.
An extrovert neighbor of mine, whom I relied upon to create a good portion of my social activities, mentioned an exercise class a friend of hers taught. It was in the park down the street, and we could take our toddlers. Perfect.
Side Note: Here’s a post on how hard it can be to make friends as an adult.
I was hooked.
The class was fun and laid back, and it fulfilled my need for human interaction and physical activity. It did nothing to undo my unhealthy relationships with exercise and food, but that would have been asking a lot from a thirty-minute free class. Especially since I didn’t recognize at the time that my number-on-the-scale obsession was what was making me unhappy, not the number itself.
That class started what would become, for me, a deep dive into the world of commercial fitness. I got involved in a fitness MLM and eventually began posting obnoxious food and workout updates on social media in an effort to gain followers and sell the MLM’s products. It was a misguided attempt to make a business for myself out of my diet-culture-fueled insecurities.
I tried to do it “right.”
I tried to use the MLM’s platform to promote exercise for the sake of feeling better, not weight loss, but it felt like a rationalization. And it felt disingenuous, as I was still paranoid about gaining weight, even though, intellectually, I was beginning to realize that wasn’t a healthy approach. Plus, I am a shit salesperson; I should’ve known from the beginning peddling workout videos and protein shakes was a terrible fit for me.
It was hard to get out
— not because the business model made it so but because I truly loved the people I met through the MLM. I valued feeling like I fit in a group. They weren’t rah-rah fitness model types; they were mostly moms like me, struggling to find a way to have friends, make money and fit into what Western culture wanted them to be. I am still in touch with some of them, but I knew leaving the MLM would mean I wouldn’t see them as much; it’s just the nature of quitting something. That part made me a little sad, so I held onto an organization whose “obesity epidemic” mentality was toxic for a little too long.
Then, my mindset shifted.
Somewhere between 2016 and 2018, I decided to divest myself of all of the cultural “shoulds” of eating and exercise. I realized all of the things I thought I should be doing were tinged with a sense of morality. When I didn’t exercise as much or didn’t eat like I thought I should, I felt like a bad person, as if I didn’t deserve to be happy. That just seemed wrong, so I embarked on a mission to pay better attention to how I felt.
At the time, I didn’t know there were whole organizations dedicated to intuitive eating; they don’t get the media coverage weight loss companies do because they’re not selling an endless cycle of weight loss products. But without even knowing intuitive eating was a thing, it felt right to me. It was simple — What do I feel like eating? Eat that if it’s around. As I eat — How full do I feel right now? Am I ready to stop?
It takes practice to get past the restrictive moralizing our culture does about food.
I’ve emerged from the world of judgmental diet culture disguised as a health concern a wiser person. I apologize to that person my friend talked to and all the people exposed to my posts during those years. Whenever Facebook memories shows me one of my old posts about a “clean eating challenge,” I roll my eyes at myself and cringe. I leave ‘em up there, though; I don’t want to sugarcoat my journey. It’s humbling; it’s a reminder to be gentle with others.
I haven’t stepped on a scale in years.
I can tell my body is bigger than it was in 2016, smaller than it was in 2019, but that now seems like an irrelevant side-factoid. I feel better than I did in either of those years. I no longer torture myself with food and exercise “shoulds.”
Admittedly, I still sometimes work out with exercise videos from the MLM days. I gravitate toward the ones with movements I like because I enjoy the way my body feels doing them. I like the ones in which the celebrity trainer doesn’t spew too much toxic “get-your-body-ready-for-the-beach” chatter; beach-ready to me now means owning comfortable swim clothes and a towel.
Our diet culture has pushed us away from our human intuition about eating and movement.
This is what capitalism does; it convinces you that you are not okay as you are, that you need intervention — specifically, their intervention which involves selling you products. Diet culture is like a drug dealer; it doesn’t care about you beyond your customer status. It doesn’t even want you to lose weight and keep it off like it keeps saying it does. If that actually happened, it couldn’t sell you any more miracle solutions. Diet culture is not concerned about our health, though many of the people pushing it rationalize that they are helping us be healthy. That’s what people often have to do to succeed in business and sleep at night. That’s the system.
Here’s the good news:
We are all a part of this. We ARE the culture, so we can change it. It takes a lot of momentum and people to derail something as monetarily profitable as the diet industry, but it can be done. Hell, I self-centeredly thought I invented intuitive eating five years ago, but it turns out professionals like Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch at IntuitiveEating.org have been supporting it since the mid-90s fat-free nonsense (which I also bought into. Snackwells cookies, anyone?) There’s also the Facebook Group, Eat food and move your body: Health without the disorder, that’s been around since 2014. I’m sure there are others.
This post was inspired by my friend’s story about the person who viewed me as “that woman who works out all the time,” but also by this: Recently, I posted a short bit on social media about intuitive eating and diet culture, and it spawned a lot more conversation than most of my posts. It’s obvious, as little publicity as intuitive eating gets, people are hungry for it. (Pun totally intended.)
CTA
The internet marketing gurus recommend you end everything with a call to action (CTA, as they say in the biz). Mostly, though, I ignore this and just ramble through each of these newsletters until I run out of coffee or things to say. But here’s your CTA for this one:
I invite you to pay attention to your feelings when it comes to food and exercise. It starts with body sensations — what does your gut feel like? Is it hungry, full, or — as often the case with me — gassy and bloated? What do your muscles feel like? Are they loose or stiff? Would a walk around the block feel good? Maybe a nap instead?
I also invite you to minimize your exposure to unhelpful messages — report or block ads that tell you eating twelve bananas a day will promote belly fat loss or whatever. I’ve noticed over the years, by mindfully blocking, liking, joining and leaving groups, my social media feed feels much mentally healthier than it used to. Or, limit your social media exposure altogether.
We can change our culture; there are enough of us to do it if we are mindful, assertive and patient. Come on…bring your green hat. None of us has to go streaking through the quad alone.