Second Helpings of Diet Culture
I remember the first time someone made a comment about my body, specifically derogatory, was when I was around eight or nine years old. It was around then that I formed a belief that something was wrong with my body…before even experiencing puberty! After that, more comments came throughout puberty. Then came teenage-hood, into adulthood - you get the idea. Sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like if I wasn’t body conscious for almost my entire life. If that innocence instead of malice toward my body lasted for years to come. But then again, my experience is a normal one in American society.
28.8 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime (NEDA,2024). My first memory of developing an eating disorder began at age 12. By age 14, I was hiding diet products in my closet and developing fear foods. I struggled with rotating binging and restricting behaviors until about age 17. In college, it evolved into bulimia and then, orthorexia as I became an athlete. That’s the thing about eating disorders, is that there can be a ton of overlapping symptoms and evolution. The lines are blurred between when behaviors transitioned, but I remember the main symptoms of each time frame. And they are so, so common.
I am now on year six of recovery and still struggling with it. There wasn’t one specific moment six years ago where I remember deciding to stop with the eating disorder. Instead, I gradually started to acknowledge what was happening and that I was sick of living the way I was living, thus a catalyst for change. When I found an online powerlifting community was when I learned that there really was an alternative to an eating disorder lifestyle.
The last few years of recovery were way easier, but now I find myself body conscious once again after gaining weight. Alas, diet culture lives on and I find myself falling for it sometimes. This time, though, I have the proper support and knowledge to aid me. I am no longer 12 year old me, but she is still part of me, and I want her to know that none of that was fair to her and it’s still not. It’s not normal to think about food, exercise, or your body 24/7 despite how normalized that is! I refuse to give up.
You see, even in recovery I am still immersed in diet culture. It oozes out of the media. It’s a commonality in the office. It’s embedded throughout the medical field. “Smaller is healthier,” they say. “More valuable,” they say. The thing is, we really don’t know how healthy someone else is. It’s also none of our business, just like what they eat and how they choose to move.
Having my body change has triggered a trauma response in me because I still have some core beliefs surrounding food and exercise to work through with my therapist and anti-diet dietician (yes, those exist). I am confident that I can acknowledge what is diet culture talking and what it my recovery talking, though.
Society didn’t teach me how to love my body, nourish my body, listen to my body, connect my mind, body, and spirit, or celebrate my body. Instead, it taught me that value and worth are in size and weight.
I am more than my body size and I don’t want to hide that from myself or others.
So that’s what I’m doing. Recovering out loud.
