I Just Want to Eat Clean, Healthy Foods and Exercise Regularly - Am I Stuck in Diet Culture?
NOTE: I’m not a registered dietician/nutritionist or medical doctor. The information I’m sharing here is culled from experts whom I’ll reference within the content.
I think this is a really interesting question that comes up again and again in my coaching practice. If this blog post is too long to read, the short answer is (likely) “yes”.
There are so many parts to this question. I’ll start with the current-day concept that there is a “healthy” way to eat.
What is a healthy way of eating?
Vegan?
Vegetarian?
Low/no sugar?
Minimal or no red meat?
Minimal or no processed foods?
Nothing in the middle of the grocery store?
Low/no carbs?
Intermittent fasting?
Only organic foods?
Only “whole” foods?
Only locally made/sourced foods?
There’s nothing particularly bad about these approaches to eating. I mean, they each have downsides associated with them - potential for missing key nutrients if you aren’t vigilant, for example. Or they might be really expensive to “do” sustainably. The thing that’s really risky about any of these approaches is that they are very likely to trigger your body’s “fight for your life” response that works to maintain your natural set-point weight.
If you are eating according to any kind of rigid wellness routine that categorizes foods as “good” or “bad”, the same physiological corrective responses kick in as if you were dieting. If you experience any kind of deprivation (actual caloric restriction or just mental restriction) it leads your body to induce reactive cravings and binges. Your INTENTIONS are the main point here - because it’s your intentions that signal to your body whether or not you are in any kind of state of deprivation (not the actual kinds of food you consume, or even the amount of food you consume).
The pursuit of health and healthy eating has essentially supplanted the pursuit of thinness in our cultural conversations around food, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still “diet culture” at work. In its most extreme manifestation it actually has a name: Orthorexia (compulsive pursuit of fitness and/or health).
“Healthy eating” is very often code for “ways to stay or get thin”. In our society - even among doctors - thinness is discussed interchangeably with health, and the ideals around healthy eating have just replaced the word “diet” to keep us all restricting foods and stuck in the cycle. Even words like “bloated” and “puffy” are really just new ways of saying “I feel fat”. The two goalposts are nearly inseparable.
There’s actually no obvious, perfectly “healthy” way to eat for all people. Even if there were (and there isn’t), it would likely only be accessible to very privileged people.
In her book “Anti-Diet” Christy Harrison points out that our health and longevity is driven by many more factors than our eating and exercise choices: genetics, socio-economic status, social interactions, environment (and environmental toxins) and mental health account for 90% + of our health outcomes. So, 10% of our generally accepted measures of health are directly affected by our food and movement behaviors. In other words, we have a very limited amount of control over our health (and even less control over our weight, which I wrote about in detail in this previous post).
In fact, many of our health measures - standard blood test result ranges, for example - have been put into place based on research provided by the pharmaceutical industry (Source: “Anti-Diet” by Christy Harrison). An example of this is the very new diagnosis “Pre Diabetes”, which essentially encourages major dietary and even drug interventions before someone has the condition. In fact, current evidence shows that only 2% of people diagnosed with “Pre Diabetes” ever wind up developing actual Diabetes. Similar early medical interventions occur with cholesterol and blood pressure issues. [If you are worried (based on lab work) that you are close to developing any of these conditions, or you already have them, you should absolutely check out these brand new, comprehensive Healthsheets to learn about weigh-neutral ways to address the conditions: https://haeshealthsheets.com/about/ ]
The food industry, our government (influenced heavily by the food and pharmaceutical industries) and the media (heavily influenced by what gets eyeballs) would have you believe that your food choices are much more important to your health than they really are.
So, if we don’t have control, why bother with nutrition at all?
Gentle, balanced nutrition - or as Ellyn Satter (author of “Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family”) calls it, “Eating Competence” - is just making sure you eat all the vitamins and minerals and fiber and carbs and protein and fats that help us to live better lives today (in any body shape or size). Balanced nutrition supports our immune systems. Eating at least three (ideally seated) meals a day and eating enough food helps your metabolism to function optimally, and allows your body to start telling you what it wants and needs more clearly (because it isn’t junked up trying to correct for restrictive behaviors).
Eating enough protein and fat can ensure you have sustained energy so you can comfortably do all the things you want to do in a day. Eating enough carbohydrates gives you enough energy to think clearly and to get started doing the things you want to do in a day. Eating enough fiber allows you to absorb nutrients and process foods, keeping your intestines working well. Maybe most importantly, eating a wide variety of foods helps you enjoy food and feel satisfied, which a) helps your body absorb more nutrients (enjoying food literally causes your body to process nutrients better (Source: “The Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family” by Ellyn Satter), and b) makes your life worth living.
How do you eat intuitively but still include nutrition in the choices you make? You focus on adding in, not taking out. Add fruits, veggies, fiber, protein, carbohydrates and fats into your meals as needed. My favorite example is that I’ll always make sure to add protein (and often strawberries or bananas for fiber) to a pancake breakfast so I don’t sugar-crash too early in my day. You get the idea. Don’t restrict foods - ADD foods.
Also, here are some amazing publicly available handouts offering gentle nutrition (foods to add in) options for various conditions (PCOS, Hypothryoid, etc.) created by Meghan Cichy RDN, www.MeghanCichyRDN.com.
What eating a nutritionally balanced diet doesn’t do:
Provide you with air-tight moral superiority over other ways of eating
Help you get or stay thin
Prevent all disease
Prevent aging
[Caveat: if you are allergic to a certain food, then of course you should avoid those foods! Again, the intention behind eliminating foods is the key. If you aren’t experiencing feelings of deprivation (i.e., if you work hard to find replacement foods that satisfy your desire for wheat or dairy or any other food you might be allergic to) then you can pretty easily find a way to eat intuitively without triggering the deprivation/restriction -> cravings/binge eating cycle.]
The reality is that what motivates most people to adopt a new “healthier” lifestyle is the same urge we had when we signed up for Weight Watchers in the 80s: we want to lose weight. Or, in some cases, our doctor told us we should lose weight.
Our bodies are powerful, complex engines that know how to process all sorts of food types into energy. Our control over our overall health is limited at best, and it’s certainly not meaningfully affected by eating a Big Mac once a week. When we talk about the ‘evils’ of fast food, it’s almost always discussed in a black and white, all or nothing way (and often overlaps with wildly classist, elitist and racist assumptions about which groups of people are eating fast food “all the time”). Again, the thinking among nutrition scientists these days is that a wide variety of foods is the healthiest way to eat (Source: “Nourish” by Heidi Schauster, interviewed on the Food Psych Podcast #168).
What I think is really interesting is what happens when you give yourself full permission to eat every kind of food.
Let’s say you’ve always ruled out fast food in the past because it’s “bad for you” and/or doesn’t serve your weight loss or weight management goals. So, you embark on total food legalization and you decide you’re going to allow yourself to eat fast food. You try it, you might even eat it every day, multiple times a day for a little while (who knows - it all depends on how severe and/or meaningful your previous ban on fast food has been for you). What comes up for you?
I’ll share what came up for me: I discovered that some of the food offered at fast food restaurants is delicious and worth being put back on the yummy food options list for the rest of my life (for me, one example is McDonald’s soft-serve ice cream - don’t ask me why). Some of it wasn’t nearly as delicious as I remembered. And some of it made me feel tired or gave me a headache or didn’t keep me energized for very long. Some of it left a weird after-taste. And in some cases I realized I strongly preferred my own home-made versions - e.g. my own cheese burgers with much better quality meat. You get the idea. You get to EXPLORE fast food through a weight-neutral lens and decide, for yourself what’s worth including in your future eating, or future eating in specific contexts (for me, I’ll happily stop at McDonalds on a long road trip) - and what isn’t worth it for you. And THAT’S peace and freedom - not gluttony or wildly unhealthful eating.
This work - the work to un-tangle food and movement from virtue - is not about diving into the abyss of lying on the couch and eating only higher calorie processed foods. It’s about relearning what foods and types of movement we truly like. It’s about relearning how foods actually make us feel, and how to rest when we need to - without moral judgments. When we’re stuck in rigid exercise routines and restriction-binge eating cycles, our bodies aren’t capable of speaking to us, and we aren’t capable of hearing them.
Legalizing all foods allows your body to trust you will feed it enough food, regularly, without fear and shame. Once you do that for a while, you’ll realize that you’re suddenly able to actually feel and hear your body’s needs so you can make the choices you want to make - choices that will satisfy you now as well as help you feel good later on when you’re trying to go to sleep, or getting through an afternoon slog at work, or get you through to lunchtime without crashing.
It’s really worth taking the risk and “letting go”. You can even put a time limit on it - one month of eating freely, for example. See how you feel. Pick a food you’ve previously banned and stock up on it. Fill your cabinets or fridge with that food. Eat it as often as you’d like, and as much as you’d like for one month. Check in at the end of the month: did you ‘lose control’ around that food? Did you love it as much as you thought you would? What thoughts ran through your head every time you sat down to eat it? How much of your mental energy was spent worrying about the weight you might be putting on? How does it feel to be aware that the restrictions you placed on that food gave it SO MUCH POWER over you and your life? Does that seem like a good thing or maybe something you’d like to move past so you can do all the other -- meaningful -- things you are here on earth to do?