How to Eat Without Growing Bigger: You Can’t

 

The Cycle of Unhealthy Eating

“Toxic diet culture” is an infinite craze that morphs and hides itself for new generations under the guise of unchangeable market beauty standards. According to the National Institution of Health, more than 2 out of every 5 adults have obesity, but how can these two facts coexist? If everyone feels the need to diet, then why is obesity still such a huge problem in America?

Many Americans have a difficult time consuming healthy food on a regular basis because they are more expensive, take time to prepare and— let’s be honest— they usually don’t taste as good. Fast food is cheap and convenient, and often what people turn to. Healthy fast-food options are far and few between, and also more expensive. Furthermore, if you don’t have time to cook, you probably don’t have time to work out.

At this point of eating non-nutritious foods and not working out, toxic diet culture shames people for not already being thin (not healthy, thin), and encourages restrictive habits. This often leads a cycle of anorexia and binge eating that is ultimately unhealthy and prevents sustainable habits. Sustainable eating and exercising habits are consistent and easy to maintain without resulting in episodes of “breaking the diet.”

                  Recently, the outbreak of prescriptive appetite suppressants has led many to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with health culture in America.

Diet Culture in the Media

                  The early 2000s media, including the social media platform Tumblr, is notorious for overemphasizing diet culture. Movies and TV shows featured only skinny women as main characters and made jokes about only eating small amounts. For example, in The Devil Wears Prada Emily Blunt’s character says, “Well, I don’t eat anything and when I feel like I’m about to faint I eat a cube of cheese.”

                  Additionally, reality shows such as America’s Next Top Model and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team featured young women of perfectly healthy body weights shamed for being too overweight to be successful. I want to overemphasize that these girls were very normal weights.

Tyra Banks called this woman plus sized… huh?

After many studies revealed the dangers of social media on the mental health of teenage girls, a case which often leads to eating disorders, body positivity has increased as a general idea, but not enough.

In the rise of influencers, many creators have taken on the role of posting honest content to encourage young girls to love their bodies. Creator Spencer Barbosa has made an especially big wave in the body positivity community with a page devoted to embracing her mid-size body, eating without shame and honesty about her own experiences with body dysmorphia. Additionally, Olympic athlete Ilona Maher has spoken out against the unhealthy standards for women’s bodies in the media.

However, next to these fabulously honest influencers, are hundreds of women that devote their time to FaceTune, Photoshop and filters. Their doctored posts are giving women unrealistic expectations for themselves that foster and produce low self worth. Despite that overwhelming wall of body shaming and impossibly skinny pictures, the world is improving its view of body positivity after the negative effects of the internet.

The most recent media “health” craze comes from advertisements pushing appetite suppressants as a universal solution. Historically these serious medications were reserved for prescriptive needs often for diabetic patients. Now, ads like this Hims and Hers Super Bowl ad are pushing appetite suppressants as a solution to the American obesity epidemic as opposed to improving American access to nutritious food.

Media Recommendation

There are several narratives that will discuss body dysmorphia as part of a larger plot, but it is still considered a dirty topic to discuss.

The book Flawless by Elise Hu is a literary non-fiction that investigates the cosmetic surgery culture in Korea.

The movie Dumplin’ is a beautiful depiction of how weight can affect personal self worth as well as how others see you.