I’m embarrassed to admit what happened…
Diet culture literally distracted me from my own human rights. Something that I warn about all the time!
But hold on. Let me back up and start from the beginning.
One morning I did some dance videos in the basement. (The Fitness Marshall is hilarious, fun & body inclusive, if you’ve never tried.)
I grooved to a few favorites on YouTube like Levitate and Bad Romance, and let it run while I did my stretches afterward.
You know how it does that “autoplay” thing and then cuts into a long ad?
Well, the danger of doing dance workouts on YouTube is that the ads target you for weight loss and plastic surgery and Maggie Q talking about how she can’t stop eating bread and used to be constipated.
Before I know it, I’m in downward dog listening to someone talking about balancing hormone levels in your 40s and the challenges that can come with aging. And yeah… as good as I feel some days, other days it feels like everything’s out of whack.
A random cry session here; a random knee pain there.
So I listened.
And then…
… yeah, I clicked.
(Gah, why did I do that?)
Pretty quickly, some 35 year-old gym bro is explaining to me why women feel sluggish and have belly fat and all these other awful diet culture things that I don’t even want to repeat.
After a few minutes of this garbage during my cat-and-cow stretch, I said, wait a minute. What the heck is this? I don’t want whatever he’s selling. This is not for me. And in fact, this is the kind of stuff I despise. He’s telling me why my body is bad. And he’s ABOUT to tell me to limit my daily food intake to less than what a 2 year-old eats.
No thank you.
But more importantly, you know what else was happening that day? A storm of conversation about the Supreme Court draft decision of Justice Alito about Roe v. Wade that had just been leaked THE NIGHT BEFORE.
I care about this issue deeply.
And while, no, this post isn’t intended to be a diatribe on all the reasons that people with uteruses need to have control over their own bodies – I strongly believe that we do. Like with every time our rights are at stake, it will most deeply impact Black and brown women and poor people.
I could go on and on.
But the point is – – – instead of digesting what this means and seeking out the opinions of reproductive justice leaders who’ve been doing this work for decades… I was thinking about the APPEARANCE of my body.
Me.
A person who has had fairly positive body image for most of my life. A person who grew up with thin privilege. A person who is trained through the Embodied Rebel Academy to coach women to give up dieting and accept their bodies in the face of fat phobia and prejudice.
Huge news was happening in the world. But my attention had been diverted to what I looked like. “You’re not thin enough” was threatening to seep into my brain.
Thankfully, I was able to recognize it quickly.
I have the tools to understand when diet culture masquerades as health and fitness or sometimes as holistic healing.
I have the tools to accept my body just the way it is, at every stage of my life, knowing it will continue to change and evolve and surprise me.
I have the knowledge that self-love isn’t enough when we continue to live in a world that is deeply fat phobic and continually penalizes people living in larger bodies simply for how they look.
Despite all of those tools and training and understanding, I had a moment where I was simply human. Not perfect. Not a model of positive body image. Just human. And prone to imbibing the relentless messages about unworthiness to distract me from what really matters.
This may sound super-conspiracy-theory-ish, but one of the goals of diet culture, along with trying to “other” and demonize Black bodies, is to distract and silence people, especially women.
It distracts us from old male politicians scaling back our rights.
It distracts us from an 18 year-old white man horrifically and systematically ending the lives of ten Black individuals simply trying to exist. A friendly neighbor helping shoppers load groceries in their cars. A dad buying a birthday cake for his 1 year-old baby.
It distracts us from our ability to create more justice in this world. To live to our truest potential.
So next time you get sucked in by an ad or a thought that tries to make you hate yourself, first – have some self-compassion. You’re not the only one.
It doesn’t make you weak or shameful. We’ve been trained for years to think this way.
The second step is to remember – they can’t take away your power. Your mental space is valuable and the world needs you. How will you channel your oh-so-special power?
If you struggle with constant thoughts about your body and food, I’d love to help you accept your body today, just as it is, and stop feeling crazy around food. Book a free discovery call with me to learn more:
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