Healthy Eating - All Foods Inclusive
What is Diet Culture?
Food – it is essential for life, but when did eating get so complicated? Today, there are so many mixed messages about what we should eat, how we should eat and what our bodies should look like, or worse, what our bodies should not look like!
Words about food have become weaponised – good, bad, clean, unclean, fat, thin, toxic, processed, naughty, guilt-free. There are endless influencers who tell us we need to cleanse, detox, be alkaline and intermittently fast. Diet choices are limitless – keto, whole 30, paleo, 5:2, avoid grains, avoid dairy, sugar is addictive.
Arghhhh, just stop already!
All of this is diet culture and it has turned what should be a pleasurable, social and nourishing experience into a minefield of guilt and shame about what we eat and how we look.
The Diet Cycle
Nearly everyone knows the diet cycle, whether you realise it or not.
It’s the one where you start a new diet. You feel motivated and determined and ready to follow whatever rules this diet lays out. You might get a couple of days in, or even a week, but then something happens. You start craving all the foods you have stopped eating on this diet – maybe it’s biscuits, or chocolate, or hot chips, or milk!
So you have the thing you are missing, and then you feel guilty and disappointed and you think ‘well I’ve eaten that one thing, may as well have another one’. And before you know it you have scoffed the biscuits or had a hamburger with the hot chips, or finished the carton of milk.
But tomorrow is another day right? You can start again and this time you really will stick to the diet.
Dieting creates a system of failure. Research has proven that dietary restriction is not sustainable for most people over the long-term. While you may see initial weight loss, the longer the diet continues for, the harder most people find it to keep restricting and the weight gradually returns. This creates negative feelings of stress, anxiety, depression and disappointment.
Exploring your relationship with food
How would you describe your relationship with food? Do you assign labels to food, like good and bad? Do you have ‘cheat days’ and feel you need to ‘get back on the wagon’?
What if I told you that food should not be a guilty pleasure, but instead just pleasurable and free from guilt?
Diet culture has so heavily permeated our society that we don’t always realise we are supporting it. Establishing a new relationship with food can be a confronting process and sometimes it does get messy! When you have subscribed to diet cutlure values for so long it can be a tough habit to break.
I work with my clients to empower them to improve their relationship with food. I want to uncomplicate eating and remove the stress and anxiety that so many people experience today when making food decisions.
When you work with me you won’t find structured meal plans, strict calorie counting or food avoidance. I work with my clients to delve into their food relationships and set realistic goals to create healthy habits and meaningful change.
Ditch diet culture and let me help you find a healthier, happier relationship with food – all food!
As an Accredited Practising Dietitian, I want to help you!
Book an appointment at my Brisbane clinic or via an online telehealth consultation and let me help you make healthy habits part of your every day!
