The Diet Mentality
A crafty image I made for this article. 5 minutes total time investment. Enjoi.
Many of you already know this, but I have been doing a fitness podcast with one of my best friends, Cam Hewett, since March of 2019, The Fired Up Podcast. Listen to it on Spotify here: The Fired Up Podcast . The other day we recorded an episode regarding the food we eat on a regular basis, Ep 114: Diet Mentality. I’m not sure about you guys, but I feel like our world has slowly been bombarded with “anti-diet” culture rhetoric. For at least the past 5 years, maybe longer, our world has slowly begun to glorify all things sloth, everything comfortable, everything soft, and demonize all the things that are good for us. Now, it’s not too uncommon to do a quick Google search and find some shitty article regarding “Diet Culture” as “fatphobic” or toxic even. Here, take this one for example, Dangers of Diet Culture. At the time of my writing, the link I just inserted was the first article that popped up with a Google search of “diet culture fatphobia,” and the contents are honestly alarming.
I don’t like taking things out of context, so here is an entire insert from the article that I find problematic:
Health is not based on your size or number on the scale because health cannot be determined based on how we look. According to statistics, there are 36.8% of adults in Oklahoma that are obese and 17.3% of high schoolers who are obese or overweight. Yes, obesity is associated with chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and certain cancers, but obsessing with thinness is risky on many levels because food restriction can lead to unhealthy relationship with food, mood swings, dehydration, constipation, malnutrition, decreased metabolism, muscle loss, and even an eating disorder.
The first part alone is one of the most pressing issues regarding anti “diet culture.” Stating that health is not based on size, number, or that health cannot be determined based on how we look is horrendously false. All of these are measurement metrics to some extent, some being more quantifiable than others. Obviously there are healthier sizes and weights in comparison to other sizes and weights. Yes, there can be some nuance regarding each individual case, but a broad statement like that is just hardline shitposting behavior. If I was under six feet tall, a man, forty-years old, and three-hundred and sixty pounds, would you assume I was a paragon of health and fitness? No, of course not. In your mind’s eye you immediately imagine a middle-aged man who is struggling with obesity. Could I actually be the exception and sit at a calm twelve percent body fat with the same weight, age, and height metrics? Maybe! But that’s not normal by any means.
Now the less quantifiable part, yes, general health assumptions can be made based off of how people look. We make those assumptions all of the time. If I see an elderly individual riding a mobility scooter around Walmart with a fat oxygen tank strapped to the back of it I am certainly not going to disregard my observational senses and believe the best in the individual’s promising cardiovascular health. This is an absolute insane claim. Yes, you can make some safe assumptions about a person’s general health based off of how they look. If I run into a guy who recently got his arm mauled off by a cougar I am not going to assume he’s probably good to go, the same goes for visual assumptions regarding body composition in relation to overall health metrics.
I don’t want to spend another couple paragraphs on this, but I can’t skate over the rest of that insert. Notice that all of the admissions of obesity being associated with chronic diseases was followed up with a strong “but.” The author of the article wanted to compare “food restriction” side effects to that of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and even cancer. No, eating disorders are not comparable to cancer. Neither are mood swings.
Cam said it best in our podcast, “God wants you to have a V-taper.” It’s true, we were made for more than this fake selfcare bullshit. Everything encouraged these days is generally bad for you in some way, shape, or form. Have you noticed that? We weren’t designed to end up as these fat, sad, and diseased human messes by the age of 30. We were made for more. Diet culture isn’t bad for you, the lack of personal responsibility and positive accountability is bad for you. Discipline really is freedom. The false freedom that facades as organized chaos regarding food, comfort, sleep, and every other health metric really isn’t freedom at all. Want to really feel free? Regiment yourself to a strict workout schedule. Read a book a month, eat food that doesn’t make you feel sick after finishing it. Put down the booze. See what happens. Restriction is healthy, just don’t get all weird about it. Give it a try.
To finish, I don’t care what you look like, how fat you are, how much you can bench, I want you to succeed. I want you to be the best version of yourself out there, but pretending like restriction is unhealthy and that all body sizes and shapes are good to go is bullshit. Call it out, wherever you go. Let’s get better together.
Andrew Happel