Let’s Talk About Diet Culture & Recovery
Since starting my business as a Holistic Nutritionist (RHNP) in 2018, I’ve found the vast majority of my clients have come to me for weight management. Not that there is anything wrong with this. If you are experiencing health or lifestyle challenges that would be alleviated if you were carrying less weight, or if you are currently at a body size that is uncomfortable for you, then seeking change can be a valid and worthwhile goal.
What I have also found, however, is that many of the clients who’ve come to me seeking weight loss were not experiencing health challenges, and often fit the criteria for a healthy body weight. In some cases, losing weight may have even put them at risk for nutrient deficiencies or other health complications. But as the result of Diet Culture, and of media portrayals of unrealistic beauty standards, they believed that being in a smaller body would lead to greater acceptance from society, from their partner, or from themselves.
On a regular basis, I also come face-to-face with the misconception that “low-calorie”, “low-carb” or “low-fat” equals “healthy”, when, in fact, the term “healthy” can be used to describe any food that is energy- or nutrient-dense, or nourishing for the body or soul.
If you are someone who can relate to this, know that it is not your fault, and you are certainly not alone. For all the progress we’ve made in the realms of holistic health and body positivity, Diet Culture is still as alive as it ever was.
Diet Culture, as described by the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, “is a system of beliefs that equates physical appearance and body shape with moral virtue and health. It promotes weight loss as a form of achieving status, values certain ways of eating over others, and devalues bodies that do not fit the standard ‘image of health’.”
Diet Culture can cause you to disconnect from your body, and can create social pressure that impacts the choices you make around how and when to fuel yourself. It does not take into account the reality that bodies are meant to come in all shapes and sizes, and that they are meant to change over time. It also does not consider that what is best for one person could be harmful for another. Instead, it gives a set of desired standards which are rooted in the pursuit of thinness, and not in the overall well-being of a person.
This can be harmful in a number of ways, from pressuring people toward weight loss, even if they are already healthy, to contributing to weight cycling (i.e. yo-yo dieting), metabolic damage, or even the development of eating disorders, which we now know have one of the highest mortality rates of any mental illness.
No one is immune to a culture as toxic and as pervasive as this. Not even me, with my years of training and experience in the holistic health and nutrition space.
In August of 2024, only weeks after our wedding, my husband and I were blessed with a positive pregnancy test (my first ever). As my pregnancy progressed, and my nutrient needs increased, I found myself having intense cravings for what we in the nutrition space call “empty calories” – junk food.
This did not make any sense to me. I’d been eating a healthy (whole-food) diet for years. I no longer had a taste for ultra-processed foods, and knew that there were no nutrients they contained that I could not get from fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, nuts or beans. Even more-so, I knew the nutrients found in my regular (“clean”) diet were much higher quality, and would be better absorbed to better serve my growing body and baby.
And then the meltdown happened. My husband and I were returning from our daily hour-long walk with our dog, and I suddenly got very quiet – unresponsive, even. I couldn’t articulate to my husband what exactly was wrong. I just knew I felt panicky – like something inside me needed to be remedied right away, though I couldn’t say what. My brain was a spiral of non-specific anxiety. Everything around me grated on my nervous system – the cold, the dog, my to-do list, my husband. I felt the weight of my daily environmental demands, and knew they exceeded my capacity to meet them at my current energy level. Physically, I felt weak and shaky. Mentally, I felt foggy, distant and overwhelmed.
I knew it wasn’t unusual for pregnant women to experience mood swings, low energy or irritability; I was also no stranger to the feeling of being “hangry”. But this was different. This felt like bone-deep depletion, like my body and brain were starving on a cellular level. It reminded me of how I used to feel almost every day of high school.
And then, I knew.
The intense cravings, the low-blood sugar, the hyper-fixation on food… I was not eating enough.
I’d had my usual high-protein, super-food smoothie for breakfast, which had been plenty of fuel for my mornings for the past few years, but now my body’s needs were different. My caloric needs were increasing drastically, and although my typical “day of food” before becoming pregnant may have been sufficient and healthy at the time, my baseline had changed; the ways in which I was accustomed to feeding myself were simply not enough anymore. In all likelihood, I’d been under-fueling for the past several days, or even weeks.
This would certainly explain my junk food cravings; ultra-processed foods like donuts, milkshakes, potato chips and cereal may not contain the nutrient-density of whole foods, but they did deliver one thing that my morning smoothie did not: a lot of calories, fast. And what are calories but energy? Just as I’d been trying to tell clients for years, the body is incredibly intelligent; While a clean, whole-foods diet provides many benefits that, over time, help us to feel our best and achieve optimum health, when we’re in survival-mode, the body will prioritize the most efficient energy sources, and produce the hormones and brain signals to steer us toward those foods.
Despite what Diet Culture might say, this is one circumstance where high-calorie, high-fat or even high-sugar options could be considered “healthy”, if they give us what we need in the moment. Cravings for these foods are essentially the body’s form of triage.
I am in no way saying that ultra-processed foods are the most ideal nourishment for myself or my baby, or that I would recommend they be the long-term foundation for anyone’s diet, whether or not they are pregnant. But this experience did serve as an important wake-up call; Pregnancy is a season of rapid (and necessary) growth. One which required me to be in an energy surplus. And by definition, one which required me to go directly against all the tenets of Diet Culture that had been so normalized and seared into my brain since I was old enough to watch T.V. or flip through a magazine.
Whether or not I liked to admit it, there were some facets of my mindset and my relationship with food that lingered from my high school eating disorder days: “less is more”, habitually plating up the same “safe” portions of food that I was used to, and staying within a comfort zone of slight hunger at all times, to name a few. And I knew these were not unique to me, or even individuals who suffer from eating disorders; they were common – even encouraged – tenets of Diet Culture.
Side note: if you are (even just a little bit) hungry all the time, you are not giving yourself sufficient fuel.
This experience effectively demonstrated for me how harmful Diet Culture can be, and served as an important reminder to stay vigilant; just because something is normalized and pervasive doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for everyone all the time. It also served as a reminder that recovery (from any addiction or mental illness) is an ongoing process.
In my pregnancy journey, I find I’m being forced to face and learn a lot that applies to everyday life, and can also apply to individuals who are not pregnant. Why must a woman shepherd another life before she decides it worthwhile to care for herself, as though she alone is not worthwhile, not also someone’s child?
Self-care and self-trust are not just luxuries-disguised-as-rights by entitled millennials. Grace is perhaps most essential and most effective when it’s turned inward. Above all else, it’s important honour our bodies’ needs through all the changing seasons of life.
Diet Culture be damned. When we take care of our bodies, they will take care of us in return.