How The Diet Industry Profits off of your Insecurities
We females in today's society are taught that there is always something about ourselves that we can change. Society today deems fad diets and slim teas as a cure-all to everything. The diet industry is a $72 billion per year industry with a 95% failure rate. We have believed that it is more normal to hate your body than to love it. We try to shrink ourselves to be seen. Why, when we gain things other than weight, we deem it to be a positive thing? We gain a promotion; we gain financial stability. We gain friends. We gain memories, etc. Yet, gaining weight has been equated to being a failure. The diet industry thrives off of your negative thoughts. They play into your emotions and offer a "quick fix" for your problems. The diet industry is sneaky. They show you images of women who don't even look like their picture (photo editing is real and very much alive). They never tell you the success rate due to the rate being practically non-existent. They don't tell you that by trying to lose weight this way, you will also be losing memories with friends, confidence, energy, and so much more.
The diet culture industry prepares you to fail. The industry can lead many people into a more restrictive and negative mindset, causing them to fall into disordered eating habits or be diagnosed with an eating disorder. These habits lead to an endless cycle of trying to find "quick fixes" that the diet industry profits from. For example, studies show that girls who diet frequently are 12 times more likely to binge than girls who don't diet. This is due to deeming certain foods as "bad" or "good." Yes, some foods are nutritionally more dense than others; however, once someone has that all or nothing mentality, they have given food a type of control over them. Weight loss is not a quick process, and if it is something you want to do for your overall health, you have to have a healthy mindset towards food to succeed. It's okay to want to change for the better, but you have to accept yourself without a feeling of resentment towards your body.
Health is not one size fits all. Contrary to what the industry has made us believe. What makes one person feel the healthiest will not make someone else feel the healthiest. Health does not equal skinny. It has been deemed that weight loss is the only way to improve one's health and fitness level. This is bullshit. Ben Gold race wrote in his book, "Bad Science," "We have somehow become collectively obsessed with these absurd thinly evidenced tinkering in diet, distracting us from simple healthy eating advice, but more than that distracting us from other important lifestyle risk factors for ill health that cannot be sold or commodified." There is so much more to health than weight; by trying to be the smallest version of yourself, you might be killing yourself in the process.
Educate yourself. It's okay to want to be healthier. It's okay to have a goal. It's okay to want to lose weight if it's sustainable and healthy. What's not okay is spending your life wishing you were in a smaller body. The diet industry is trying to control us, and we have to fight back. We have to take back our power. We have to accept our bodies. We have to normalize losing weight sustainably and healthily. Why should we want to shrink ourselves when we have so much to offer? We have been brainwashed, and it's not our fault. We grew up surrounded by the idea that loving yourself was selfish and that a number on the scale defined our worth. When that is, in reality, the least exciting thing about you, these beliefs are not easy to let go of, but we have to try. We have to create an empowering society of women who accept and love their bodies at all stages, so that young girls do not endure the same thing we did.
Life is too short to base your mood off on the number of the scale or how many carbs you had that day. Live your life, eat good food, create your version of a healthy life. Health looks different on everyone. Accept that as we change, our bodies will too. Our bodies do so much for us, don't spend your life hating it. Let's take our power back.