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Diets in Disguise

Diet = any external guide that teaches you to disregard your internal authority on how to feed yourself.

Find a good post on Whole 30 here.

Article on Weight Watchers pretending they’re body positive can be found here.

Find a post on healthy living or wellness bloggers here.

22 comments

  1. Yes yes yes. so insightful and so true

  2. Yikes, I hadn’t seen that WW campaign video – total fail.

    Thank you for including my Whole30 post – I love your watercolor painting posts <3

  3. First of all, weight and sex are not related. It doesn’t matter what size you are, anyone can enjoy or struggle with it. That is so frustrating. What an idiotic campaign! Love this and all of your watercolor paintings and messages!

  4. Ah man, it’s so frustrating. What’s been tough for me lately getting into the social media and blogging space and almost an RD (woohoo!) Is that the popular accounts are promoting diet and a way of eating…they throw out this idea that they have an answer for people who are interested in health, when really it is leading them down an awful path of restriction, feeling inadequate, and more. I just want to shake them and scream “no! I know they seem like they know better with the glitter and glam and fancy posts, but YOU are your own best nutritionist…start listening to you!”

    • I hear you, Jamie. It is really frustrating. I know A Beautiful Mess, a totally great DIY blog, just released a cookbook and it promotes a 5:2 approach – 5 days of “clean” eating + 2 days of “eat whatever you want” eating. And I’m just like, I don’t think you should be giving nutrition advice. Give DIY + hair care + fashion advice…but you could really mess someone up by encouraging that 5:2 style of eating. They do collaborate with an RD for some of their posts (and I think for the cookbook they did too), but even the content I’ve seen from her is put through the ol’ “here are the nutrition rules (i.e. watch sugar, eat fruits and vegetables), now you go follow them and it’s just so easy and fun” lens. No mention of relying on internal cues and/or increasing one’s ability to trust themselves around food.

      I’m with you! Your body knows how to feed itself if you can turn down the diet noise and turn up the noise for hunger/fullness/the fact that emotional eating is normal and an option for how to care for yourself/etc.

  5. Thanks for this, I feel like these messages are rampant. This may be slightly unrelated but at my OB appt at the beginning of my second trimester last month my doctor gave me the advice to “not eat too much” bc it would be harder to take off later. At first I was just taken aback and later I was outraged. Why couldn’t he tell me to make sure I’m eating enough? And what does he consider “too much”? Ugh. Sometimes I let that get in my head and I worry that I’m overdoing it, but I’m actively fighting against that. 

    • I hate that for you, BJ. Pregnancy can be such a lesson in constantly remembering that you CAN trust your body and that your body knows how much weight it needs to gain in pregnancy and you don’t need to micromanage it. Having an OB make comments like that makes you feel more neurotic about feeding you body, which adds stress at an already stressful time.

  6. I’m so glad you highlighted Weight Watchers and Whole 30 here. Those seem to be the diets I hear the most about when people are trying to frame it as a “lifestyle.” And that is my EXACT point about Weight Watchers! They argue that you will learn to regulate your food during the day to have enough points by the end, but I believe this also suggests that we should be eating exactly the same amount everyday. So no true!

  7. Thank you, Kylie. I am on my journey through intuitive eating (reading Intuitive Eating now!) and have been struggling with deciding if Whole30 and more “clean” eating is right. I did try Whole30 out of curiosity, but I know that my previous ED thinking also wanted to see if I’d lose some weight or tone up. It’s so hard to balance wanting to eat well and eat foods that make me feel good (physically I felt good on Whole30) while also not being controlling of food.

  8. As I sit here freely bawling over your post on wellness bloggers, I just wanted to say thank you. Even as an adult it is so freeing to get”permission “ to not like something, especially if you are in the minority. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve labeled myself a failure because I cannot eat a salad every day for lunch or that a bowl full of veggies doesn’t appeal to me as a meal. Or that I HATE nut butter!! But my goodness how can those “healthy” people be wrong with 2billion followers! I’ve got a ton of cleaning up to do on social media.
    Anyway, again thank you!

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  10. Love your posts so much. What’s your take on the 30 day sugar detoxes? The author of Practical Paleo hosts them. I have never done one and probably won’t, but I was wondering your thoughts on those kinds of things that are short term?

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  13. Thank you for this post. Really needed to read this today!

  14. A little late to the party, but I am working on healing my own disordered eating patterns and have been working my way through all your fantastic posts. Can you (or perhaps you already have) talk about the If It Fits Your Macros concept? As a personal trainier, I see a lot of that around me and have done it myself. It is marketed as “flexible” eating and “not a diet”. I have even heard it aligned to Intuitive Eating and read a post from an RD about how counting your macros is not disordered eating behavior (I fell on the floor with that one). I think it deserves some mentioning as it is quite prevalent in the world now. With so many people working out in Corssfit gyms and being exposed to that culture of clean eating, Macro counting, carb cycling, paleo, etc I think disordered eating is more so the norm and mainstream behavior now-a-days. Love your blog! It is helping me to read something from you every day.

  15. I love this so much. First of all, the watercolor is awesome. Second of all, you made me laugh. Third of all, you say it like it is, and we need more of that.

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