When Diet Culture Steals Your Logical Thinking

This is a painful blog for me to write. It shows just how much diet culture and striving for the thin ideal overtakes one’s logical thinking brain.

Here’s the story…

I’m treating a client for a gastrointestinal disorder. Due to the nature of her condition and her intolerance to many foods, she shared with me that she lost weight. How does she know? Her clothes are big on her. And, yes, she weighs herself regularly.

She went to her internist this week to discuss her varying medical issues she is currently dealing with. The doctor weighed her and told her she lost X pounds in the last 3 months. I’m not revealing the number of pounds she lost, the number isn’t relevant. What IS relevant is that it’s a significant weight change in a short period of time, coupled with a review of her labs which reveal that she is malnourished.

My client’s reaction?

I’m happy I lost weight, I like how I look and I’m getting compliments.

This is where I cringed. Here is a bright woman who for the last 50 years has been chasing weight loss only to regain what she’s lost (no news here!). Now that she’s losing weight, she is thrilled, but what she fails to comprehend is that this weight loss is DETRIMENTAL to her health.

Her body is not absorbing the nutrients from the foods she is eating. She is malnourished. Yet, she says she “wouldn’t mind losing a little more”.

Diet culture has messed with people’s intelligence. The society we live in today worships thinness so much so that people are willing to go to any lengths to lose weight and claim a higher status that diet culture promises.

If you’ve fallen prey to this unfortunate outcome of living in a diet-obsessed culture, here’s 3 steps you can do right now to turn this around:

Step 1: Be honest with yourself: Take a long hard look at how you are treating your body. Are you dieting and wishfully dreaming for that thin body? And if so, to what extent and detriment to get there? What harm are you already experiencing physically and emotionally?

Step 2: Commit to stop dieting: This might be very scary if you’ve allowed diets to “control” your eating for a long time. But you must commit to never diet again, otherwise you will always be tempted by another diet that pops up (and there will be many!).

Step 3: Seek support: If diet culture and the pursuit of thinness has prevented you from making logical decisions about your health and well-being, please reach out for support. You need help from a qualified health professional to help you turn this around. It is possible! And, it shows strength to reach out for support.

I’m happy to report that my client is now doing well. She has given up the notion that her body needs to look a certain way and she has started to appreciate her body shape and capabilities. She is slowly re-nourishing her body and healing from her gut disorder. And, her logical thinking has returned.

What about you? How has diet culture and striving for the thin idea affected your logical thinking? Let me know below! And, as always, if you want to chat, just contact me.