How Diet Culture Hijacked Our Health and How to Break Free
If you’ve ever looked in the mirror and felt like you weren’t enough. Not small enough. Not lean enough. Not disciplined enough. Haven’t we all?
If you’ve ever eaten a nourishing meal and still felt guilty because it wasn’t clean enough, same. Many of us have spent years stuck in patterns we didn’t even realise were shaped by something bigger. Diet culture.
I used to want to shrink myself. I thought if I could just be thinner, everything else would fall into place. My health. My confidence. My happiness. But the harder I tried to fit into the version of healthy I saw online, the more disconnected I felt from myself.
It wasn’t until I started learning about the body, including my nervous system, my hormones, my gut, and how stress affects everything, that I realised diet culture had nothing to do with real health. And it was costing me mine.
What Actually Is Diet Culture?
Diet culture is a belief system that equates thinness with health, morality, and worth. It tells us:
Smaller bodies are better.
Restriction is strength.
Hunger is weakness.
Health means fitting into a narrow aesthetic.
But these ideas are not based on science. They are based on profit and perfectionism. They keep women stuck in a loop of not feeling good enough.
How Diet Culture Shows Up In Daily Life.
Praising weight loss without asking why.
Assuming someone in a smaller body is automatically healthy.
Feeling guilty about eating carbs or fats.
Skipping meals and calling it discipline.
Associating your value with how much control you have over your body.
The Science: How Diet Culture Hurts Your Body
When you're living in that mindset:
1. Dieting Creates Chronic Stress
When you’re under-eating, overtraining, or constantly self-critical, your body feels unsafe. Your stress response turns on and cortisol rises. Over time, this can mess with your cycle, slow your digestion, inflame your gut, and drain your energy.
2. Restriction Affects Hormones
When you don’t eat enough, even if the food is healthy, your hormones take a hit. Your body needs fats to make estrogen and progesterone. It needs carbs to regulate cortisol and support your thyroid. It needs protein to repair tissues, including your gut and hormone receptors. If your body thinks you are in a famine, it is not going to prioritise your period or your digestion. It is going to protect you by conserving energy.
3. Your Gut Feels the Mental Load
Your gut also takes a hit. Food obsession, guilt, and shame activate stress in your brain, which shows up in your gut. This slows down digestion, disrupts your microbiome, and can lead to bloating or discomfort.
How I Let Go Of Diet Culture
For years I tried so many different wellness rules. Low carb. Sugar free. Fasting. Greens. Long workouts. I tracked everything. But I didn’t feel good. My period was gone. I felt tired. And I still didn’t think I look like the women I saw online. That pressure was messed up.
Everything changed when I learned to listen to my body and support it instead of fighting it. I started fuelling myself properly, I put on weight (the opposite of what we ‘should’ do). I let go of needing to control everything. And I redefined what health meant for me.
Now, health looks like:
Having energy to move in ways I enjoy.
Feeling satisfied after eating.
Sleeping deeply.
Having a regular cycle.
Feeling calm and grounded in my own skin.
I want this for you too.
You’re Not Failing. The System Is
If you’ve tried everything and still feel like it’s not working, please know it’s not your fault. Diet culture was never designed to support your health. It was designed to keep you chasing an impossible standard.
You’re not failing. You’re responding like a human in a system that thrives on keeping you small, distracted, and self-critical.
Real health isn’t about looking a certain way. It’s about having energy, regular cycles, mental clarity, good digestion, restful sleep, and freedom around food.
So how do you start breaking free?
1. Get Curious Instead of Judging Yourself
When you catch yourself thinking a certain food is bad, pause. Ask yourself where you learned that rule. Who does it benefit when you believe it?
2. Tune In To How You Feel
Start paying attention to your energy, digestion, sleep, and mood after meals. Let your body be the guide, not a trend or a tracker.
3. Nourish Your Body Without Guilt
You deserve to eat enough. Especially if you are healing your gut or hormones. Food is not something you have to earn.
4. Clean Up Your Social Media Feed
Unfollow accounts that make you feel not good enough. Follow people who promote health at every size, intuitive eating, and function over appearance.
5. Redefine What Health Means to You
Health is personal. It changes with your cycle, your season of life, and your needs. You get to decide what healthy looks and feels like for you.
If you feel like you’ve been stuck in cycles of restriction, shame, or obsession, you are not alone. So many of us have been there. Diet culture is loud, but your body is wiser.
You can choose a new way of relating to health. One that is rooted in nourishment, trust and freedom. You can choose yourself.
If this post resonated with you, please share it with a friend who needs to hear it too.
With love and balance, my Friends x
