Why the pandemic has signalled it’s time to cancel diet culture

We live in a society where we think thinness equates to healthiness, when anti-diet means being anti-healthy, where we kill ourselves exercising purely for the wrong reasons.

Since the beginning of the first lockdown, it was almost inevitable that most of us were going to spend even more time scrolling through our feeds, comparing ourselves to unrealistic beauty standards, and swiping through videos telling us that a fruit smoothie has “too much sugar- maybe swap it for a green smoothie?”. To be frank, at times it has felt like none of us can escape the vicious cycle that is diet culture, and the pandemic has only heightened the notion that we needed to change ourselves.

So, what exactly is diet culture? A lot of things fall into its spectrum. From discussing the new diet to lose weight, justifying what you eat, cutting out carbs or certain food because they have “too many calories”. Disordered eating and exercise habits have been perpetuated by the society we live in. From IMG models telling Kaia Gerber, she needs to lose weight (resulting in her eating disorder) to the Kardashians selling weight-loss teas on their social media, which to be fair has stopped, but now we have Kim selling shapewear for women…

We have normalised believing only one body type is the way to go. Instagram, fashion, movies, everything we consume has made us believe we have to be a certain way to fit in. But it’s time to get real. Diet culture is damaging. This obsession with everything we eat and feeling guilty for going over our calorie count is dangerous and sometimes we disregard the long-term effects simply to achieve the ultimate reward, being skinny.

As a society, we believe that beauty only comes in one shape, but the reality, being beautiful means nurturing your body the right way and loving yourself unconditionally. If spending hours on social media has proven anything, is that exercising, being in a calorie deficit, swapping out foods you adore has never been about achieving ultimate health and in fact, it has never been about your body. No matter how much weight you lose or how much weight you gain, we will always be brainwashed to think you have to change something about yourself.

Diet culture is incredibly damaging to any society. However, In the UK alone, the diet industry is worth an estimated £2bn a year. Diet culture is more like a business and marketing strategy targeting vulnerable people’s money. We see influencers promoting their apps promising you a beach body in 6-weeks, a new smoothie or tea that is going to make you lose inches in a week. News flash- It’s all fake.

Many times, these diets are set up to make you feel like a failure when in reality 98% of diets fail as they’re unsustainable. With isolation hitting everyone hard, the rise in mental illness and your emotions being so susceptible, believing everything you saw on Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube was at times unavoidable. Covid and this lockdown meant that eating disorders were at an all-time high. Between 1.25 and 3.4 million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder and around 25% of those affected by an eating disorder are male. However, since the pandemic data shows there has been a 128% increase in the number waiting for routine treatment compared with last year.

Diet culture fuels discrimination within all body types. Fatphobia and skinny shaming is something women and men face every day. Somehow people’s bodies are up for public discussion on social media and the online bullying and mockery many people face daily is detrimental to their mental health.

The sensational musician Lizzo and models such as Ashley Graham, Iskra Lawrence and Paloma Elsesser are a few of the notable names who are advocates for body positivity. However, because of their weight, they are constantly stigmatised as unhealthy for being a different body type. These women are targeted via social media, but they represent the women who face judgement at school, in the workplace and in all aspects their everyday lives.

With the growth of inclusivity and seeing more plus-size models on runways and magazines, we are coming to realise that there is more than one beautiful body type. We are putting our health and listening to our bodies first. We’re following more Instagram pages that celebrate all body types and that reinforce the idea that social media is all fake. We are nurturing our bodies and eating whatever we want intuitively without feeling guilty.

A lot of bad habits have been fostered during this pandemic, but also the rise of self-love and being kinder to ourselves has been greater than anything else.

Feature image by Body LightField Studios.