Satisfaction May Not Be Yours Until You Break It Off with Diet Culture
Satisfaction happens when we are able to clearly identify what we want and need, directly and effectively reach for what we want and need, receive what we want and need to nourish us, and then experience completion and integration of receiving that which we want and need.
When we are not able to bring in what we want and need, we are not able to experience satisfaction. This experience creates a Nourishment Barrier.
So what gets in the way of us bringing in what we want and need? One answer is our attachment systems and the rules we have learned that bring us love and belonging within that system.
As mammals, humans are wired for safety and connection. Our attachment system drives the impulse to connect. Attachment figures include caregivers, family, work, community, cultural, societal, and spiritual frameworks. These figures offer conditions of attachment; in order to have safety and connection, you must follow the rules of those attachment figures. In order to belong to the desired attachment community, people may shut off parts of their authentic selves to gain the safety and connection necessary for survival.
Diet Culture as an Attachment Figure
A pervasive, often unquestioned attachment figure is diet culture. According to author Christy Harrison, diet culture idolizes thinness and equates it to health and morality, promotes weight loss as a way to attain higher social status, demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, and systematically oppresses those that don’t match up with health and appearance ideals. In this attachment framework, in order to receive love and belonging, the conditions of attachment include being thin and healthy, and if you are not, you should be dieting or attempting to control your body size. Diet culture says it is not ok for us to exist in the world unless we are thin, and if you are not thin, you should feel shame.
Research now shows 95% of diets fail, and that most people who lose weight will gain it back plus some in 5 years. (Tylka, et al 2014). Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and it is biologically impossible for many people to have thin bodies. We know that diets can lead to weight cycling, and that weight cycling has more negative health outcomes than maintaining a weight.
Breaking Free from Diet Culture
Dieting and focusing on weight loss causes harm. Within diet culture, people may feel they have to take weight loss medications, have surgeries that remove parts of their internal organs, or engage in eating disorders, the second most deadly of all mental health disorders, to suppress and control their weight in order to access a sense of safety and connection.
When our attachment figure is a source of connection, but also causes threat, this situation creates disorganized attachment. If your attachment figure is diet culture, and you inhabit a marginalized identity like living in a larger body, safety, and connection are less accessible to you. You learn the conditions of the attachment figure (diet culture) are to be thin, but to follow along with the rituals and strategies to achieve thinness, you have to put yourself in a state of starvation, which the body perceives as a threat.
It is important to name that diet culture is a system of oppression that upholds racist and patriarchal beliefs and therefore is a disorganized attachment figure for anyone who is not white or cisgender male.
Developmental Movements and the Relational Cycle
Developmental movements relate to all things we want and need, and our ability to access these movements are shaped by our attachment figures. These movements create a relational cycle as proposed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of Body Mind Centering, that include push, reach, grasp, pull and yield. When we can embody push, we have clarity. When we can embody reach, we are effective. When we embody grasp and pull, we are able to have satisfaction. When we embody yield, we are able to experience relaxation. Let’s explore these movements and how they are shaped by the attachment figure of diet culture with the example of food.
Insight Barrier
Let’s say you are hungry, but you are not sure what you are hungry for. You may lack clarity about your food choices because the rules of diet culture are not in alignment with your true hungers. You might restrict because you can’t identify your hunger/fullness, or because you have difficulty with food choices. Perhaps you have relied on the rules of diet culture about what is “good” or “bad” to eat, and have lost the connection to your own knowing when it comes to nourishing yourself. This scenario creates an Insight Barrier.
Response Barrier
Maybe you know what you want to eat, but you feel like you can’t reach directly for it because the rules of diet culture say you can’t have it. You either feel frozen and angry, or you reach for the food in a sneaky way. This scenario creates a Response Barrier.
Nourishment Barrier
Maybe you feel you don’t have permission to take in what you truly want/need, so you binge on foods that don’t satisfy you, you aren’t able to feel the pleasure of the food you are eating, or you restrict because you can’t take in what you TRULY want and need. This scenario creates a Nourishment Barrier.
Completion Barrier
Maybe you are feeling not enough in the face of the conditions of diet culture, and therefore a lack of belonging, so you can’t slow down and relax and nourish yourself from a place of safety and connection. Maybe you binge or restrict because you can’t experience completion or cannot finish completely, or you have an inability to rest and digest and restrict and engage in overexercise. This scenario creates a Completion Barrier.
When the developmental movements are interrupted there is no permission…
No permission to honor your hunger and fullness
No permission to reach directly for what means something to you
No permission to take in what you want or need
No permission to soften and yield and not strive for diet culture belonging
Ambivalence about Diet Culture
In diet culture, the conditions of attachment say it is not ok for you to exist in the world unless you are thin and able-bodied, or striving towards this goal. When your authentic self is identifiable by your physical body - skin, size, gender - you may feel you have to give up parts of yourself in order to belong. Themes of conditional attachment include the idea that if you are authentic you will damage relationships. Living in diet culture, we develop strategies - adaptive processes to gain love and belonging in the conditional culture. Dieting, disordered eating, diet pills, weight loss injections, weight loss surgery, laxatives, excessive exercise… these are all diet culture strategies. At times they feel like the only way to access safety and connection is to live in diet culture. Remember, as the Center for Body Trust® says, all coping is rooted in wisdom. In diet culture, you can be in your strategy and be in a relationship, or be authentic and be alone.
So of course people have ambivalence about giving up diet culture. Rachel Lewis-Marlow, co-founder of the Embodied Recovery Institute, wisely articulates the situation: We cling to diet culture until we can yield into belonging. In the face of diet culture, ask yourself - What does holding on to diet culture feel like? How about yielding into belonging?
Communities of Belonging Heal
In order to break free of diet culture, rebuild a relationship with food based on trusting our bodies wants and needs, and rebuild authentic relationships, we need to build communities of love and belonging. Belonging allows us to let go of false attachment structures like diet culture that require us to cause harm to ourselves in order to belong. You may find communities of belonging in affinity groups with people of similar identities, or with recovery groups that are anti-diet and anti-diet culture. These groups are out there when you are ready to seek them.
An important caveat, since we live in a society that is full of fatphobia, weightism and sizeism, safety may not be accessible to you if you live in a larger body. This challenge is even greater for people with intersecting marginalized identities including race, gender, sexuality, ability, financial challenges, and more. Honor the grief and anger inherent in this truth. We can’t take away the conditions of being a large bodied person in a siziest/weightiest society. But we can add resilience, tolerance for pain, distress, and ambiguity, increase empowerment and confidence and finding affinity groups of belonging.
You Can Be Authentic and Find Belonging
When we break it off with diet culture, we are able to call back the parts of ourselves that we hid away in order to fit into diet cultures standards. We have the opportunity to explore what it feels like to be authentic and connected. We experience satisfaction with food, our relationships, and the world. As a result, our lives are more satisfying and nourishing.
Seeking Support to Break Off with Diet Culture: Body-Centered Psychotherapy
If you live anywhere in North Carolina or South Carolina and would like to start weight-inclusive body-centered psychotherapy for your eating disorder recovery and body image healing journey, our experienced and effective therapists can help. Our therapists are able to see clients living anywhere in North Carolina or South Carolina. It’s important we get you matched up with the right therapist. The first step is to reach out online or give us a call at 828-279-7091.
Contact us to make an appointment today.
Learn more about our approach at Reclaiming Beauty.
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Other Services We Offer in North Carolina & South Carolina
We offer everything from eating disorder therapy, trauma therapy, nervous system therapy, Safe and Sound Protocol, Safe and Sound Protocol Groups, embodiment coaching & more. We treat all genders, teenagers, and adults all the way across the lifespan. Our therapists each have their own specialized training in somatic approaches to eating disorders and unique personalities.
Here are some additional supports for your journey:
Center for Body Trust - an alternative paradigm to relating to food and your body with an abundance of resources, events, and connection opportunities - as one of the co-founders, Hilary Kinavey says, “If you love this work, then you belong to it.”
Embodied Recovery for Eating Disorders - bringing the body to the forefront of recovery, supporting the healing process that allows us to yield into belonging
Affinity Groups for People in Larger Bodies:
Resources for learning more about attachment:
More on Belonging
Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, by Toko-Pa Tuner - a poetic and deep book about belonging
