The damage of diet culture.

By age 6, I already knew that it was my life’s mission to be skinny.

I mean, it was a women’s purpose. (What is self objectification?) Lose whatever weight you have, and then love, success and beauty will fall politely into your skinny-mini-lap.

I learnt this from watching the likes of Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz attracting male attention like flies with their long, matchstick legs, flat tummies and tiny waists. From the ghoulish models scattered across the pages of my mum’s GRAZIA. From the before and after transformations plastered on the walls of Archway tube station. (The Ideal Body)

I was encouraged to laugh in disgust at “fat Monica” in Friends, learnt to grimace at fat bodies in ‘The Biggest Loser’, and taught that women over a size 8 were “plus-size” in America’s Next Top Model. (FATPHOBIA)

Want to be popular? Thin.

Want to be desired? Thin.

Don’t want to be desperate, awkward, wobbly monster, with no friends or sex life? THIN.Thin tHiN THINNY McThin thin thin THIIIIIIIN.

The sticky situation for me you see, was that I was not thin. Thin was the norm and I was a chubby little malfunction in the system. Thin people were allowed to be happy in their own skin. I, was not. And, anyone else who had the audacity to be ‘not-thin’, apologised for their existence through self-deprecation and weight-loss programmes (Diet Culture). So it was pretty clear that that was my only option.

I just wanted to fit into the world, and as far as I could tell from the world I saw around me - I didn’t. I wanted to be wanted. (Emotionally intelligent queen at 7 years old who?). Melodramatic as this may seem, witnessing the rejection of bodies like mine everywhere I went, led to my own rejection of myself: my body was wrong and I knew that I ought to be ashamed of it. I was 9 when I was first weighed by the GP, (almost) literally shitting my pants as I stepped onto the scale - desperately sucking in my tummy as if it would change the outcome. I didn’t have a fucking clue what any of the numbers I saw meant, but I knew whatever they were, they were bad…I mean, they were asking to weigh me, even 9 year old me knew that that in itself was a red flag.

“A bit over”, I was told, with an awkward kind of sympathy that felt like I was being told my dog had died.

Over. Too much. Grotesque. The words coated my insides…I was disgusted.

How had I been so careless? Maybe if I wasn’t such a greedy pig I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess. Maybe if I had some fucking self-control, and had listened to my mum’s warnings, telling me to eat slower, to say no to chocolate and put less butter on my bread - I wouldn’t be such an embarrassment. I wanted to, so desperately, unzip my flesh, letting it fall to my feet and release an ethereal, graceful, skinny being. I wanted to peel off every inch of myself from my bones, and start from scratch. 

It wasn’t just about losing weight - it was about being a different person altogether. To get as far away as possible from, what I saw as, that embarrassing, desperate, ugly little girl in primary school. I had to reshape myself, metaphorically and physically. I needed my golden ticket out of Unloveable and Butters-town, into the world of popularity, beauty and attention. And, from what I had learnt over the course of my long 9-year-life; weight-loss would get me there.

So, health became my new personality, and changing myself was my purpose. It was a reinvention, stripping the old Rach off and starting anew. Everyone seemed pretty delighted with my latest life goal, and the classic weight-loss praise started to trickle in, giving me juicy carrots to chase. I was spurred on throughout primary school, and into my secondary years…

“WoW, wHaT a TrAnSfOrMaTiOn!”

“oH mY gOd I hArDLy rEcOgNiSeD yOu!”

“EvErYoNe ReSpEcTs yOu sO mUcH fOr tHe WeIgHt LoSs!”

Fucking finally.

This is what I had always dreamt of - the look of disbelief on people’s faces, the admiration of my transformation, the respect and attention for the way I looked.

But I was now faced with a new problem: I couldn’t go back. 

Why would I? From the evidence I was collecting on a daily basis, my hypothesis was correct: A smaller me was more attractive, more loved, more desirable, more popular and more worthy. According to diet culture, I was a fucking queen. My restriction was admirable, my increasing level of exercise was inspirational, my loyalty to an ever-growing set of rules displayed wonderful dedication, and my humble self-hatred made me honourable. Stopping would mean giving up all of this new-found positive attention.

So, I didn’t stop, and neither did the growth of my lurking eating disorder, turning my self-improvement project, into a self-destruction mission.

Diet culture and eating disorders are two peas in a big, toxic pod, and when you look at them side by side, it’s a pretty insidious comparison… They both place our worth entirely on our bodies, that’s a given - keeping us transfixed, and hyperaware of our insecurities. They teach us that our dissatisfaction with our bodies is our own fault, due to a lack of effort to change them. They keep our self-esteem to the bare minimum, leaving room only for the confidence that with grit and determination, we will one day be allowed to love ourselves. Then, like Puritanical cults, both diet culture and eating disorders sell self-punishment as a ‘way of life’, normalising starvation and demonising rest. No matter how obedient we are, they cannot be satiated, locking us into cycles of obsessive comparison and body dysmorphia, pushing the goal posts further and further out of reach.

Essentially - they both rely on our self-hatred - because that is how they survive. If we were all content with who we were, a multi-billion pound industry would go bust, and eating disorders wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. For 7 years, anorexia has consumed every minute of my daily life. It has stripped me of my independence, through reliance on my parents/professionals to feed me, my social life, by forbidding me from any form of relaxation, and stolen every last nugget of self-compassion.

I have been kept inside an echo chamber of my own perception of myself and my body, allowing intrusive thoughts to make themselves at home in my head. With anorexia’s overwhelming presence, it is pretty much impossible for any other aspect of life to get a look in: relationships, friendships, work, personality, sex drive, physical development and mental development all suffers at the hands of an eating disorder.

Whatever I am doing is wrong, unless I am meeting the disorder’s demands, and even then, what I do will never be enough. No matter how brutally I pound, grind and beat my body to a pulp, the bone-grinding hatred against my flesh, and the the desire to rip it violently off of me, remains. With the help of diet culture, my illness has convinced me that my body is an insatiable, greedy beast that needs to be kept on a tight leach of gruelling rules and regulations. This antagonisation of my body has sent me on a quest to destroy it, to make it pay the price for the embarrassment it’s caused me.

When gripped by an eating disorder, anger towards the body outweighs any fear of the physical repercussions of your actions. Anorexia doesn’t give a fuck if the overexercise gives you stress-fractures, if your hair falls out, if your bone marrow loses density due to lack of periods, if your nervous and circulatory systems break down. Physical damage is exactly what an eating disorder wants. With no respect for your body, it drives you into literal self-obliteration. But of course - just a diet gone wrong, silly me… xxxxxx (Eating disorder awareness week)

Now, I'm not looking to induce a pity party, and as I have said before, I am not opening up for the grand title of bravery. I just want to highlight how fucked it is that diet culture promotes this behaviour. Obviously, those making all the decisions are clearly ignorant and have no clue what the torment of having an eating disorder entails, and I am not accusing anyone of actively trying to give us all eating disorders. However, the normalisation of punishing behaviours in order to control our bodies, means the vast majority of women in the Western world have disordered relationships with food and exercise, and are praised for it. The fact that I recognise the messages that gym bunnies, “nutritionists”, influencers, fitness gurus and diet companies pump out, as similar to the messages I receive inside my head from an eating disorder, a severe psychiatric illness that has a 20% death rate…is rather fucking scary.

If this link seems like a bit of a stretch to you, firstly, you are probably male (although diet culture is attacking the male physique more and more), and secondly, let me give you an example: if I told you I starved myself for 18 hours every single day, spent 1.5 of those hours in the gym and when I did eat, it would consist of lean meat and vegetables, I’m guessing that would sound pretty obsessive. The reality is, that this is simply intermittent fasting, with a daily workout routine, and a low-carb, high-protein diet, a highly popular combination within the world of influencers. This. Is. Branded. As. N-o-r-m-a-l. As HEALTHY…The word ‘health’ and the actual meaning of health, have become completely alienated from one another. Health has been modified so drastically by diet culture, that there is very little that is ‘healthy’ about it anymore.

So, wonderful reader, if my preaching seems somewhat militant to you, or if you think my rants scream ‘triggered Gen Z’, that is because, yes, I am fucking triggered. Along with most women, I am triggered by the very world we live in, that tells us we look wrong no matter what we do to change ourselves. I don’t scream to the rooftops that weight-loss promotion is the devil, or rattle out surprising statistics to be ‘provocative’, I do it because I am a living, breathing piece of collateral damage from the diet industry’s dirty work, and I’m fucking angry.