Diet Culture Detox
Noise around detoxes and cleanse may look like this…
Give your digestive system a break so your body can heal and repair itself quickly.
Feed yourself pure nutrition that your body can absorb immediately.
Help your liver and kidneys detoxify your body.
Give your body what it needs to slim down and have more energy.
Actually your body does all this for you (thanks liver, kidneys, and lungs) and there are plenty of other ways to get adequate nutrition other than cleanses. So next time you’re tempted to jump on a trendy detox or cleanse, let me give you a more fulfilling detox you can do instead - diet culture detox!
Detoxing from diet culture is “cleansing” your accounts, feeds and other triggering items from your current routine with the goal of providing mental and physical clarity from all things diet culture and intentional weight loss.
You may be wondering what getting out of this murky mindset looks like practically, so let me share my 5 ways to do a diet culture detox:
01 | Cleanse your social media
Do you follow people who promote fad diets? Are you seeing too many before/after pictures? Go through all your social media accounts and hit that unfollow button on anyone that is promoting diet culture. And always remember social media doesn’t always show the full picture to anyone’s story. Make sure your feeds match your values when it comes to diet culture.
02 | Remove diet ads
Instagram recently changed their policies on posts featuring diets and promoting weight loss. They have committed to stop the cycle of these harmful diet culture lies, especially for impressionable audiences under 18 years old. Now every time you see an ad or post that makes a “miracle” claim about weight, click away and hide that post! This is a simple way of saying no to diet culture and stop the allure of their lies.
03 | Rejuvenate your closet
You know that feeling after doing some Spring cleaning and getting a little Marie Kondo in your life? This can almost bring about that same excitement that the beginning of a new diet brought on, a new beginning, a fresh start. Go through your closet and donate those clothes you were holding onto once you got back down to that size. This can be a bit hard and it’s ok to grieve through this step. But remember it’s the clothes job to fit you, not your job to fit into the clothes.
04 | Unsubscribe from body-focused magazines
I might argue that basically all magazines have some element of diet culture in them. You see the headlines “Lose XX lbs. in 5 days!” “7 recipes that melt away fat” plus the image of a thin, airbrushed celebrity showing off their abs. Recently SELF and Cosmo have made some strides in inclusivity, but the diet culture headlines of many other magazines scream at you while you’re standing in the grocery store checkout line. If you still need to get your celebrity gossip fix or love browsing through interior design ideas, you can always tear or mark through the diet culture articles and ads.
05 | Smash your scale
Quit the daily weighings and throw out the scale. Your life and happiness shouldn’t be tied to a number that shows your body’s relationship to gravity. Such a cathartic way to get that frustration from living in diet culture for so long, get out your hammer (and safety glasses!) and destroy your scale. I recommend taking some time after this to reflect and journal on your relationship with your body and what breaking free from the scale means to you.
It’s really hard to be completely free from diet culture. However you can empower yourself to spot it and not fall for the deception it tries to sell you. Detox from diet culture and let your body do the rest!
For further detoxing, use these journal prompts to reflect on diets and body thoughts:
What has lead me to start diets in the past?
How has dieting impact my life? (i.e. social life, personal life, finances, etc)
How does my body image impact my day?
Imagine a day where your body image and/or relationship with food is in a positive place. How is your attitude? What does your day look like? What clothes are you wearing? What kind of food are you eating?
