How to Avoid Plugging Back into the Diet Culture this January

December 29, 2024 ~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ 1 Comment

Here we go again! It’s that time of year when “being merry” fades into another tiresome weight loss resolution. The diet industry once more pushes the promise of losing weight and keeping it off. If you are healthy and are planning to go on another diet to shrink your body, here are some reasons you might want to reconsider.

The diet industry is a big part of the diet culture. It uses generalized assumptions to motivate us to criticize ourselves, or perhaps instill a negative body image that wasn’t there in the first place. Internalizing standards of thinness while wasting precious time achieving it can produce dire psychological consequences. Dieting is a risk factor for developing a serious eating disorder.

January is a prime time to lure folks back into unrealistic resolutions under the guise of health. People want to get healthy by reducing their food intake, which is short-lived as they slide back into old eating habits within a few weeks. The all-too-obvious clue is that weight loss programs aren’t sustainable. But what is sustainable? The availability of another recycled weight loss program that makes the same empty promises year after year. The emphasis is on changing behavior while focusing less on other factors that cause weight gain or the mental health consequences of chronic dieting.

How can you stop the tidal wave from dragging you back in? Start by deconstructing the ads you see. Look for baseless generalizations. Question the easy solutions to difficult problems. Here are four concepts to awaken your skepticism.

Body acceptance isn’t profitable, but failure is.

The body transformation industry needs a conduit to low self-esteem, or it won’t survive. It’ll lie by withholding the truth about how our bodies grow, develop, and mature. By tapping into the desire for self-improvement, it wants you to believe that every extra pound, wrinkle, and gray hair that deviates from the ideal standard is your fault. They sell hope while they coach you into a better life. They don’t want you to accept what you’re born with and will always convince you to keep paying despite the evidence that what they’re selling isn’t working.

Body acceptance means, in part, accepting, respecting, and caring for your body even though you don’t like certain aspects. Acceptance of yourself reduces the power of ideal standards and the desire to subscribe to them. Failure has no meaning in this perspective.

If you’re new to body acceptance here are three ways to begin moving toward it:

Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. This includes comparing your body size to the images of the before and after photos in weight loss ads. Instead, focus on how far you’ve come. Whether you survived or achieved it’s your story.
Whenever a bad thought about your body surfaces, say (out loud) something nice about yourself. Choose words you can believe in.
Acknowledge your worth and value in the body you are in right now.

Sure, it’s easier said than done, but how is not accepting yourself working so far?

Diet culture encourages you to demean yourself.

I’m too fat. I need to stop eating so much sugar. I’m getting old. How many times have phrases like these entered your mind? The diet industry is notorious for promoting ways to compare yourself to others. These generalizations can apply to almost anyone:

“Just eat the food and lose the weight!”
“Our program is clinically proven to help you lose weight.”
“Join millions of others who lost weight and kept it off.”
“I feel like my youth came back, it’s amazing!”
“Losing weight gave me the energy and the confidence I need!”

One popular diet company encourages food logging. Food records don’t work for everyone and recording every bite of food is unnatural. Obsessing over calories and portion sizes encourages unrealistic expectations and unhealthy categorization of certain foods. The potential danger of keeping a food diary is that it can worsen the symptoms of an eating disorder.

Separate yourself from the gimmick of weight loss.

Any company selling a product or service, whether it involves losing weight (or not), works toward a bottom line. The small ones want to earn profits, and the larger ones owe their shareholders. At what point are they focusing on their customer’s best interests?

People don’t start out believing they need to lose weight. At some point, we all develop beliefs based on the culture that surrounds us. We are taught that fat is bad. In developed countries and on the internet limiting exposure to thousands of weight loss ads is impossible. The diet industry seeks out the vulnerable and coerces them into the fantasy of weight loss for a better life. Their message tells them what nature gave them, isn’t good enough. Every ad has its niche, but all accomplish the same thing, to make viewers fear fat.

You are good enough now not in some future utopia.

There’s no guidebook to life. So don’t leave your life in the hands of conglomerates peddling unrealistic standards that convince you into useless misery. Protect yourself by knowing that most ideals about body size aren’t your own, they are learned. How you internalize them will affect how you treat yourself, and not in a positive way. When it comes down to it, you get to decide what comes into your life and what does not.

All of us are caught in a tug-of-war between the food industry selling convenience food and the diet industry telling us we’re fat. The fault is always placed entirely on consumers while they harp on self-control. Most of us are forced to work long hours to pay for the rising cost of food with less time to figure out how to feed ourselves.

As this post was written, the diet industry is scrambling to stay competitive in response to the heightened demand for GLP-1 injections. The price for weight loss skyrocketed. Even with insurance, patients on Wegovy can expect to pay $650 monthly for 28 doses, about $7800 a year. Not to mention the inconvenience of the weekly injections while placing sharps in an FDA-approved container and legally disposing of them. As with all medicines, there are risks, and once they are discontinued the weight returns.

DISCLAIMER: The Green Apple Dietitian blog provides nutrition information for education only and is not intended to offer medical advice or cure any health conditions. The content should NEVER be used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment of any health condition or problem. Any questions regarding your diet and health should be addressed to your specific healthcare providers. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you have read on this blog.

Green Apple Dietitian makes no warranties expressed or implied regarding the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, comparative or controversial nature, or usefulness of any information posted or shared on this blog. Green Apple Dietitian does not assume any risk whatsoever for your use of any information contained herein that was posted or shared on this blog in the past, present, or future. By accessing this blog, you agree that neither Green Apple Dietitian nor any other party, is to be held liable or otherwise responsible for any decision made, or any action taken or not taken, due to your use of any information presented on this blog website.

Is It Me or Was Santa Claus Put on a Diet?

December 10, 2024 ~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ Leave a comment

I might be a buzzkill for writing this, but something seems wrong about the recent depictions of Santa. CAUTION! This post is for adults and not for little ones awaiting his arrival on Christmas Eve. You were warned.

After I watched The Christmas Chronicles with Kurt Russell, I noticed a disturbing trend. Kurt Russell is an A-lister when it comes to his rugged good looks. He was coined a “macho thespian” in a UPROXX post written about the realistic nature of his facial hair as the man in the red suit. I’m not exactly sure where it started, but the movie’s popularity paved the way for a new identity for our bearded toy-toting figure.

If there’s money to make, retailers will find it. Since Kurt’s epic came out in 2018 and again in 2020, Santa was reinvented a few times. The jolly old man whose tummy shook like a bowl full of jelly succumbed to the desires of modern times. One who’d prefer to speed down a snowy highway in a red SUV instead of a sleigh. This year’s Target commercial depicted Santa as a young dude in a tight red sweater putting on a name badge emblazoned with the name “Kris K.” Other employees caught him doing “treecep” curls while holding a fake Christmas tree, “I’m getting into shape!” He went on to explain himself and almost blew his cover. Reviews online called him “the weirdly hot Santa.”

I preferred Kurt Russell’s version and enjoyed John Travolta’s Holiday Night Fever for Capital One. He looked more like the traditional Santa with hair as white as snow above a pair of red disco pants. More for my generation, I guess.

Kris Kringle was a big part of retail marketing for many years. If you’re old enough you might remember Santa holding a bottle of soda or smoking cigarettes in magazine ads. Yikes! Coke faced criticism online for fattening him up in earlier decades, but Target managed to slim him down into a youthful physically fit variety.

It’s only a commercial. I get it. If I don’t like it, I can click on something else. Well, I’ll go even further, I won’t spend my money. But based on my line of work, it’s not surprising that my radar is focused on advertisers that toy with Santa’s waistline. The young and impressionable are always watching.

In the age of Wegovy, there’s a lot that concerns me. Weight loss received way too much attention this year. Research that proves losing weight isn’t the best way to attain good health doesn’t make headlines. The truth about weight gain after dieting gets overshadowed by even more weight loss chatter. Santa’s athletic build as a Target employee seems too coincidental as he’s now a symbol to further the agenda of a certain body standard.

Many of us are generally unhappy with our looks, and St. Nick isn’t immune to the similar harsh criticism we give ourselves. According to some posts I’ve read online, he gets a bad rap for getting fat from eating way too many cookies. His rosy cheeks and large girth are solid evidence he’s had too much to drink and is out of shape to descend chimneys let alone travel the world in one night. One blog writer didn’t see a problem with urging him to adopt a healthier lifestyle which we all know only makes people feel worse. The blog didn’t make much of a case for including all body types and fitness levels.

The real buzzkill is dieting. We’ve forgotten how to relax and enjoy ourselves without the constant pressure to achieve that standard ideal. Diet talk is at epidemic levels as far as I’m concerned. Regularly I hear others declare, “Don’t eat so much sugar,” while projecting their insecurities on other folks. It crushes me to listen to a parent criticize their child’s weight. What a bummer. Such negativity is cruel especially when most kids seek parental approval.

The desire for perfection hurts everyone. How do you stop it, or at the very least, slow down how it affects our feelings and actions? We can control how we spend our money, but more importantly, we should examine how we respond to the messages we receive from those around us.

Whether you’re the pillar of health or not, you always have a choice. This belief can significantly change how you react to something you hear— in a good way. The holidays can be miserable, or you can set out to do something meaningful despite your feelings.

You don’t have control over what other people do or say. Inevitably someone will say something that upsets you or they will judge your looks or the food you eat. It might even be someone close to you. You can’t stop the world if you feel offended by someone, but you do have the right to your boundaries.

There’s nothing wrong with a little indulgence while celebrating. It’s expected. The problem is the overuse of indulgence to numb, cope, or harm yourself. It’s easy to do in plain sight while everyone else is having a good time. But only you get to decide what you consume and how much. Deep down inside you’ll know when it’s enough.

People who are unsure often ask me what they should eat. The conversation starts with, “Oh you’re the dietitian…” They fail to see that if they put their health above what the scale reads and their desire to please others, they already know plenty about how to nourish themselves. It’s not rocket science. The path to good health includes becoming aware of what’s happening inside, and not judging what’s on the outside. The goal of health often gets confused with what appears in the mirror. Retailers use it to their advantage.

I’m not out to control retailers or the media. My mission is to bring awareness during this time of year by acknowledging the struggles of others. It’s not always easy to see how selling goods and services can come with unrealistic expectations. I’m not the only one who feels bombarded with these messages.

Christmas comes once a year. Whether you celebrate or not, let’s agree to put aside the harsh judgment of ourselves and others. Commercials encourage us to be more self-centered than we intend to be. The nature of increasing brand awareness by repetition influences our actions without us realizing it. Viewing screens are everywhere we go and even in our hands. Let’s have a day without them. Turn them all off. January will be here before you know it.

As a Registered Dietitian, I Don’t Tell People How to Eat and Why You Shouldn’t Either.

July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 ~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ Leave a comment

Doing what I do for a living makes it hard to ignore the plethora of horrendous nutrition advice I hear from people around me or on social media. The hardest truth I try to accept is how my knowledge as a dietitian means nothing to someone with an agenda. When patients seek advice about healthy eating, it often involves something more complicated. Something no meal plan can fix. A negative sense of self makes folks vulnerable to misinformation and unsolicited advice that misses the mark.

I hate the word healthy as it relates to food. As I watch others preach about healthy eating all I see is an obsession with weight loss. While others act with a sense of entitlement, they dramatize and incite fear around what we eat. Most general nutrition advice people share is a culmination of inaccuracies or partial truths. Whenever I ask where they heard that, I hear something like “I don’t know, I heard it somewhere,” or “I saw it on TikTok.”

It behooves you to awaken your inner critic and question what you hear within today’s landscape of advice overload. The most educated choice will be one that’s made after careful examination of both sides of a story. Let’s take carbohydrates. If you’re unwilling to listen to unpopular evidence of why you don’t want to completely avoid carbs, you won’t learn what they can do to benefit your health. But there may be other reasons driving your choice to avoid carbs.

Most folks giving health advice don’t consider behavioral health a vital component of food choices. A patient with an eating disorder avoids calories for fear of weight gain, while another with OCD who loves animals becomes vegan to avoid feeling shame around eating meat. Both have less to do with healthy eating and more to do with a distorted view of themselves. These are serious mental health issues that often lead to severe malnutrition if left untreated. This is where dieting misinformation and unsolicited advice becomes irresponsible and self-serving. You don’t know what you don’t know, so it’s better to keep unresearched opinions to yourself.

The word healthy means different things based on who’s teaching it. For a vitamin supplement company, it’s nutrition supplements. For a dieting company, it’s weight loss. But not everyone needs a supplement or should lose weight. As a dietitian, answering the question, “How can I eat healthier,” is not easy to answer because everyone has their own set of core values tied to their food choices. Telling a patient what they should be eating won’t be as helpful as they would like to believe. The greatest success I have with patients is by not acting like I know best about what they eat.

Unsolicited advice doesn’t help in fact, it can be harmful

It’s natural when we perceive something is wrong, we want to fix it. Let’s say Anne noticed Sally gained weight recently. Anne cares about Sally’s health. She lectures her on how obesity leads to chronic illness and that she should find a way to lose weight. Sally was already aware of her weight and never asked Anne for advice about weight loss. Sally has been meeting with a therapist every week to work on her emotions around eating since her father died. Anne was not aware of that. Even with people who are close to us, we don’t know everything they struggle with.

Lately, it feels like everyone believes they know everything about everyone else’s health. So, it’s hard to explain why well-intentioned diet advice from Aunt Edna at the family picnic is short-sighted. But here goes.

Why I won’t tell others what to eat

People often don’t do what they say they’re going to do. It’s not because they’re lazy or they lack willpower. It’s because they haven’t gotten to the root of the real issue. Often folks believe weight loss will make them feel better about themselves. But what they want is to go back to a time when they were more active, had less responsibility, and felt happier. Even patients as young as eighteen reminisce about an easier time in their life. Growing up is hard.

Food choices often have nothing to do with eating healthy. Eating disorders are complicated mental health issues that often hide in plain sight. Consider a person who loses a lot of weight, and now everyone around them is saying how good they look. Senseless judgment, criticism, and unsolicited advice are detrimental to the person who is suffering. I don’t blame people who don’t know better, I blame our society that stigmatizes mental health and drags its feet in distributing helpful information to folks who need it.

Rigid thinking gets in the way of making lasting lifestyle changes. If there’s a reason not to do something, you’ll always find it. If you’re looking for negativity, you’ll find that too. The fear of uncertainty that comes with change is often why we talk ourselves into doing nothing. Getting out of your comfort zone is easier said than done, but there’s more power in changing your view of yourself instead of asking me how you should eat. What drives your actions is how you think and what you believe.

When my career was in its infancy, I made a lot of mistakes while stumbling over my personal biases to figure out the best way to help someone. The more I learn the more I realize there’s so much I don’t know. My experience came with paying attention and listening, not lecturing on nutrition facts. Unless a patient is willing to share their story, what I say means nothing. Giving unwanted or the wrong medical nutrition therapy is a useless waste of everyone’s time. Chances are great that many patients sitting in front of me thought I didn’t know what I was talking about. When it came to their personal experience with food, they were right.

DISCLAIMER: The Green Apple Dietitian blog/Substack provides nutrition information for education only and is not intended to offer medical advice or cure any health conditions. The content should NEVER be used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment of any health condition or problem. Any questions regarding your diet and health should be addressed to your specific healthcare providers. NEVER disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking treatment because of something you have read here.

Green Apple Dietitian makes no warranties expressed or implied regarding the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, comparative or controversial nature, or usefulness of any information posted or shared on this blog/Substack. Green Apple Dietitian does not assume any risk whatsoever for your use of any information contained herein that was posted or shared on this blog/Substack in the past, present, or future. By accessing this blog/Substack, you agree that neither Green Apple Dietitian nor any other affiliated party is to be held liable or otherwise responsible for any decision made, or any action taken or not taken, due to your use of any information presented on this blog/Substack website.