Diet Culture Overview
Good morning, chaps. Hope you're doing well. Hope you're a morning walk, having a smile listening to the podcast. Hopefully, it has happened. But if you're, you know, you're just waking up listening, that's fine as well.
Speaker 1:But key steps in, guys, the weather's getting lighter in the morning. This is it. This is what we've been waiting for. The early mornings, the nice bright mornings, and just, the birds singing. Class like, I love it.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. So key steps in. Let's talk about diet culture today. Diet culture, you know, the term we use for basically any any the culture that's been created by companies, you know, like me and Doctor. P were talking about, a lot of companies create position themselves against other things.
Speaker 1:So they anti of something and they demonize the opposite and then this is kind of what happens. So you've got the anti carbs, anti sugar, then you've got the high carb, you've got the keto, which is anti carb, and then you've got the paleo which is like anti anthems, not paleo and then you've got plant based and you know being a vegan and plant based is absolutely fine and ethically people do judgment, nothing wrong, if anything we should all move that way because of obvious benefits, the environment right. But to understand like Doctor. P was saying, plant based diets are lower than iron and all this stuff and accepting that going yeah that makes sense, they're low and nice, I need supplement instead of going no plant based is king, plant based is the best, vegans are best forever and ever and ever, don't you can't change my mind about it. Let's not be that way.
Speaker 1:Entire culture is war basically, it's a war of different factions and you need to watch out because you don't know which faction you're part of. And when you're in a faction, you will fight for that faction. You don't know what's going on, you're fighting as part of your group, comes tribal, online crazy stuff goes on. And basically, you don't even see what's going on to yourself. So you just, you know, you just get pulled in.
Speaker 1:And, you know, carbs of the devil is a key one. You see these fads pop up every week. They sound about right. You know, they kinda sign they sound a bit like sciency, but they're just wrong. You know, celery juice, that's another one.
Speaker 1:The celery juice, diet, the medical medium block. And, you know, the problem is guys, these people, these buffoons go on big podcasts. I remember when he was on Jay Shetty's podcast and Jay Shetty was like, the number one health podcast in the world and he brings this guy on the medical medium who talks absolute nonsense about salary juice curing cancer and stuff like that. Right? I'm like, Shetty, mate.
Speaker 1:Where is your integrity? Where is your integrity bringing these guests on? He's just gonna come on and spout nonsense. You're just accepting her all going, woah. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Where's the fact fact checking? Why are you letting people and, you know, this is this is the problem. These people would bring on anyone as a guest to get views. Right? These podcast hosts.
Speaker 1:That Steven guy who's a podcast host of people like, you know, he had Matt Hancock on the other day for views. Matt Hancock to spit his propaganda about how he wasn't doing anything wrong just for views, know, people will do anything for views and attention is sad as hell. Where's integrity gone? There's no integrity left anywhere. You know?
Speaker 1:And you're like, that's even goes like, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He did at one point.
Speaker 1:He did at one point. That guy was responsible for loads of people actually die in him. Like, what are you on about? Same as this medical medium guy in Shetty, like how many people have listened to that piece of advice and tried and even told someone maybe he's got cancer to try celery juice when maybe that was the wrong, definitely wrong thing to say. Just there's huge knock on effects that these people don't even see because they're blinded by fame and attention, right?
Speaker 1:And this is what diet culture is all about, getting your attention because it's so out there, you're like, woah, that is a claim. They back these claims up with, bullshit science, right? It's nonsense. It sounds about right, but it's not. They sell you a product, they show you before and afters of people and you don't before and afters don't reveal anything apart from what someone's weight's gone down.
Speaker 1:Okay, they look like they're in hell in the second picture when they've lost weight. They look terrible. What is their mental health like? What's their relationship with the people in their life like? What is their freedom like?
Speaker 1:They could be more trapped than ever. Right? So these are like before and afters. If everyone relies on before and afters, I don't like before and afters. I know it's a necessary evil in a sense in the fitness industry.
Speaker 1:Like well how would you help people ask oh like you know what like show us some results like let us let people talk about their story for you. Now some people listen that's amazing Don't need to see the before and after. As you say, I've lost a lot of weight, and they just zoom over that path because it's the least important path. Go on to all the other benefits, and that's what it's about. Some people are, yeah, wanna see the weight loss.
Speaker 1:It's fine. But just because there's a before and after doesn't mean they're successful. Right? They will push you, push you, push you four weeks, six weeks, get a before and after, you gain the weight back, and they'll keep using you before and after forever to show it works, but it doesn't. Right?
Speaker 1:So this is dietitic culture. It's for attention. It's pitting you against someone else using fake science. And that's the game. That's the aim of the game for these people.
Speaker 1:And that's where you get sucked in. Okay, and you get sucked into these tribal wars, right. So the Alliance for Eating Disorders defines toxic diet culture as this. Any program that encourages extreme weight loss require restricting yourself and suggest cutting calories very low, as well as programs that advertise weight loss pills and shakes. Diet culture is both the marketing of these products and the belief, and the beliefs and insecurities that they instill within us.
Speaker 1:In order for them to convince us to buy their products, we first must be insecure about our bodies, whether it is our weight, stretch marks, cellulite rolls, etcetera. The success and profit therefore comes at the literal expense of our mental health. Diet culture plays an integral role in creating these insecurities. The more insecure we are, the more money they make. The more money they make, the more advertising and products they create and the more insecure we become.
Speaker 1:Okay? This is what's happening guys and that's why this mindset path of this child is absolutely essential because you're being told by these things and you're insecure because of your weight and I'm telling you that your weight doesn't define you, right? Even if you've loads and loads of weight to losing your happy still doesn't define you, right? If you can objectively look at your weight and go you know what, this is where I am. I'm not a weight that I want to be at, I accept that and it's going take me time, I'm going to build a healthy lifestyle and the weight will come off over time.
Speaker 1:You then stop being someone who the diet culture these companies can pull in because your insecurity about your weight, you know it's been dealt with your lifestyle and you're focusing on yourself, you're focusing on awareness, you're focusing on the steps on your macros, there's no special product out there, you know there's no special fat loss product, you know there's no special foods make you lose fat faster, you know going extreme dieting will cause yo yo and that's a really damaging to the health so you don't even want to touch it. You don't want to touch extremes, want to go slow and steady, smooth. And when you're in that state, a state of stillness, a state of focusing one day at a time, these guys can't touch you. They don't want this. They don't want you to be in that state, but we want you to be in this state.
Speaker 1:And you'd have to be, you know, we offer a service, right, obviously. I'm saying you're gonna be with us forever, I'm not saying you have to be with us at all, we're doing this for free and if you want to join us happy days, but just we're trying to make you understand what's going on. Again, it's it's all about the awareness of what's happening. When you see what's going on and the pushes and pulls and all this stuff to make us feel insecure to then buy products and to go it's a circle. Once we come out of that, right, and we see it for the mess it is, we realize we're just we are turning the cogs around every time we buy into a fat product.
Speaker 1:Every time we step on a scale and say, I'm terrible, I'm not losing weight, what's wrong with me? You're playing into what they want you to do. Okay? It's easier said than done obviously, obviously. But once you escape it and you've got this stillness and you live one day at a time, untouchable.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the most toxic belief about dieting is literally the diet in itself. You know, the research shows that food restriction on a long term scale has never worked for anyone's body on an extreme end. It works temporarily, know, studies show dieting can help you lose weight obviously, but it's manipulating you and thinking it's gonna help you can lose weight now and it's gonna keep your office doesn't work like that. So in the UCLA, researchers reported and analyzed 31 long term studies about dieting and found out people on diets typically lose five to 10% of the starting weight in the first six months. However, least 30 to sixty percent of people on diets regained more weight than they had lost within five years.
Speaker 1:You can initially lose five to 10% your weight on any number of diets but then the weight comes back. The researchers found the majority of the people regained all the weight and more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority Okay, just doesn't work, doesn't work. Social media. You know research has shown that metabolically healthier, thinner people and metabolically healthier, larger people.
Speaker 1:So our behaviors and routines influence the status of health not weight itself. There's studies now where people are overweight and some people even bordering obese and because they're active and healthy and walking themselves their health is overall is good. What they're saying is being overweight and obese there is a risk factor to that. So of course we want to pull our stress off the body but like again, like I mentioned in the first podcast the yo yo dieting one, I mentioned that the more, the swing in the weight is the danger, so it's losing fast and gaining it back on that is what the body really struggles with. The body evolutionary is not used to this at all, that swing is danger, real danger.
Speaker 1:The more we do those swings, the more dangerous position we're in. It's actually better to maintain your weight than to lose it and gain it back. It's actually better and healthier for you to maintain, stay overweight than to drop it on, put it back on. You may think no, that's not sensible yet, it's that swing all the time, the body's getting out of whack, you know, being really stressed and stuff like that. So only take steps forward that are permanent and something you can handle tiny, tiny, tiny, and over time the weight will come off, right?
Speaker 1:That is the only way to lose weight healthily. Nothing else works. Nothing. The only way you're slow. I have to, drill it into you guys because it's very dangerous and I'm not like joking about this or whatever like extremely dangerous to do your dieting.
Speaker 1:It has to be up there, it has to be a warning up there, it's got to be as bad as smoking, it has to be up there with those warning signs. Are you losing weight and getting in the back all the time? Yeah, I've been feeling my diet. It's way more dangerous than that. Way more dangerous than that.
Speaker 1:So if we're going to move, guys, we move slow, we move with reassurance, okay, we move with awareness, and we take one small step ahead at a time, things will change over time, right, your health will improve, you can set your steps and still do your workouts if you want get fit and healthy and all that stuff, right, but we move slowly, It's nice, we can go slow, we can have that drive, you know when you drive home and it's slow and it's nice and you know you chilled out, you've got the tunes on, you're loving life you know. And then you got some crazy guy who's driving fast in and out of traffic and you know by the end of the hour you can see him cause all the traffic lights have slowed him down. And you're like, he's just be stressed out for the last hour driving in and out on his speed up to the back, danger, danger, danger. And chilling, listening to the tunes, knowing that we're getting there. It's all good.
Speaker 1:We're gonna get there. It's all good. Diet culture basically creates this thing fatphobia. Okay? It makes fat seem like the worst thing in the world and this, oh my god if you're fat, oh my god, who do you think you are?
Speaker 1:Terrible human being fat. Come on now, like most of us, most of us like those men's fitness physiques and there's women on Instagram, okay, those ones tiny and all that stuff, know, you think they're happy outside those photos? You know, do you think they live in a moderate lifestyle? Do you think they're absorbed by all of that? They're absorbed by the only thing, you know, the body, absorbed by what their body looks like, you know.
Speaker 1:That's not a way to live, is it? It's really not a way to live to be like so obsessed with what we look like that we want abs chiseled out, want, you know, we look super amazing and we see these people looking like a lot of these people dedicate their lives to a body like that, it's their job. Right? Most of us know our job isn't that. Right?
Speaker 1:We've got not we haven't got the time or the the effort or the energy and stuff to put into just folks in our bodies or job, you know, and they might love their job, happy days, but you can't compare you, you might have a few kids, you might work in an office, right, you come back, you've gone all time, you've limited on time, you kind of compare that lifestyle to a body of a 22 year old girl on Instagram who the only thing she does is student, she's got lots of money, all she has to work forks on is going to the gym every day and getting her protein and doesn't eat much, okay. Or even focusing on someone who's 32, who's a fitness model, who does photoshoots and the only thing she has to focus on is what she looks like. That's her job. Know, put him into your job in the office work, they'd be like a fish out of water, you know. So let's look at things in context.
Speaker 1:I'd rather just be that person you know slowly getting healthier, fitter over time, trying different things out, letting go of his perfectionist body, letting go of the got to be lean and chiseled with abs, letting go of what people are going to think if you're on a summer holiday and you're not as lean as someone else's world class, letting go of that you know. It's mad, isn't it? It is mad how much we put effort into what others will think of us. Why do we put so much emphasis on other people's opinions in us and then only listen to our own negative thoughts, let them catastrophize but then we'd never say those things to our best mate. We would big up our friends, we'll give our friends the reassurance, tell them they're good, tell our kids the good, the great, all this stuff.
Speaker 1:When it comes to us, we listen to the opinions of others more than ourselves. We're ego driven as well, you know, we're ego driven but we listen to other people's opinions more. You know, it's weird. The mind is weird. I think that's the main thing to take from it, the mind is strange.
Speaker 1:I don't think we'll ever make sense of it, so we need to not take it so seriously. But we experience diet culture every day, but we're really unaware of it because it's deeply embedded in our society as in it's completely normal. It's toxic, it's body dysmorphia, disordered eating, common mental health illnesses, consumes every part of our day, negatively impacts everything, all social occasions, this and that. And it's taken a huge toll on us. This is ways that diet culture is taking its toll on us.
Speaker 1:Here's the things we do. We exercise the burn off specific number of calories, that's diet culture, Do not work out for calorie burn, work out for the performance benefits, for the enjoyment, working out for the purpose of working out itself, that's it. The working out is good enough, the endorphins, that's it, that's it. I don't need to know, I don't care if I burn 300 calories after that, leave it go. Right?
Speaker 1:Following restrictive diets, of course, obvious one, cutting back or avoiding food groups that are considered bad, experiencing guilt or shame for eating food, you know, rituals based around eating, suppressing appetite, you know with nicotine, water, coffee, tablets, avoiding social settings that require food consumption, strong negative emotions and feeling towards body image, fat shaming behavior, you know, hating ourselves, jealousy towards others for the weight or body image, you know. Big time stuff going on, but here's three simple solutions. We got to practice body neutrality instead of body positivity, Right? There's a good body neutrality. Okay.
Speaker 1:So there's body positivity movement, but I think body neutrality. You know, they say strong nor skinny for, for the body positivity. But, again, that's still feeding in. It's just the ante of something. It's on the other side.
Speaker 1:Body neutrality is just acceptance. Done. There's no I wanna be this versus that. This the this versus this, this versus this is the problem. Let's be neutral, observers.
Speaker 1:Boom. This is me. Hello. I am here. I am improving myself today.
Speaker 1:Today is a day I'm gonna have a good day at work. I'm gonna go from get my steps in, I'm gonna be happy, I'm gonna have a joyful experience today. I'm not gonna think too much of the past or the future, I'm gonna just live one day at a time. This is me today, over time my body changed but me as my soul as a human being I can radiate daily. Possible, extremely possible.
Speaker 1:So body neutrality is just accepting the body and celebrating, you know, us as a human being. Remember that, you know, stop looking at yourself going, how much weight do you need to lose? Social media guys, unfollow people, please just unfollow them, get off social media if you can. Unfollow people that make you feel bad. Don't go on the explore page.
Speaker 1:They're in danger. And just, you know, turn your notifications off. Okay? The third thing is obviously what we speak about certain good, letting go of the ideas of good and bad food. Right?
Speaker 1:Oh, good and bad food, decades, decades of this. Oh, the world of foods. You know? This is right. This is wrong.
Speaker 1:No. No. No. This is this is a chemical, this and that. Oh my, everything's a chemical, mate.
Speaker 1:Go away. You know? Unless you're sitting there with a tube of sugar going into you all day every day and then you're not moving, we're like, look, you need to change this now. But we think like that one can of Coke or that one chocolate bar and it's that oh my god, you know like that one thing we do in detrimental. The funny thing is the people, the influencers, the fitness people that push all of this nonsense sometimes, right?
Speaker 1:They're the ones on freaking anabolic steroids, they're the ones taking orals to dehydrate their body, to get leaner, they do all sorts of stuff, Olympic athletes do it, bodybuilders do it, movie stars are doing it, they talk about health and stuff, get off it. Talking absolute nonsense, your guy's smashing these pillows and stuff so go away with your nonsense stuff. Working reality here. So guys, I don't know if this is a helpful voice or not or not, hopefully it was. I think it's important to always recap on this and understand the environment we're in.
Speaker 1:Diet culture, how is it conditioned us? Okay, I'm conditioned by diet culture all of us are. Okay, I accept, I see the conditioning, I can't change that that's happened over years and years, I can't change the conditioning, but I can be aware of the thoughts that arise from it. And in that awareness, I can make different decisions. And that's really it.
Speaker 1:And then stop fighting against the narcissist happened this, that, this is over the culture is, but let's be aware of it and make better decisions. And I'm telling you'll change your life. So hopefully it was useful. Enjoy your day guys. Get your one big thing done.
Speaker 1:Track your macros and all that stuff. Enjoy the day. Live with joy. Happy day. Speak tomorrow.
