Why I hate dieting. A Rant.
by
Cliona Kelliher
- Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Actually the title is a little misleading because I have never been on a diet in my life and I have no intention of ever embarking on one. The thing I hate about dieting is the concept itself, the discussion around it, the emotional relationship with food and above all, the unrealistic body image pressure that most women are subjected to from an early age.
It is a topic I have been discussing with my daughter recently and I was reminded of a book title 'Fat is a Feminist Issue'. I hadn't actually read the book (but now really want to - to delve into the subject a little more deeply).
I found an interesting Irish Times article where the author, Susie Orbach, discusses the continuing relevance of the book - written in 1978, the title continues to hold true and is perhaps even more relevant today.
The fact is, that dieting originates in the belief that we need to change ourselves, that our bodies are flawed and need to be moulded into some kind of acceptable state. That our 'normality' is not chosen by ourselves, but dictated by societal and media pressure.
A constant bombardment of airbrushed images of the female form gives us a completely unrealistic notion of what it is to be female.
We are shown what the 'ideal' is and expected to conform to that, regardless of age, body shape or any other number of factors. What better way to subdue an entire sex than to make them feel inadequate and lacking most of the time?
Where does this pressure come from? It would be far too simplistic to say that it's men but it certainly could be considered as another little link in the patriarchal chain. However, I do believe that it is a complex web of consumerism, habit, marketing and probably many things I haven't even yet considered.
The beauty and diet industry is absolutely massive, a gigantic money making force that has nothing to gain from women feeling confident about how they look.
Cosmetics companies, magazines, hair product manufacturers, the fashion industry - all of these have an enormous vested interest in making us feel like crap about ourselves.
And don't get me started on the weight loss gurus/organisations and the horrendous 'diet'products that they peddle, empty of nutrition and never a substitute for healthy real food.
Frankly if they were all that successful, there would be millions of happy healthy women out there, content with their body image and never feeling the need to diet again.
This really isn't the case, though, because they just feed into the food obsession - the belief that food somehow has a moral component. I'm 'good' if I eat an apple (not because it's healthy, mind, but because it is less calorific) and I'm 'bad' if I eat a cream bun.
Eating food does not involve some kind of moral choice here, it is simply a way to nourish and feed our bodies and I do think that this emotional bond with food is part of the problem, something that can only be exacerbated by dieting or depriving ourselves. By elevating sugary products to the elevated status of seldom allowed 'treats', we give them a power they just shouldn't have.
As I said, I have never been on a diet. It is important to me to be healthy and I think that we all need to take care of ourselves, both physically and mentally, and eating well is part of that. However, I don't feel even the slightest pang of guilt if I decide to have a bar of chocolate or a piece of cake and I think that we, as women, need to start feeling confident. Not just having confidence in our bodies, but confidence in ourselves, our choices, our abilities and our strengths.
Loving yourself is a corny concept, perhaps, but I do believe in it very much. How many times have you thought 'I wish I was younger/slimmer/taller/less wrinkly/etc.'?
Why not just enjoy who you are right now?
I also firmly believe, for anyone who has daughters, that we need to stop this endless negative body image cycle. Everytime you critique your body, you are giving a message to your loved ones that you don't value yourself and that message is slowly imbibed by young women and taken to their hearts so that they start to feel inadequate about themselves too.
It really needs to stop and I feel very strongly about this. We need to throw away the magazines, stop aspiring to be some unattainable female 'ideal' and we need to shout from the rooftops how bloody amazing we are!
It is a topic I have been discussing with my daughter recently and I was reminded of a book title 'Fat is a Feminist Issue'. I hadn't actually read the book (but now really want to - to delve into the subject a little more deeply).
I found an interesting Irish Times article where the author, Susie Orbach, discusses the continuing relevance of the book - written in 1978, the title continues to hold true and is perhaps even more relevant today.
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Image courtesy of Sujin Jetkasettakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
The fact is, that dieting originates in the belief that we need to change ourselves, that our bodies are flawed and need to be moulded into some kind of acceptable state. That our 'normality' is not chosen by ourselves, but dictated by societal and media pressure.
A constant bombardment of airbrushed images of the female form gives us a completely unrealistic notion of what it is to be female.
We are shown what the 'ideal' is and expected to conform to that, regardless of age, body shape or any other number of factors. What better way to subdue an entire sex than to make them feel inadequate and lacking most of the time?
Where does this pressure come from? It would be far too simplistic to say that it's men but it certainly could be considered as another little link in the patriarchal chain. However, I do believe that it is a complex web of consumerism, habit, marketing and probably many things I haven't even yet considered.
The beauty and diet industry is absolutely massive, a gigantic money making force that has nothing to gain from women feeling confident about how they look.
Cosmetics companies, magazines, hair product manufacturers, the fashion industry - all of these have an enormous vested interest in making us feel like crap about ourselves.
And don't get me started on the weight loss gurus/organisations and the horrendous 'diet'products that they peddle, empty of nutrition and never a substitute for healthy real food.
Frankly if they were all that successful, there would be millions of happy healthy women out there, content with their body image and never feeling the need to diet again.
This really isn't the case, though, because they just feed into the food obsession - the belief that food somehow has a moral component. I'm 'good' if I eat an apple (not because it's healthy, mind, but because it is less calorific) and I'm 'bad' if I eat a cream bun.
Eating food does not involve some kind of moral choice here, it is simply a way to nourish and feed our bodies and I do think that this emotional bond with food is part of the problem, something that can only be exacerbated by dieting or depriving ourselves. By elevating sugary products to the elevated status of seldom allowed 'treats', we give them a power they just shouldn't have.
As I said, I have never been on a diet. It is important to me to be healthy and I think that we all need to take care of ourselves, both physically and mentally, and eating well is part of that. However, I don't feel even the slightest pang of guilt if I decide to have a bar of chocolate or a piece of cake and I think that we, as women, need to start feeling confident. Not just having confidence in our bodies, but confidence in ourselves, our choices, our abilities and our strengths.
Loving yourself is a corny concept, perhaps, but I do believe in it very much. How many times have you thought 'I wish I was younger/slimmer/taller/less wrinkly/etc.'?
Why not just enjoy who you are right now?
I also firmly believe, for anyone who has daughters, that we need to stop this endless negative body image cycle. Everytime you critique your body, you are giving a message to your loved ones that you don't value yourself and that message is slowly imbibed by young women and taken to their hearts so that they start to feel inadequate about themselves too.
It really needs to stop and I feel very strongly about this. We need to throw away the magazines, stop aspiring to be some unattainable female 'ideal' and we need to shout from the rooftops how bloody amazing we are!