A Better New Years Resolution: Leave Diet Culture in the Dust
Why it’s so hard for your fat friends to hear about your diet and weight loss goals.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a big to-do because Lizzo decided to do a juice cleanse. I’m not going to get into all the details (they’re easy to find with a quick search), but I will say that it was emotionally exhausting to watch it unfold.
Seeing the diet-culture, intentional-weight-loss focused propaganda on the page of the personal trainer/nutritionist/whatever that Lizzo was working with was hard. What was harder was knowing it was just the beginning of the New Years January onslaught of diet culture posts. For your fat friends, it’s triggering, frustrating, disappointing, and exhausting. I posted this on my stories, and a friend messaged me:
You have taught me so much. I would love to ask a question. Is posting about exercise a shitty move? Or is it the weight loss specific shit that is crappy?
I am so thankful for friends like her who reach out to me and ask me these types of questions. My answer? It really comes down to how you post about it. If you frame it in terms of feeling good physically and\or mentally or getting stronger or having specific goals (like if you’ve always wanted to hike a certain trail so…
