Ep. 29 | What Makes A Diet? The 3 Dieting Red Flags

In this episode, we’re delving into the complexities of diet culture, discussing the 3 red flags associated with every single diet, and the manipulative tactics of the diet industry. We’ll address the importance of understanding personal preferences in eating and the subjective nature of what constitutes “healthy eating”. I encourage you to practice discernment with your food choices and to recognise the pervasive influence of diet culture within our society.

Takeaways

Diet culture is pervasive and manipulative.
Not all diets are labeled as diets; many disguise themselves as lifestyle changes.
Understanding dieting red flags can help navigate diet culture.
Personal preference in food choices is crucial for intuitive eating.
Healthy eating is subjective and varies across cultures.
Dieting behaviors can lead to disordered eating and negative self-talk.
It's important to recognize the emotional aspects of food.
Self-care and self-respect should not be tied to body size.
Food policing reinforces fatphobic narratives.
It's not your fault; diet culture is everywhere.

Chapters
00:00 Why The Language We Use About Diets Matters
17:37 The 3 Dieting Red Flags
25:26 But, What About Health?
28:25 Food Policing & The Restriction Rebellion Pendulum
33:10 3 Takeaways From The Episode

Links:

Maintenance Phase Podcast with Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes

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Transcript

Melanie Knights [she/they] (00:00)
Welcome back to the culture of it all. Welcome to this week's episode. Hello my friends. Hello my plus size pals. Hello everybody.

If you are new here, thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. I hope you'll stick around. I really, really appreciate it. And I am looking forward to getting into today's mini episode.

Over the past few weeks on a series of different videos where I was talking about a number of different aspects of diet culture in the diet industry, I had used some statistics and data around the long term success, quote unquote success of diets. And I noticed how many people were coming into the comments saying things like, well, no, it's not all diets. It's just fad diets that don't work.

Or it's not the diet that's the problem, it's when someone stops dieting. That was really common comment. Or my personal favourite, which is, well it's just about eating under your calories. If you're not losing weight then you're not eating under your calories. My favourite thing on the internet is when people try to teach me.

to lose weight. It's almost as fun as when people want to point out to me that I'm fat. Like I don't know. Anyway, whilst I don't believe that these people are listeners, or have any desire to listen and learn, I thought that we should talk about dieting red flags and what makes a diet a diet. That's really what we're going to be talking about today, because I think this is incredibly helpful for navigating your own anti-diet

work, so to speak, It's helpful for navigating advertising and marketing of diet related products or programs because they're everywhere and they're sneaky. It's helpful for navigating conversations in real life or online. You know, this stuff comes up everywhere. You can be at work, you could be in a meeting, you could be at the cinema, you could be anywhere, anywhere in society.

you could be witness to these conversations. These conversations can happen around you.

it's really helpful for us to understand.

where does this fall into like dieting categories? And it doesn't mean that we're going to tackle every conversation. It doesn't mean that we're going to have all these conversations with people about their diet. It's not designed for us to judge. It's designed for us to continue to understand where this stuff comes up in society. It's in order for us to understand and recognize for really ourselves and so that we can

navigate these conversations, we can continue unlearning the dieting mindset, practicing ditching diets, intuitive eating, etc. And I really think that any supporting tools supporting language is really useful because diet culture and the diet industry are sneaky.

Right? Really, really sneaky. So today I'm going to be answering questions like, what makes a diet a diet? What are the red flags of every diet? What about health? And where does nutrition come in? So stay tuned. I'm going to get into all of this in today's mini episode.

Melanie Knights [she/they] (04:33)
Hello pals, it's Melanie from the future. I am here editing this episode and I just wanted to let you know you're gonna hear me refer to this as a mini episode, a mini-soad throughout. It's not, as you can tell. I got into it. I had a lot more to say than I realized and so this ended up being a full-length episode. I promise next week I will bring you a mini shorter episode, but yeah, enjoy.

Melanie Knights [she/they] (04:58)
Okay, so before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder that you can subscribe to The Culture of It All over on Substack by heading to CultureOfItAllPod.substack.com forward slash subscribe and choosing between the free or paid plan. Subscribers get early access to episodes, regular bonuses, including creative resources, blogs, videos and more. You can follow the show over on Instagram under at Culture Of It All Pod

where I share episode updates and the stories, my fat thoughts and the odd Aquarius meme. Or you can join me over on TikTok at Melanie Knights, where we discuss plus size fashion without the diet talk, body image, parenting and fat acceptance.

The best place to start is here. Just because it doesn't claim to be a diet doesn't mean it's not a diet. Just because it doesn't claim to be a diet doesn't mean it's not a diet. And the reason this is important is because I would say in the last 25 years or so we have seen many areas of the diet industry, many brands, many terms or phrases

repackaged And the reason this happened is because we started to call bullshit. We started to question the diets and the language that was being used in the nineties, especially when this rise of body positivity was happening on social media in the 2010s, there was this kind of

This, this rise of body positivity and this awareness that diets didn't work, right, we started to become more more aware of this and people were talking about it a lot more. But at the same time, we were still focused on thinness. I think that's the thing that we have to remember is even though there was this rise of body positivity, it was not the body positivity, it was not the body positivity movement as it started out. It was a body positivity movement that was still

centering thin bodies. The body positivity movement when it started was a political movement and it was focused on the most marginalized bodies within society. It was not designed to be performative. And whilst all bodies are good bodies, the body positivity movement has kind of lost its way because it no longer focuses on the most marginalized bodies. It started to center much smaller bodies. And what happened was

those bodies were being seen as positive, which of course continues to further the fatphobic narratives and it continues to further stereotype and discriminate against people in larger bodies and people in the marginalized communities. So what happened with this rise of body positivity and people starting to say, well, diets don't work, is the diet industry had to get savvy, it had to get smarter and sneakier.

It had to start thinking about the way in which it was promoting or marketing its products. It had to start thinking about the language it was using. was around this time that we started to see a rise in the wellness industry, right? The wellness industry is just the diet industry repackaged. So this then started to look like ⁓ very classist diets, diets that were not something that most people could attain to pursue.

We saw Weight Watchers before its demise, obviously. We saw them rebrand and start to focus on like, quote, healthy behaviors. This was a time when we started to hear people talking about it being a lifestyle and about habit change. Brands like Noom, which is very much a diet, but they claim continually to not be a diet because they claim to be a lifestyle change. Now, as I said, there are so many different phrases that have been taken and twisted.

by the diet industry and I think that's why we have to just remember that even if it claims not to be a diet doesn't mean it's not a diet and of course the red flags I'm going to share with you in a bit those are going to help you to recognize when something is a diet

What's funny is that during this time when we were seeing this rise of body positivity, I was very aware of this, but I was also working in the diet industry. I was working in the health and fitness industry. This was during that time period of like 2012 through to around 2018. I became aware of the body positivity movement. I was completely unaware of where it started. I want to be really honest. My only awareness of the body positivity movement at that time was very, very whitewashed.

and was not truly what the movement was. Now, during this time I was also selling dieting, I was selling coaching, I was participating not just in diet culture but it was my job, it was my career at that time. And one of the ways in which I now can see that we were trying to sell dieting without calling it dieting is we would call it fat loss instead of weight loss. This was a very, very common

phrase or term that we used during that time. All of my peers were using it. Some of them may still do. I don't know. but this was a really common term. And what we would do is we would demonize weight loss. We would talk about what hasn't worked in the past. We would talk about all the diets that we've done and how unhappy we were and how harmful it was and how we never achieved the bodies that we wanted to achieve. Like it was very, very...

performative and focused on aesthetic and like people can change their bodies because they want to look differently. I don't care. But for the point of this, I was focused on what you looked like. It was focused on what you looked like and of course being thinner. But we didn't want people to just be thin. We wanted people to be strong and we wanted them to be empowered and like those things are inherently fine. ⁓ But at the same time, the way in which we were marketing this was still a diet.

But if you had asked me during that time, I would have told you that A, I wasn't dieting and B, I wasn't selling that. The reality is both are true. I was both dieting and I was both focused on selling diets, but I was convinced that I wasn't. And there are so many times where we would focus on certain types of diets. And I think this is where we started to enter into this comment that

it's not all diets, it's just fad diets, right? This is where we've started to focus on that narrative. Now, oftentimes you'll see dieting behaviors presented as a form of self-respect or self-care or self-love. Just recently I had a comment from somebody on a video where I was talking about the impact of diet cycling and they commented and were like, let's be honest, you didn't really show up for yourself.

the last 20 years. You didn't really show up every day because if you did then you'd be thin. And I thought this was such an interesting thing, besides the fact the comment was incredibly transparent and what it tells us is how this person sees their own body and how they need to control themselves and how that means showing up for themselves. But it also tells me, or reminds me, that this phrase, show up for yourself, has been

adopted by the diet industry in order to center weight loss and dieting and thinness as a form of self-respect and self-care and self-love, once again making us believe that we cannot do these things unless we're a certain size, which is just completely bullshit. Now, because it's often presented in this way, right, it's very manipulative. The marketing around these products is marketing in general can be very manipulative, but especially in the diet industry, because what happens is you're like, what's the alternative, right?

If I'm in a larger body and I'm being told that the only way to respect myself, care for myself, love myself is to be thin, what's the alternative? It implies that you don't do those things already, implies that you can't do those things unless you're also doing all these other things, jumping through hoops or investing your resources in this other way. And it further pushes the narrative that to love oneself, you must also be thin, right? It further pushes that narrative.

And this is where we get trapped in this like internalised fatphobia because marketing things in this way means that even when it's subtle, we constantly are being exposed to this type of marketing and to this language. And we believe that we are not actually looking after ourselves, which I just want to go on record. All of these things are entirely possible in a larger body, right? We just have to recognise that we're allowed to do that. We're allowed to actually look after ourselves in whatever way.

⁓ I believe that like personal hygiene is the most basic form of self-care and we should all have access to that and we should all have access to the products that we need in order to do that and this is something that I've talked about before but I did not realize until I stopped dieting until I started to respect my body as it is that was when I realized I didn't actually know how to take care of my body

So anyway, that's the story for another time. But yeah, it's very manipulative and it pushes these narratives even further. Now, the other thing is it's rooted in shame, This marketing and the way this is presented, it's rooted in shame, Why don't you make time to take care of your health? What's more important than health?

This is what people really, when they show up on the internet and they're like, but what about your health? They're applying this like shame tactic, right? Because the reality is that for most of us, we are thinking about our health. I find it baffling that people walk around thinking that people in larger bodies don't think about their health. I would hazard a guess that folks in larger bodies think more about their bodies on a regular basis than anyone else. Because of course we do.

Even if you have ditched diet culture, you're still thinking about your body. It's a reality of, you know, my everyday life. But we don't have to feel ashamed about it, We can think about our bodies without this shame.

This also reinforces moralizing, you know, things are good, things are bad. So every time you stop following their rules, right, every time you, you know, quote, "fall off the wagon" you see yourself as bad, You take these, these words and this language and you're, you're repeating it to yourself and it starts to become your belief, your self-worth becomes collateral damage. You start to believe that you are bad because you're not actively pursuing thinness or pursuing weight loss.

And it's also incredibly performative, There is a lot of times when health, right, is about how it looks rather than actually helping anyone.

Often this like performance, it's like rich, white, thin ladies chatting about moon juice and overpriced goop. This positions health, quote unquote health, as something you can only obtain if you are wealthy, which is classist, racist, and absolutely false. You'll often also hear terms like whole foods and clean eating and moderation and toxins, like these words get thrown around. There's so many of these words and phrases that we have heard over the years.

that get thrown out in association with different types of foods or diets or behaviors, the reality is they don't really actually mean a whole lot. And these are kind of buzzwords that get taken on. Like, we understand what a whole food is, right? It's... but it's also really important to understand that when people talk about processed foods or, junk food or convenience foods, like...

There's a really great episode just released by Maintenance Phase on ultra-processed foods. And basically what we established is no one's agreed on what it means. So it's a great episode. I highly recommend listening to it. I highly recommend the show in general, but I do recommend listening to that episode. I think it's really important to understand where these terms come from, the studies and...

the end of the day how so many of these things don't actually have a complete definition. They are usually subjective and colloquial and it really really depends on what we're talking about. So the other thing to remember is the language that we use when we talk about how we're eating, Things like I'm being careful or I'm being good or I'm not eating. Insert whatever food group you're not eating.

I can't eat that on my diet. This is all diet talk. It's often about control. It's, you know, it's associated with dieting and or maintaining our body weight. You know, it's focused on portion control or avoiding food groups and it very much, you know, is, is part of what makes up this dieting mentality.

So let's talk about these three dieting red flags, right? These are the main red flags that come up in every single diet. I wanna give credit to my coach, Naomi. ⁓ She is my source for this. This is something that I learned during my intuitive eating coaching. And this always stuck out to me as such an important part of this conversation. So the first main red flag is having a goal.

that is based on manipulation or control of your body size. Having a goal that is based on manipulation or control of your body size. Let's just remember, we don't have as much control as we think we do. But the diet industry repeatedly tells us that we do. It tells us if we just try hard enough and we just focus on food and exercise, we can have whatever body we would like. We are all different.

even if we all ate the same and moved the same we would still all look different. It's just not possible. Now in addition to that there are so many factors that impact body size right. I say this on a regular basis there are over 35 factors that can impact body size, increase weight and increase body size. It's not as simple as people want to believe it is and so I just want to keep that in mind.

The second red flag is when we prioritize external factors instead of internal cues, Prioritizing external factors instead of internal cues. So what does that mean? Well, that means that we're not focusing on our own hunger and fullness. To be honest, I think this is something that diet culture has manipulated wonderfully over the years

And I know for myself, all that the diet industry did was confuse me. It confused me about hunger. It confused me about fullness. And I ended up feeling like I had no idea. I had no idea what hunger and fullness felt like. And that was one of the incredible things that I started to understand and recognize when I started ditching diets and focusing on intuitive eating because I was like, ⁓ it's not as complicated,

The diet industry complicates everything, complicates very, very biological human responses, Now, it also, when we talk about prioritizing external factors instead of internal cues, this also includes things like fearing body change. Body change is inevitable. We will all experience some kind of body change, whether that is weight gain, weight loss, changing the way our body looks.

Our bodies change, it is inevitable. And being afraid of that, or making people afraid of that is incredibly harmful. It gives us a fear of certain foods. We end up being afraid of certain food groups, certain food products. We become afraid of eating certain things. It also means that we end up ignoring how our body feels. So for example, we don't recognize when we're hungry. We don't...

want to recognize when we're hungry, we demonize hunger and we start to be afraid of it. the diet industry tells us that we don't know what we need and these diets consistently push us further away from our own body cues. Right, we don't know what our intuition sounds like, because we don't, we cannot recognize it.

And so this is, this is a process of kind of coming back to those very basic biological responses and starting to block out the rules, block out all of the noise that comes with the diet industry. And I think this is something we're to get into this in another episode, but the food noise that we hear about, I understand what that sounds like from my own personal experience. Now, obviously everyone's experience of it is different and

What I'm also aware of is like how much of that noise didn't belong to me. How much of that food noise was diet noise, But I said that's an episode for another time.

And the third red flag of diets is moralizing food choices, Associating this is good and this is bad. Whether it's low calorie versus high calorie, low carb versus high carb, sugar or sugar-free, portion sizes, We end up moralizing food choices. We end up deciding certain things are good, certain things are bad.

So if you think about any diet you've ever been on, whether you think it was a fad or not, all three of these rules will apply to every single diet. All three of these rules. And I think this is a really important definition. It's really important for us to understand and recognize where these three red flags come up, because it doesn't matter whether it was you were counting points or you were counting calories. It doesn't matter what it was.

these three things inherently come up.

And as I said, it is important just to recognize that this isn't just about weight loss,

because these behaviors can also show up when we are trying to manage or control or maintain our body weight. So even if we're not pursuing weight loss, but trying to control our bodies, these red flags will still often be present. Now, this stuff is ingrained in us. It is there every single day, whether it's obvious or not. It's not our fault, it's not your fault. It's not easy to escape the...

manipulation of diet culture.

And I think it's important to me that we call it what it is, because these non-diet diets can still lead to disordered eating and negative self-talk and body image issues. I see these conversations happening in my comment sections and I have to try and discern, okay, could this lead people to think that this isn't a diet when it is? And so I will often speak up and say, but that's still a diet. People get very, very upset with me when I do this.

But I've accepted that it's just part of it because at the end of the day, if people are having conversations about something that is very much a diet.

and they're presenting it as not a diet, I see that as potentially doing harm. seeing people talk about this stuff on the internet, that is not being well informed. That is not being well informed.

And of course this doesn't mean that there aren't other things that we may think of as individuals that could be red flags for dieting. Things like promises of quick results or claiming not to be a diet because it's a lifestyle or moderation or mindful.

demonizing hunger or fullness, being nutrient deficient. Think of Slimming World, for example, and their belief that you can't eat a banana, but you can eat as many low-fat toffee yogurts as you want. Diets are also socially isolating. They often interfere with celebrations and holidays

Sometimes you need to buy new products or gadgets and supplements in order to quote unquote "get results". And when it doesn't work, they say that you did it wrong. Right? It's always back to blaming the individual rather than blaming the

When I talk about diets or the failure rates of diets, a common response that I will get is, it's just about healthy eating. So when I talk about the fact that diets don't work long term, that there is no solution to fatness, people come into the comments and say, well, that's just because it's just about healthy eating. And I'm always so curious what people mean when they say that.

And sometimes I will respond and ask the question, well, do you not think that healthy eating is subjective? Or what exactly does healthy eating mean to you?

And I found that when I ask people whether or not they think it's subjective, there's this argument that Healthy food is healthy food. And I'm like, yes, but this is where we're going wrong. Like in my opinion, this is where we're going wrong. We're talking about healthy food. You're not talking about nutrients because people's perception of health foods is vastly different between

like one culture to another, right? It's colloquial. As I said earlier, the episode on ultra-processed food by maintenance phase, definitely a must listen because they talk about this in within the context of ultra-processed food and how people mean different things when they say this. It's not the same across the board.

So what I found is that when most people want to talk about health eating or health foods, they are trying to talk about nutrients. They're talking about like vegetables and fruits and things that we know are high in nutrients. However, even within that, it's still very subjective and this leads to many a debate because, for example, Brussels sprouts. I like Brussels sprouts. However, I get a tummy ache when I eat them.

So no, they're not going to harm me, I'm not going to get sick from eating them, but they're not a healthy food that I would want in my diet all the time because they give me a tummy ache and that's not fun. And this could be the same for other vegetables, other foods, other foods that you might consider to be healthy. Other people may not be able to eat them. When we talk about

health foods, well there's plenty of health foods that people who have certain autoimmune diseases cannot eat. And that is one of the reasons why healthy eating has to also look at people on an individual basis. And we've all been taught to apply so many rules to our food choices that this leads to food policing. We create these rules and we apply them to ourselves and others.

We apply shame and judgment and guilt about certain types of foods or certain food choices or even food related thoughts because there is a lot of emotion and feeling when it comes to food because diet culture has taught us to be afraid of food, it's taught us to be afraid of hunger and certain food groups and food policing reinforces fatphobic narratives that if somebody eats a certain food that well that's going to make them unhealthier than the next person.

So I want to share an example that is especially for my Gilmore Girls fans, you will know exactly what I'm talking about, and for the rest of you I think this is still a great example of food policing. I always think of the episode when Richard comes to visit Stars Hollow and Lorelai takes him to Luke's for breakfast. She orders her meal and Richard comments that she didn't order any grapefruit. And she says she doesn't like grapefruit, but he tells her that it's brain food and he always starts his day with half a grapefruit.

she's like I don't really like it and he says well there's often things in life we have to do that we don't like. She caves and asks Luke to find her a grapefruit preferably one that tastes like a donut.

Now I'm not suggesting that we look at this show for inspiration on how to eat because it is highly problematic. There is a lot of fat phobia in this show and that could be a whole episode. But my point is that when it comes to food policing, these are the kind of rules that we might apply because we enjoy a certain meal or we eat at a certain time or we like a certain food or we see a certain food as being good for us, we assume that everyone else should follow the same rules.

we should be able to make decisions about our own food choices free from shame and guilt. We shouldn't feel good or bad about making certain food choices because at end of the day, not every meal can be perfect. Not every meal can match somebody's version of health. The other issue with this is that most of us don't grow up or live in this kind of middle ground, this like neutral space.

There's this thing called the Restriction Rebellion Pendulum, or it could also be seen as like dieting and binging, which visually is a pendulum swinging between two spaces. On the one hand, you have something called diet land, on the other you have donut land, or perhaps we could call it grapefruit and donut land. But the reality is that most of us spend time swinging between these two extremes.

We apply rules that are impossible to maintain when we are in restriction, when we are in diet land, and we swing back and forth.

We eat in a way that eventually becomes dissatisfying. And this could be because it's boring. It could be because we don't actually enjoy the foods that we're eating. We're eating them because we think we should. We're eating them because they're the good foods, quote unquote.

It can also become socially isolating, whether that's at celebrations or even just at mealtime. you know, especially if you're in a family and I've certainly experienced this both from adults around me when I was growing up and as an adult myself is you're eating differently to everyone else at the table because of your diet. This becomes socially isolating. We become resentful, especially if everyone else is eating the things that we would like to eat, but we feel that we can't.

And this can happen even if we get that like dopamine hit in the beginning, right, that I'm gonna do it this time feeling. Because inevitably it wears off. And there are so many reasons why that can happen. But we never ever stop to think.

And we're never ever taught to think what happens when you stop swinging from restriction to rebellion. What happens when you settle somewhere in the middle. I think it's important to highlight that there are plenty of diets out there that would tell you...

they're settling somewhere in the middle, that they're not diets. Again we can apply all of the information we have, all the knowledge we have about what makes a diet diet, to discern whether or not something is really somewhere in the middle. Now the way in which I think we do that is through discernment, something I see missing from a lot of the comments and arguments online, because to be quite honest if you're able

to understand quote unquote health on a micro and macro scale, on an individual and collective basis and discern what is healthy for yourself, then I think people wouldn't be so quick to judge someone else's food choices. I think if we can understand that food is about community, it is cultural, it's social, it's celebratory, there is emotion of feeling to it, it isn't just about fuel.

Right? I know that's a common argument, like food is just fuel. Well, we're not cavemen. So food does look a bit different for us nowadays. And we're not going to dig deeper into intuitive eating today or the principles of the framework, but I do want to leave you with a couple of things that I've learned from my intuitive eating practice. The first thing is personal preference. Personal preference when it comes to food. I can't believe

how much of my life I spent eating things I didn't like. ⁓ On the flip side of that, there are also a number of things I actually enjoy, but I deeply associate them with dieting. And one of the practices that comes up in intuitive eating is kind of getting to know food again, and finding which foods you enjoy, and finding what you enjoy about different types of foods. It's not easy, it's very scary.

whether it's figuring out do I actually like sweet potatoes or did I just eat them because they're supposedly better for me than regular fries? Do I want to eat egg whites or would I prefer to have the whole egg? Do I like low fat Greek yogurt or do I actually want regular yogurt or do I not like yogurt at all? Did I just eat it because it's a food that I associate as being healthy?

You know, even down to candies and chocolates and sweets and things like that, within those, you know, because so many of us have been taught that these foods are bad and we have restricted ourselves from having certain foods, it's an opportunity for us to figure out whether we actually enjoy something.

Because I know in my experience, there were number of occasions when I was restricting myself that you could have given me something that was sweet and I would have eaten it whether I really liked it or not because I felt so restricted. And I think that's one of the beautiful things about intuitive eating is being able to discern.

which food you actually like, which food you don't like. Personal preference gets to play a part in that. And it's really, really interesting to kind of open up to that and start to practice it. But as I said, it is definitely a practice. It can be scary and there is a lot of nuance and individual, ⁓ individual preference is definitely going to play a part. But you know, you can see how this is completely different from

deciding certain foods are good or bad, right? You get to decide whether you enjoy it or not, rather than it being good or bad. The second thing is asking myself what do I need? I truly think this is like one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves.

The interesting thing is that I had been asking clients what they needed from me when it came to their marketing for years. And when I started Intuitive Eating, this question came up. What do I need? And I was like, huh, I never realized I could apply it to other areas of my life. And I realized this is just such an important question. What do I need?

This is a question I use especially when maybe I'm feeling very anxious or have a lot of feelings going through my body and I find myself in the kitchen opening all the cupboards looking and I'm like, am I actually hungry right now? Like what's going on? What do I need right now? And I can kind of talk myself through what is going on? What do I actually need? And figure it out. Yeah, sometimes I'm hungry. Sometimes I'm not. Sometimes it's something else. And I can kind of make that decision.

Again, this isn't something that diet culture teaches us. This isn't something the diet industry wants. The diet industry doesn't want us to make decisions. The diet industry wants us to pay for their products and programs.

And the final thing is that it's not your fault. None of this is your fault. It's not my fault. It's not our fault.

Diet culture is everywhere. And these rules, these beliefs are tangled up in marketing and products. They're in conversations that we don't even get to opt out of because they just happen so freely around us. They're in the way people talk about their bodies. They're in the way that people talk about food.

They're in the way that stores market or promote their food. They're in the way in which people describe food. So it's not your fault.

You get to practice discernment you get to decide whether or not a food is something you want to have. Not every meal is going to be perfect, but we get to make different decisions when we're not dieting. We get to make different decisions about how we eat and how we feel about food as well. Because again, there's so much feeling and emotion associated with food for so many of us.

So I hope you enjoyed this mini episode. Thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you next time.