Body Image & Diet Culture

Have you ever experienced feeling fat one day and not feeling comfortable in any of your clothes, then another day not having any of those feelings and fairly easily getting dressed? Maybe the way you feel about your body influences your eating behaviours, and you find yourself constantly yoyo-ing.

Here we unpack the common experience of ‘feeling fat’.

Dieting can lead to a preoccupation with food and weight that, for some, can become obsessive and harmful.

Here we explore some of the problem with diets, before highlighting 5 reasons that dieting may lead to eating disorders.

In recent years there has been a large increase in the popularity of bodybuilding, and studies are now exploring the link between bodybuilding and eating disorders.

“I lost my personality, my partner, and my purpose in life. It was just gym, eat, repeat. There was literally no time or energy for anything else.”

In today’s blog post, eating disorder recovery warrior Lydia discusses how she navigated her fears around body change and took powerful steps towards body acceptance. Sharing difficulties she faced and a recovery tool that she found particularly helpful throughout her recovery journey.

Body image issues affect around 1 in 3 adults in the UK, and studies suggest this number is growing. An important part of building a healthy relationship with food is looking beyond the exterior, including when we compliment one another.

In this article we discuss weight stigma and what health really is.

“Your healthy weight is whatever weight you reach when you are nourishing your body intuitively. When you are not restricting food in any way or compensating for food eaten. When you are neither strictly controlling food nor feeling out of control with food.”

Restaurants, cafes and takeaways with more than 250 staff are now permitted to display calories on menus, websites, and delivery platforms.

In this post we share our thoughts on this new legislation, as well as tips on how to navigate this change.

At Natural Food Therapy, we support each individual with the recovery tools needed to make lasting change. Your learning styles, strengths, passions and character traits can all be used to support your recovery journey. And something we champion for those who respond well to reflective tools is letter writing.

Most people will experience a grieving process on their journey towards body acceptance. A powerful and necessary step that allows you to let go and grieve unrealistic expectations of what your body ‘should’ look like. Here are the five stages of body grief and some thoughts on how to navigate them.

January is possibly the most challenging month for anyone suffering from an eating disorder. It can not only reinforce behaviours that you’ve been working so hard to change but can drive a depriving and punishing mentality with regards to food and exercise.

Diet culture can be tough to navigate when in recovery from an eating disorder. This week two of our recovery warriors have chosen to share their letters to diet culture with us all. As well as being thought-provoking and impactful, these are letters that deserve to be shared and celebrated.

Muscle dysmorphia is a subtype of a mental health condition called body dysmorphic disorder, where a person spends a lot of time worrying about perceived flaws in their body. It is also associated with eating disorders, as it often leads to disordered eating behaviours.

Body-editing apps are the newest trend fuelling body image issues in both men and women. Instead of supporting us to accept that we are all different and embrace our individuality, editing apps encourage us to conform to society’s pressures and only share a sculpted ‘version’ of ourselves.

Many people think that it is simply about being on a diet, however diet culture is a belief system that worships thinness and values a socially constructed ideal of beauty over health and well-being. This is why diet culture has become so dangerous and is strongly implicated in the rise of eating disorders and body image issues.