Anti Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison
(Format used for this read: Print–hardback)
Every now and then I pick up a book and it really shakes me to my core.
As I’m reading the words on a page, it’s like little lightbulbs of awareness start to turn on in my brain….and I literally am knocked on my complete ass with self realizations.
It can be so unnerving and so uncomfortable….but in such a necessary and vital way that I just willingly sit in those feelings and let things unravel and reveal.
Sometimes when I read a book I don’t have many thoughts to say about it other than I liked it or I didn’t like it and my reviews are pretty straightforward, simple and short.
And sometimes when I read a book I have SO MANY thoughts swirling around upstairs in my brain that I don’t even know where to begin with putting them into words.
Guess which category this one fell into for me.
I’ve been sitting with this finished book for a couple days now and still feel the giant thoughts swirling at warp speed and don’t think they plan to slow down anytime soon…..
So this review is just gonna happen and hopefully I can get some of the swirls expressed thru my keyboard.
Here is what this book is all about before I get going:
“Sixty-eight percent of Americans have dieted at some point in their lives. But upwards of 90 percent of people who intentionally lose weight gain it back within five years. And as many as 66 percent of people who embark on weight-loss efforts end up gaining more weight than they lost. If dieting is so clearly ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it?
The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness to health and moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It’s sexist, racist, and classist, yet this way of thinking about food and bodies is so embedded in the fabric of our society that it can be hard to recognize. It masquerades as health, wellness, and fitness, and for some, it is all-consuming.
In Anti-Diet, Christy Harrison takes on diet culture and the multi-billion-dollar industries that profit from it, exposing all the ways it robs people of their time, money, health, and happiness. It will turn what you think you know about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it’s infiltrated the health and wellness world, how to recognize it in all its sneaky forms, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat “perfectly” actually helps to improve people’s health – no matter their size. Drawing on scientific research, personal experience, and stories from patients and colleagues, Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture, and helps listeners reclaim their bodies, minds, and lives so they can focus on the things that truly matter.”
For those of yall who don’t know me IRL, let me share with you just a few teensy tidbits about me personally that relate to why I am diving into undoing the diet culture way of life inside me and how it came to be there.
I went thru a huge 60+ lb weight loss journey in my early 20s….and then again in my late 20s after having my first kid…and then again in my early 30s after having my second one.
I have been a nationally certified Group Fitness Instructor for the past six years, with two other years of experience way back when. (I call that long ago time period “B.K.”….Before Kids 🤣)
I also have been a coach with Beachbody for the past 7 years.
Dieting and controlling my size (and teaching other people how to do the same) has been a way of life for me for YEARS.
Plus, I’m also woman who lives in the United States who is indoctrinated with diet culture in EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of life from the age of birth.
I have only just realized what a sneaky ass beyotch this “Diet Culture” nonsense is and how much of a hold it truly does have on me.
In trying to find peace with my own body as I entered my 40s this past year, I realized I don’t think I have EVER had peace with my body at ANY size or ANY age.
And I also thought that I haven’t technically “been on a diet” in years…instead I had a mindset of “healthy living”…
But guess what?
Lots of things our society sells to us as “healthy living” is COMPLETELY STILL diet culture BS.
“Diet culture–a system of beliefs that equates thinness, muscularity, and particular body shapes with health and moral virtue; promotes weight loss and body reshaping as a means of attaining higher status; demonizes certain foods and food groups while elevating others; and oppresses people who don’t match its supposed picture of ‘health’.”
This book was really helpful in learning the history and evolution of diet culture and also explaining the ways you can begin to actively work to NOT succumb to it as well as undo the toxic holds it already has on your brain.
(I do wish it spent MORE time on that last piece though as I felt like it did a great job explaining all the things…but the time spent on how to UNDO all the things wasn’t enough in my opinion)
Just like every freaking other thing in our country, diet culture is completely rooted in racism, classism and sexism… which I admit I was slightly aware of and have witnessed (and unfortunately partook in unaware) myself over the years…but I had no idea the DEPTHS of it all.
“Western culture IS diet culture.”
“Part of the rise of a thinner ideal to define a middle class American citizen was this contradistinction to the ‘stout, sturdy’ immigrants…”
“These days, diet culture pushes the narrative that the reason we stigmatize larger bodies is because higher weight ’causes’ poor health. In reality, though, fat bodies were deemed ‘uncivilized’ and therefore undesirable long before the medical and scientific communities began to label them a health risk around the turn of the twentieth century.”
“The roots of our cultural preference for thinness and weight loss are planted in racist hierarchy of bodies created by nineteenth century evolutionary biologists.”
“The times in history when women have made the greatest political gains–getting the vote, gaining reproductive freedom, securing the right to work outside the home–have also been moments when standards for ‘ideal’ beauty became significantly thinner and the pressure on women to adhere to those standards increased.”
“The food activist movement upholds white culture’s preference for thinness by equating it with the picture of health, and defines ‘real food’ as the type preferred by white elites.”
“Calling a particular way of eating ‘clean’ automatically labels anything else unclean or dirty….it creates an imagined moral hierarchy in which people who ‘eat clean’ are viewed (or view themselves) as morally superior to those who don’t (and feel incredibly guilty if they deviate from the supposedly correct diet). In that sense, clean eating has echoes of religious dietary laws.”
Something that reallllllyyyyyyy had me checking myself a million times over was realizing all the ways I have participated in diet culture WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING IT.
Because I thought I was just “being healthy” with choices I made or ideas I bought into.
When in reality, that “healthy living” was just diet culture in disguise.
“The argument that ‘It’s about health, not dieting!’ is in fact central to diet culture’s business model in this day and age.”
“The way the Wellness Diet–and diet culture in general–conceives of health is bound up in healthism: the belief that health is a moral obligation, and that people who are ‘healthy’ deserve more respect and resources than people who are ‘unhealthy’….further makes health out to be exclusively a matter of individual responsibility, rather than a matter to be addressed at societal and political levels.”
“Following the Wellness Diet is a type of virtue signaling that people use to secure and maintain their own class status.”
“Health isn’t a moral obligation nor is it within reach for millions of people for a lot of deep, systemic reasons that largely boil down to social injustice.”
“If we really want to reduce people’s levels of chronic inflammation in any significant way, we need public-health interventions that help end racism, weight stigma and economic inequality.”
And all that trusted research and information I have so easily bought into? It isn’t always what it seems to be….surprise, surprise.
“The costs attributed to ‘obesity’ are grossly inflated; excess spending on health care in the United States has nothing to do with body size. The U.S. has higher healthcare spending than any other developed nation–even when adjusting for relative wealth, and despite having a healthier population than most–primarily because we have higher salaries for physicians, profit hungry health care and insurance companies, and expensive new technologies.”
There have been so many times in my life where I obsessively counted every single calorie that went in my mouth.
I have compulsively exercised to the point of overuse injuries, sleep disturbances, and even missed chances of human interaction.
I have used extreme exercise as a form of “punishment” for eating too much “bad food”.
I have felt guilt and shame over not eating “right” or looking “fit”.
I have bought into the lie that a healthy body has a very narrow definition of what it should look like on the outside.
And sadly, I know I have passed all these things on to others at some point and time.
And also sadly, because of all this I have never felt comfortable in my body. EVER.
These are just some of the horrible things diet culture does to us.
“So instead of jumping to blame your weight for any discomfort you feel, what if you could recognize that the problem isn’t your body, but how you’ve been made to feel about your body?”
“Diet culture steals our sense of identity at perhaps the most fundamental level: our ability to feel at home in our bodies.”
“Applauding weight loss for anyone reinforces weight stigma for everyone….many people who’ve lost weight intentionally have done it via disordered behaviors such as restriction, compulsive exercise, and deprivation. Praising people for weight loss, then, often means applauding them for disordered behaviors and a damaging relationship with food…When we stop applauding weight loss, we stop passing judgement on other people’s bodies.”
I want to do unlearn all the mess that diet culture has poured into my brain.
AND I WANT TO CALL THAT SHIT OUT FOR WHAT IT IS.
I want to continue to be a part of the health and fitness industry but in a radically different way than I ever have before.
I want to continue this growth and listening and processing and un-doing.
This book is just the first of many resources I plan to use to reframe my thoughts and mindset and also to completely flip my way of teaching others.
I want to find more people like this author that are in this industry working to actively fight against diet culture and are doing things completely differently than I have been doing…and those are the voices who I want to listen to. She had a great list of resources at the end of the book which I am so very thankful for and have been diving into already.
“Intuitive eating is not about experiencing ‘perfect’ hunger signals that never change–it’s about doing your best in any circumstance to honor your body’s need for food without letting diet-culture beliefs get in the way.”
“Life beyond diet culture is about having variety and balance in your food choices and about getting your needs met, both for nutrients and for satisfaction and pleasure…there’s no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods.”
“Truly holistic health encompasses physical, mental, emotional and social aspects–including freedom from stigma, reliable access to food and shelter, and sufficient resources for transportation, childcare and medical care, as well as the right to pleasure and satisfaction in your life as a whole, including your food.”
“Your body is not meant to be at a weight that it can sustain only through restriction.”
“It’s crucial for people to make peace with themselves and feel comfortable in their own skin, but the work doesn’t end there. Individuals wouldn’t need to undertake these self empowerment journeys of learning to love and accept their bodies if systemic forms of oppression didn’t cause people to believe their bodies were unacceptable.”
“To change how we perceive our bodies, we must put ourselves in a cultural milieu that portrays ALL bodies in a positive way.”
Reading this book just started to pry the blinders off my eyes in regards to allllll this….and I know as I continue on the path of unlearning, more layers will be pulled back and more things will be revealed.
And I am ready and willing to be patient as I go and also accept the discomfort that comes along with it….. because true transformation takes plenty of time and has tons of growing pains.
Gosh…I have so so so so many more things I could share about all of this….and I feel like I only just began to share the very tip of the iceberg of emotions and thoughts I have going on after reading this book….
But I gotta end a review at some point.
This isn’t my journal so yall don’t need to be knowing ALL my things 🤣
(and do yall even WANT to know all my things?!?)
Highly recommend this book for EVERYONE.
Seriously.
We need to bust down the bullshit, yall.
Our world can be SO much better and ALL bodies deserve SO MUCH MORE.