Dump the Diet

New Years Resolution: Dump the Diet

I, like many other little girls, went on my first diet at 11 years old. Growing up I learned about “good” foods and “bad” foods, how to restrict and count calories, and how to use exercise to enhance weight loss. My parents, like much of diet culture, equated health with thinness. Being fat was stigmatized and shamed. For the next fifteen years I dieted, binged, restricted, over exercised, and counted calories all in hopes that my body would eventually be small enough to be worthy, to be accepted.

I believed that my desirability and worth was determined by the size and weight of my body. I wish that I had had an intuitive eating, body loving, fat celebrating fairy godmother who lovingly held my belly and told me:

Your body does not determine your worth or your health. You and your body, no matter the size. deserves to be seen, and heard, and celebrated. Find joy and freedom in taking up space. Being fat is not bad or unhealthy. Repeated weight loss and gain is harmful to our bodies and to our psyche.

Diet culture is the idea that we have to be constantly controlling what we eat and exercise to pursue some idea (rooted in white supremacy ideas of how a body should or should not look) of body perfection. Diet culture is ubiquitous. Last year 45 million people went on a diet, and vowing to lose weight is the most common New Year’s Resolution (The Washington Post). The US weight loss market is worth $72 BILLION dollars. What they don’t tell you is that 95 percent of diets FAIL. And that weight loss cycling leads to disordered eating, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and weakens self-worth.

I totally understand that this has been a hard year, perhaps your hardest year yet. In a year of uncertainty and destabilization, controlling food or your body may be a distraction from all that you cannot control. I believe that you are strong enough and brave enough to move through the uncertainties and to accept and love your body for what it has done for you in 2020. This New Years my Resolutions are about celebrating my body at any size or shape and having gratitude each day for what my body does for me. Join me and  my fairy godmother in loving our fat, dimpled, wrinkled, strong, beautiful bodies no matter what size or shape.

Sarah E. Young is a Queer Couple and Family Therapist with Amanda Atkins Counseling Group and can be reached at sarah@amandaatkinschicago.com.