The BODcast - S2: E9

Oh no! The complete stranglehold that diet culture had on my brain! It’s broken!

Not quite.

Welcome back to another episode of The BODcast - Episode 9! 

This week is about diets and how you think we can end diet culture - it’s going to be short and sweet because many good things are! I am going to ask some questions at the end and I would love to hear from you.

I have been exposed to diet food since childhood. Weight Watchers margarine (EW), points, Jenny Craig… all of it.

I also remember being told I would have to have my jaw wired closed or a padlock put on the fridge (one of the reasons you didn’t see me speaking out about the recent magnetic version of the jaw lock. I feel pretty confident based on some of the tweets, posts and articles I read that many of my peers in the fat positive community felt distrubed and distressed by this, just as I did. Sofie Hagen tweeted ‘nothing tastes as good as torture feels’ and even as I laugh, tears well in my eyes reading those words.

Diets are, by definition, “a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one's weight”. So, after a lifetime of diets and disordered eating in my past (that the thought of never truly go all the way out of my mind) I want to stay away from diet talk as much as possible.

Some people would consider this shaming - those same people generally do not understand fully what it is like to see your body as a before photo OVER AND FUCKING OVER again.

Comfort in your body is something we should all be entitled to. Without taking into consideration the ways that disability, gender dysphoria and chronic illness steal this from many people regardless of their weight or size, this comfort is something that fat people have long been forbidden from feeling.

I know that diet culture is one of the main reasons any time I feel discomfort in or about my body. 

So what I want to know is: 

Do you think it is possible to end diet culture?

When will we smash diet culture and end it for future generations?

What’s the one thing you think YOU can do to help end diet culture?

What’s the worst thing diet culture has ever said to you?

These questions are going to help me do more to dismantle diet BS in 2022 and I want to do it with you by my side. If you want to answer each of those questions in a voice note and email it to me, I could share your ideas with everyone who listens to the BODcast in your own words! Like I said, I will also be putting them up for anyone who wants to respond to a trusty question box and will also share those answers. Like everything good we are ever going to do for the world, we have to be united and do it together.

Thank you in advance for the wonderful responses I hope to get to this episode - speaking of 2022, I’m going to be taking a short break over December and January, because revival is survival baby.

I thought a round dozen episodes for the season would do nicely. All sorts of things come in dozens - eggs, bread rolls, donuts… so stay tuned for three more bites of this sweet BODcast pie and until next week, remember: my body, your body, every body is a good body.