Spring Cleaning: Diet Culture Edition
Spring cleaning is a great way to freshen things up after a long winter. Season changes are also always a great time for reflection, not that you need an excuse to do any self-reflecting! Spring can bring especially hard feelings about bodies since summer is just around the corner with lighter clothing and bathing suits. I also love the idea of spring “blooms” and feel like it is such a great opportunity to let go of things that may be holding us back and keeping us stuck in diet culture to let us do some blooming of our own. I’ve compiled a list (not extensive by any means!) to help you find a few ways to ditch triggering, toxic thoughts about food and get closer to food & body freedom.
The Scale
This could be an entire blog post on its own but I’ll save that for another day! If you have a scale, consider trashing it this spring. If you’re not ready for that level of commitment, a friend could get rid of it for you, or you could have someone in your home hide it as a first step to getting rid of it. Weighing yourself frequently creates a lot of pressure based on “the number” and sets a tone for the day. If we’ve “passed” by being under our last number then we’re doing “good” and can continue on. If we’ve “failed” by having a higher number then we’re doing “bad” and must compensate for it that day or the next few days. Does this sound familiar? Our weight is not a measure of health or worth. It’s time to ditch the scale, you deserve it!
Clothing
Spring can be a hard season change when it comes to our attire. Getting back into warm weather clothes that we haven’t worn in months can bring lots of feelings like dread, anxiety, and worse. Tips to make this spring season a little easier:
Try on warm weather clothes like shorts and bathing suits weeks before you’ll actually want to wear them.
Be prepared. Go into this experience with some affirmations to help you get through it if things get hard. Helpful affirmations may look like:
“My body has changed over the winter and that’s ok.”
“It’s normal to need new clothes when the seasons change.”
“It is not my body’s job to fit clothes, clothes are supposed to fit my body.”
If things don’t fit comfortably, try not to dwell on it and make up a bag to donate or get rid of. Wearing tight or ill-fitting clothes can trigger us to have bad body thoughts and thoughts of how to “fix” our body all day.
Go shopping for some new threads! Shopping is also another hard experience for our bodies, more on that another time. Try on clothes you like, no matter if you think you “shouldn’t” wear that style. Move around in them and only buy things that make you feel comfortable, then rock them!
Social Media Ads
Ads on social media are targeted to certain demographics. If you’re constantly searching or clicking on things about dieting and weight loss, these are the kinds of advertisements you’ll have on your feed. The problem is, you never know what’s coming next. New baby announcements, travel photos, funny memes, and then bam, there’s a weight loss ad in your face. You could have been having the best day and now you’re having second thoughts about your body.
Many social media platforms have heard our voices and are letting us take the reigns in regards to the types of advertisements we allow on our feeds. I strongly encourage you to find the settings that allow you to update your ad preferences. You can also click on ads when they come up to do this as well.
Pro tip: you can report these types of ads as misleading/false or whatever the options are when you click to report!
Social Media
Speaking of social media…since our feed can be full of random things, you can try to control it as much as possible. Sure, you may have some really interesting posts from a wacky relative come up but as far as diet culture goes, you can filter some triggering things out. Here are some types of people/accounts to watch out for
Accounts constantly pushing their MLM diet and weight loss products (looking at you BeachBody coaches and similar companies).
People that post a lot of before/after photos, gym selfies, etc.
Fitness models or influencers that make you feel “less than” about your own body.
Accounts that only show thin, ultra-filtered or altered bodies. This can be hard to figure out sometimes! Most people are using some type of filter or alteration these days.
Ditch them all! Unfollow, stop engaging, snooze, unfriend or do whatever you have to do to get that content off your feed.
Pro tip: find and follow accounts that show unedited, real bodies of all sizes, shapes, and colors-they do exist!
Subscriptions & Reading Materials
Spring clean that inbox and your regular mailbox, too! Most of us have subscribed to a bunch of different newsletters, email lists, magazines, or catalogues. Now is a great time to get rid of all the things you don’t look at, cancel subscriptions that are costing you money, and unsubscribe to things that trigger those bad food and body thoughts. Stop using them as “motivation” to lose weight, you don’t have to do that!
Conversations
This one can be really hard. Discussing or commenting on bodies, weight loss, food, and dieting has become a way to bond with fellow humans, no matter how bad it may make us feel. Simple tips:
Remove yourself from the conversation physically:
“I need to use the restroom.”
“Oh, look there’s someone I want to go talk to!”
Change the subject.
Set boundaries for yourself:
“This is not a topic I’d like to discuss. Is there something else you’d like to talk about?”
“Discussing food/bodies/weight/etc is not appropriate. I’m sure there is something more interesting you’d like to talk about.”
You know what you’re comfortable with, feel it out from there. If you’re new at this, there’s no need to explain. If you’re more comfortable, explain why you don’t want to discuss these things. Warning-some people will never understand, no matter how many times you try to explain it to them. You can do this!
Self-Talk
How we talk to ourselves makes a huge difference in our mental and emotional health. Constantly nagging yourself about your body, food intake, or appearance will only make you want to control these things more or rebel against these thoughts. Consider this, would you say these types of things to a friend? Try using more self-compassion in your self-talk. Noticing negative self-talk is the first step to working on making it better. Notice certain things or experiences that trigger the negative self-talk. Try to prevent those experiences. Is one of your triggers seeing fitness models on social media making you feel like you’re not working out enough and need to change your body? Unfollow them like we discussed earlier. Give yourself some grace, you deserve it.
Body Checking
Body checking is gathering information about your size, shape, or appearance. Many of us check our appearance before leaving the house or going into a work meeting but body checking can be very triggering for bad food and body thoughts and can become problematic if it is obsessive. Here are some examples of body checking:
Frequent mirror checks
Poking or pinching parts of your body, especially parts you feel are flawed
Frequent scale use or measuring your body
Trying on clothes that don’t fit
Any way that you’re measuring or examining your body’s size or shape
There have also been a lot of body checking trends on social media (I will not mention here to avoid triggering content) so please beware! Make the time to ditch the measuring tape and stopping every time you see a mirror, you’re fabulous just the way you are!
If you feel that your body checking has become compulsive, is getting in the way of your day/life, is creating problems, or causing you to isolate, reach out to a trained therapist.
Try to spring clean at least one of these areas this season. If you’re really digging it, go for them all! The goal is to really curate and control your environment as much as you can because, let’s face it, there is so much of it out of our control. The more you surround yourself with normal bodies and lessen the chance that you’re faced with these triggers, the more able you will be able to work on accepting your body the way it is today.
Happy Spring!
-Ashley
