Blaming diet culture felt like power. It kept me trapped in the same place.
Read time: 4 min.
She was telling me about the airplane seat.
It was our second coaching session. She had just returned from a trip. To be comfortable in her seat, she had upgraded to business class. As she told the story, the anger came with it. At the airline. At seats built for smaller bodies. At a world that had never been designed with her in mind.
She had read the books. Listened to the podcasts. She could name every principle of intuitive eating and explain weight stigma research with precision.
And yet she was still not at peace.
I felt the goosebumps move up my arms. That happens sometimes when I need to pay attention to what is being said.
She was telling my story.
The book I never intended to read
In 2014 a client told me she was reading a book about being healthy at any size. I disregarded the idea.
A few weeks later another client gave me a book for my birthday: Health At Every Size by Lindo Bacon. I put it away lost among all my other books, never intending to read it.
But then just a few days later a third client saw the book in the library behind my desk and told me she had heard about it and intended to read it.
Not a coincidence anymore. So I decided to read it.
I discovered the word diet culture. I learned about Health At Every Size. I started to understand how completely I had been indoctrinated. By marketing. By medicine. By my mother who sent me to Weight Watchers at twelve years old.
And I became deeply angry.
At the weight loss industry. At the personal trainer who injured my body telling me to work out twice a day to lose weight faster. At every doctor who handed me a diet as a treatment. At a society that had spent decades telling women like me we needed to become smaller to deserve a place in it. At the teacher who had trained me to provide diet culture in my own practice.
The anger felt like power.
But it kept me stuck.
Although I understood every principle intellectually, I still could not get to the end point. Not to eating without chaos. Not to looking at my body without disgust.
The loop I could not get out of
From 2014 to 2016 I kept trying.
I'd bring chips into the house to make peace with food and eat the entire bag. Over and over and over again.
I became unbothered about my body. I didn't care for it. I avoided it.
What I didn't understand yet was this: the power that emerges from blaming is not the same as the one that emerges from taking responsibility.
I was so focused on being angry at the system and those who had put these diet culture thoughts in my mind that I never asked why I kept thinking them. Yes, diet culture had indoctrinated me. Those beliefs were installed before I was old enough to question them.
But I was forty years old. And I was the one continuing to think those thoughts in my own mind.
The system that had harmed me was not coming to apologize. And even if it did, that remorse would not have done the work inside my body.
Only I could do that.
The distinction that changed everything
Taking responsibility is not the same as placing blame. That distinction took me a long time to understand.
Blame says: you did this to me and I am its consequence.
Responsibility says: yes, diet culture got me here. And I am the only one who can choose what happens next.
My client was not wrong to be angry. The anger was righteous. The airplane seats are too small. The world is hostile to her body. Weight stigma is real and causes real harm.
And she was also keeping herself trapped inside the very unpleasant emotional experience of it. Over and over again.
Both things were true.
What the goosebumps were telling me
The goosebumps that day were recognition.
I had sat exactly where she was sitting. Righteous and stuck. Educated and still suffering. Waiting to be freed by the same system that had imprisoned me.
Peace, acceptance and freedom did not come from blaming diet culture and staying angry.
It came the day I took responsibility for the angry diet culture thoughts I kept thinking in my own mind.
The bottom line
Anger at diet culture is righteous. The harm is real. The socialization of women is real. Nobody is arguing otherwise.
But anger will not get you to peace with food. It will not get you to peace with your body. I know because I stayed angry for years and stayed stuck in the same place.
The shift came when I stopped blaming the system and started asking how I wanted to experience my life going forward. Not because diet culture deserved to be let off the hook. Because I deserved to be free.
Taking responsibility is not the same as placing blame. It is about claiming power over what you can control. Yourself.
So here is the question I want to leave you with: where in your own life are you still blaming diet culture instead of taking responsibility for your experience of it?
