1. Why it's not your fault that you're a serial dieter

We spend so much of our lives yo-yo dieting. Diet, lose weight, stop, gain weight.... over and over..... but it's not your fault. Find out why it's not your fault, what happened when I did an experiment to see how many times diet culture pops up in a week and what Monica from Friends would say if she could hear me.

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Transcript

Hi, I'm Terri and this is the Life Bite podcast. I'm going to be talking all things intuitive eating, body positivity and health at every size and shaking off weight stigma, diet culture and food rules, so that we can all have a better relationship with food and our bodies. 
 
 

Hello Hello. Episode one of a brand new podcast. How exciting is this? Episode one. Welcome. Welcome to the Life Bite, Intuitive Eating and Body Positivity podcast. 
 
 

I hope you're as excited as I am. I'm so looking forward to just chatting about eating and getting rid of food rules and ditching diets and getting stuck into making yourself feel more body confident and knowing that you've got a value and a place in the world no matter what shape and size you are. I'm so looking forward to getting going and talking about this stuff. 
 
 

It is mostly going to be me sat here in my house and chatting away to you all by myself and so feel free to message me. Email me. I'm on Facebook and I'm on Instagram. So you can drop me a message over there if you've got anything to say. Love to hear from you. Makes me feel like I'm not just talking to myself then and, yeah, let's get into it. 
 
 

So this is real life, and I am sat at home, so there might be background noise, there might be stuff going on outside. The cats might scratch at the door. I have a baby kitten. She is quite needy to say the least, and she wants to be where I am. So every now and again she'll scramble up onto me or she'll claw at the door or yeah, she's lovely though. She is lovely. 
 
 

I don't know if you've listened to the trailer, but if you haven't, just to reassure you that there's not going to be any talk about numbers, no talk about scales and weights and measurements and calories and things like that. So we might discuss the overall topic, but we'll never put numbers to it. So you should be in a trigger free zone, hopefully, but discretion is advised. If you have an eating disorder currently just listen at your own discretion. 
 
 

And I'm not going to be having any foul language. I want this to be a podcast that everybody can listen to so the most you'll get out of me is a bloody or a crap, I would imagine. Yeah, there won't be any swearing, so this is safe if you want it on while you're pottering around the house, if you're in the car on your way to work with the kids, to drop them off to school. If you're at work, yeah, it's a it's a swear free zone on the whole. 
 
 

Should we get going? What's happened? What's happened in life this week? So shops are back open, lockdown is done pretty much and the shops are now opening. So I had a little trip into town yesterday to go for a bra fitting. That has been long overdue. Long, long, long overdue and I cannot tell you how good it feels to be wearing the correct size underwear. I was a little bit wary of how it was going to be because obviously we're still social distancing and all of that so I wasn't sure how it was going to work, but I went to Marks and Spencer's and they were amazing. The sales assistant was amazing. They've got really good, really good precautions in place, really good social distancing and organized really well, so yeah, go get it done if you are overdue a bra fitting. If you're not wearing the correct size underwear, go get it done. It's very important for the health of your breasts. Public service announcement over. 
 
 

Was nice though. It was nice to go to town. It was nice to go and wander around for a bit and, yeah, wander around in the sunshine in a way that is relatively normal. It's good. We're quite lucky here because COVID levels are really low here. But yeah, it was nice. It feels like a bit of normality is coming our way. Can't wait. And also it's sunny and who doesn't like a bit of a wander around when it's sunny? 
 
 

I did go to Debenhams as well. Unfortunately our Debenhams is closing down, so they've got a big sale on. Urgh, it's just a little bit like TK Maxx at the moment though it is. Just a jumble sale. I can't bear TK Max. I'm sure they've got some great stuff. I'm sorry, TK Maxx. This is nothing against you. People obviously love you, but I do not. I cannot do it. I just want to go into a shop, look at what's there, easily pick out my size and go. I just can't do that in Debenhams now, but they did have some great. Bits and pieces on the shelves. I've got some new pajamas and things like that. So yeah, all good. Well, pajama, bottoms because what happens with me is my top half and my bottom half are not the same size, so I have to buy separates. But there you go. That's a conversation for another day, isn't it? 
 
 

What I did want to talk about today for this very first special podcast is, why it's not your fault that you are a serial dieter. So by serial dieter I mean a yoyo-er. You do a diet, you lose some weight. You stopped dieting. You put the weight back on. So you go back to your diet, or you try a different diet and you lose some weight. All is well with the world. And then you stop and you put that weight back on. And over time it becomes harder and harder to lose the weight, and easier and easier to gain the weight, and it's an absolute nightmare circle. 
 
 

But it's not your fault. It's not your fault that you are in that loop. So there is a saying, no, not a saying. There is a quote from Seth, Godin, Godin. I think it's Godin. And he said "facts are irrelevant, What matters is what the consumer believes". And that quote speaks volumes to me because it nicely packages up diet and beauty culture perfectly, because it doesn't matter what the truth is, it just matters what the advertisers make you believe is the truth. 
 
 

And it doesn't matter what you really look or feel like, just what you think you look like and how much of it you think you need to change. And I know that diet culture is all around us, but I'm not sure that people who aren't immersed in it day in, day out, like I am, would realise how bad it is. 
 
 

It's kind of my thing to know this and to see it and to help you to see it through my posts and things. But I am aware that not everybody is working in the field and you might not see it for what it is. So I did a little experiment. I thought for a week I would keep a note of every time that I saw or I heard anything diet culturey. Yes, that is a word, and if it's not a word, I've just made it a word. And I know that you hear Monica in your head. That's not even a word. That's also not a very good impression. 
 
 

But yeah, i thought I'd see. I'd keep a note of everything that I heard that was related to diets and beauty standards and things like that and see how it looked at the end of the week. And I was, even I was, surprised at how often dieting and body image came up, both in the media and in general conversation. 
 
 

So here is my list. Are you ready for this? You might be shocked because it started really early in the day. It started with the breakfast TV doctor talking about losing weight. So if you are in the UK, I'm sure you know what that TV doctor is. Who that TV doctor is. He's on TV quite regularly and actually he quite regularly drops into conversation about the impacts of weight on health. Another morning, breakfast TV presenters were busy talking about the weight that they had gained, and that the nation had gained. And did you realise that a diet club actually sponsors morning TV on one channel? Weight Watchers actually sponsors a whole morning TV programme so even if they don't discuss it on the program they're still talking about it. So every time you go in and out of an ad break there it is. Filtering into your subconscious. 
 
 

What else? So there were numerous social media posts. Every time I logged on to Instagram or Facebook, there it was talking about the ways I could improve myself. There were too many to count, really. I stopped counting, I started keeping a record of them, and then I decided it was way too much and I stopped. 
 
 

1 radio host joked about his own weight. I can't remember the exact joke now, but he made some joke about the way he looked and the weight that he was carrying now, and I don't know if he meant it or not, but I suspect that there is an element of him that did. And either way, self deprecating jokes are not good for you. They're so not good for you. I mean, you wouldn't talk to your friend like that, so why talk to yourself like that? 
 
 

Social media adverts were all around my news feeds. They were all over social media. They were on the websites. You know, you get the sponsored ads and things. Loads of ads in there for things like that. 
 
 

And in a shop that I went to, there were magazines on a rack where I queued and they were all busy commenting on celebrities, bodies and what the best diets are for coming out of lockdown. The healthy meal plans that they were supplying. Beauty secrets. Honestly, those magazines are the worst. Please stop buying them because they do absolutely nothing for your self esteem. And actually. I think it's not OK to support a publication that is willing to tear down celebrities for the way they look. And it's it's not OK. We shouldn't treat people like that week. 
 
 

Sadly, a celebrity died after losing her battle with an eating disorder. Poor Nikki Graham. Bless her. So she had an eating disorder that she battled with for years and years, and then when lockdown happened, she, it just, it just emphasized the whole eating disorder, and at the end of the day, she didn't think that she was thin enough and it sadly got the better of her. 
 
 

Colleagues around me at work talking about their weight and why they shouldn't eat something and the diets that they're on. Friends around me talking about their weight and the diets that they're on. And that's not a criticism or towards my friends and my colleagues. This is just natural, normal conversation now. Other friends of mine promoting diet products and the financial gains that they get from selling it. 
 
 

On TV, if you notice, people are cast with TV shows generally are more slimmer and more glamorous than your average person on the street. If you take Hollyoaks, for example, I think Hollyoaks is designed to make people look more glamorous than your average soap. So if you compare something like Coronation Street to Hollyoaks, Coronation Street I think represents normal people much better than Hollyoaks does because when you look at the cast in Hollyoaks they are very much more the ideal beauty standard. The ideal of what people aspire to be. 
 
 

So that's just a soap. That's just a drama. There are obviously lots of examples of TV shows that don't do it, but on the whole, when people are trying to glamorize their TV shows, they hire the thin, the blonde, the tall, the tall, dark and handsome man, you know. Have a little look at that. You might be surprised at what you see on the TV now. 
 
 

And jokes on birthday cards. Have you ever noticed how many of them refer to dieting and weight and the negative connotations around aging and what it does to your body and what it does to your skin, your weight. I mean, I know they're designed to be funny. I personally don't find them funny. I don't know about you, but I don't find jokes about age funny. I just think it's a bit, I think it's a bit old school now. Come up with something better card makers. 
 
 

Anyway, these are just the things that I spotted, so never mind the stuff that I didn't pick up on. The stuff that I missed because I was too busy working or dealing with stuff at home or cooking or you know, whatever. But this is all being drip fed into our subconscious without us even knowing it. So with all of that going on, is it really any wonder that we constantly question ourselves and that we question the way that we look? And we question our weight and whether our clothes look right and what size clothes are we in. And we question our hair and our makeup and what people will think when we enter a room. 
 
 

And I eat, sleep and breathe this stuff, and even I was second guessing the impact of my weight this week. So I've had some health issues. I'll go into that another time. That's another subject for another podcast, but even I was questioning whether my weight was to blame for some of the symptoms that I was having. And I know better, and I know the truth behind how weight affects health, so if I'm doubting myself, it is no wonder that people who don't know about the damage that dieting causes and the impact of white on health, it's no wonder that those people don't stand a chance. 
 
 

And when it comes to advertising, companies are spending millions of pounds getting us to buy their product, and they just wouldn't do that if it didn't work. So go back to that quote and tell me that the advertising doesn't intentionally make us feel bad about ourselves in order to sell products. And you can't, because you see it and you hear it and you feel it. You know when you see something on TV, that on a TV ad that makes you want to buy something to make your skin less wrinkled, or you see holiday companies advertising women in bikinis on the beach having a great time and you're like, i'd better do something about that before I go on holiday. You know, it's all natural thoughts that we get. 
 
 

But that's what advertising does. It makes you see things and think that that's what you need to be. It makes you feel bad about yourself. Interesting, isn't it? Like, it's rubbish, but it's interesting as well. It's interesting. And these companies, they all play on the mind and the psychology of how we feel about ourselves. 
 
 

Principle one of intuitive eating is rejecting the diet mentality. So seeing all these things around us and understanding the impact that it's having on our lives and looking at ways to put that aside so that you can have a more normal relationship with food. And looking at that list, it's no surprise that this is the hardest principle for a lot of people to get through. It takes the longest time because while you're trying to shake off all the diet stuff around you also have more of it being drip fed into you.It makes me really angry, makes me so angry, because people struggle with their body image and their self-confidence because they're constantly being told that they're not good enough. 
 
 

Like poor Nicki, poor Nikki Graham. She didn't think she was good enough. She was constantly hearing all these things, seeing all these things, and it was tapping into her eating disorder and she sadly lost her life. Why can't we just accept that being thinner or lighter is not the be all and end all? You can be healthy without trying to live up to some companies beauty standards. You can be healthy at a bigger weight. You can be valued. You do have a place in the world at whatever size you are. You are a valuable person and you shouldn't have to be thinner or lighter or a certain shape or size in order to feel like that is so. 
 
 

What was refreshing though, was that I did hear a conversation between a couple of people who were talking about food and weight loss, and what they were eating and how much they were cutting back in order to try and lose some weight. And people in that conversation were actually telling these other people that weight loss is not the answer to better health, that it's about what you eat, not how much you eat. And it's about your overall diet and your overall physical movement and things like that matter to your health, not the weight on the scales. And that was a really good, sensible conversation. It wasn't instantly dismissed, which was amazing. 
 
 

So keep spreading the message and keep telling people that they are wonderful as they are because people are listening. I think the body positivity and the health of every size movement is coming on in leaps and bounds and the more people listen and the more people hear the truth and the more people see what they don't need to be, better and healthier we will all be. 
 
 

So there endeth the lesson for today. Yeah, there's loads to be said on it. I know there's loads and loads. You will probably come up with a whole heap of other things that you see in here around you that is telling you how you should or shouldn't be? I really hope actually, that if you've listened to this and you weren't seeing it before, that you start to spot these things now and you can start to kind of push them aside a bit and feel better about yourself and not feel pressured to look or be a certain way. 
 
 

I will leave it there for today. Before I go, just a little cheeky request. I would love you to come and follow me on Facebook and on Instagram. I am posting regularly. I'm putting loads of little messages out there, just quick things for you to read and to see that will help you to get deeper into body positivity and intuitive eating and I'd love you to come and join me. So on Instagram I'm at Life Bite Nutrition, and on Facebook, the Facebook group is life bite Intuitive eating and body positivity group. So come and find me. Come join the group. The Facebook group's really small at the moment because it's brand new, so come join that and yeah, give me a follow on Instagram. 
 
 

That is it for now. I will speak to you next week. I'm going to try and keep these podcasts weekly and yeah, give you a little something to listen to every week. Thanks for listening. I can't wait to see where this goes. Drop me a message. You've got any questions? Got any comments, Just drop me a message. But have a great week. Enjoy the Sun. I'll speak to you soon.