Just Eat It: Intuitive Eating and the Ghosts of Diets Past

I've been reading a book recently called Just Eat It: how intuitive eating can help you get your shit together around food, by Laura Thomas PhD. A few pages in, I wanted to recommend it to pretty much every woman I know. Occasionally by slapping them upside the head with it until they read it, though I'm told that's frowned upon.

I can't call this a book review, because a book review needs to be fairly analytic and I struggled to evaluate this book logically beyond AAAAARGH MY MIND IS BLOWN EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS. Let's call this a book discussion, instead, because boy, did some weird shit come up for me while I read this.

Firstly, I hadn't really realised that diet culture is insidious as fuck. Take a second look at the TV viewing you grew up with, after reading this book. Here's a snapshot from my developing years: Friends. Buffy. 90210. The OC. Ally McBeal. Farscape. Other than showing my age, I suddenly realised that according to these (admittedly enjoyable) shows, there's pretty much only one way to have a female body, unless you are an actual alien. Cast members from several of these shows admitted to suffering from eating disorders whilst filming. This was such a lightbulb moment for me - until fairly recently, the vast and incredible diversity of human bodies was literally nowhere in the media. (I'm also white, cis, straight-sized and able-bodied, so compared to a lot of folks I'm well-represented in mainstream media.) There is one single main body type held up as 'standard' or 'normal' for women - thus all other bodies are implied to be aberrational (see: the running joke in Friends about how Monica used to be fat).

This obviously struck several chords for me, as I had a bizarre, somewhat melancholy dream about being a crew member on the set of a TV show whose entire job consisted of lovingly framing the actresses' hipbones and making them look as thin as possible. Doy....

I also found myself remembering the ghosts of diets past with a weird nostalgic fondness. That buzz that comes from the hope that this time, the stars will align and you'll magically transform into the thin toned babe in the lycra booty shorts, swishing your hair on Miami Beach. Or something. The excitement, the anticipation of a new "wellness plan". That one diet book I followed (with the hideous subtitle of 'get skinnier than all your friends') where you consume nothing but black coffee till lunchtime, blow up balloons every day, and take an ice-cold bath every morning (I'm not kidding, I did this). 

The chapters on clean eating and concepts around 'processed' foods were fascinating to me as well. I almost... didn't want to accept the facts being presented to me. Part of me wanted to continue to believe that the right combination of chia seeds, spirulina, coconut water and kale would make me pure and clean and lovely and forever unhungry. How can so many Instagrammers be wrong?!

The reason I chose to buy this book at this time was that I have a bit of a pot belly going on at the moment. This was brought to my attention by several friends and family members getting excited about my 'good news' and asking when I was due.

At first I laughed this off - I'd spent a good portion of our holiday on a cider farm... maybe I was becoming one with the apples? - but after a while it started to get to me and I started considering a diet. I'm not really sure why. If diets worked, there wouldn't need to be a multibillion pound industry built around the concept. Also, been there, done that, hated it, would put the whole concept in a dustbin and set fire to it if I could. I own a t-shirt that says 'screw diet culture', for goodness' sake. But in a moment of self-consciousness and weakness, the urge was there.

Happily for me I bought this book instead.

Why does this relate to my blog about consumerism? Well. Sit ye down and I'll tell you a story about the hundreds and thousands of pounds I would not have spent if I hadn't believed for a decade and more that the way I naturally look is actually a problem. A problem that it is presented as being my duty, nay, my life's work to solve.

Times that amount of money by the number of women in my friendship group caught in the same trap. Times that amount of money by the number of people in the world caught in the same trap. How many years of your life have you spent fighting your own body? How many products have you bought to hide, flatter, disguise, slim, tone, lift, sculpt? How many uncomfortable garments have you tolerated because you believed in some dark recess of your mind that your body, not the badly made clothing, was the problem?

Diet culture is fucking poison. Don't swallow it.

I thought I knew my onions (sorry) about food and nutrition, but this book was a revelation. I've remembered how to listen to my body instead of the clock. I laugh in the face of food guilt. I take great pleasure in reminding myself 'nutrition is cumulative!' when that stupid little voice in the back of my head starts chuntering away about my food.

If you've ever felt guilty about eating a doughnut, seriously, read this book.