WELLNESS IS DIET CULTURE, NOT HEALTH
And I don’t want to be silent about it anymore.
It is well-documented that eating disorder cases have risen during the pandemic, but they’ve been costing governments billions for decades. Unsurprisingly, something else rose during the pandemic: Just how many people are willing to put their health at risk to fit into society’s thin ideal.
Wellness has become a $1.5T industry globally in everything from sleep, mindfulness, nutrition, fitness, and appearance to health. Social media is the fastest growing segment of diet culture, with an 8.5% market growth per year projected through 2027.
The industry wraps diet culture in aesthetic packaging to distract from its often non-medical health advice and promotion of restrictive behaviors.
Social media fitness boomed during COVID. For example, influencer Chloe Ting is paid $200k for each “ab-blasting” Youtube video she posts, and her estimated net worth is $3M. Her videos are one of thousands with slim-down, sexy, tight, toned, fat burn in their titles; all words that villainize other bodies and commodify thinness. Viral trends insinuate that smaller is superior, and their popularity indicates that the public agrees. In 2021, the what-I-eat-in-a-day hashtag garnered over 80M views for the top ten videos on Youtube combined. The posts feature unrealistically small portions of fruits, and vegetables which mimic orthorexia, an eating disorder where the sufferer obsesses over quality of food intake.
As a former athlete and anorexia survivor, I’ve always subscribed to this innate belief that thinness is better, that it made me worthy. I wasn’t alone in this: 42% of high school female athletes report eating disorder behaviors, which increases their injury risk eight-fold compared to their peers. Even worse, 91% of female collegiate athletes present symptoms, but only 25% compete on campuses with eating disorder management policies. Schools are failing to provide the resources and education needed to intervene.
That feeling of specialness is one of every eating disorder’s superpowers. It makes us feel powerful, limitless. That’s part of why we hesitate to seek help. We don’t want to lose the high, the invincibility, that using behaviors grants us. But starving didn’t make me special, it made me weak; afraid, lonely, and miserable.
And growing up in Gen Z, it was impossible to escape Instagram’s airbrushed selfies. Fitting in with my peers and popular culture gave me a perfect excuse to keep my eating disorder and avoid recovery.
Social media’s portrayal of the thin ideal is psychologically harmful. Meta’s whistleblower Frances Hagen proved that in October 2021. German research found 25% of eating disorder patients reported Pamela Reif, a 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and fitness influencer with 8.1M Youtube subscribers, had a significant impact on their eating disorder development.
Influencer content can even be illegal. The Texas Attorney General sued ex-fitness influencer Brittany Dawn (466K IG) in February 2022 for selling personalized weight loss plans after followers later reported malnutrition and eating disorders. Unsurprisingly, Dawn’s non-medical programs were not individualized for each client and promoted food restriction. She may have to pay up to $1M in penalties. In the U.S., it is illegal for non-Registered Dieticians (RD) to sell detailed meal plans. RDs must earn bachelors and masters degrees, pass a standardized exam, and have a state license to practice medical nutrition therapy, unlike social media influencers.
These wellness trends wouldn’t exist, however, if the public didn’t buy into them and the $1.5T industry. But cutting out entire categories of food, like carbs for keto and Atkins, is harmful for nutritional and metabolic health. Average dieters risk falling into serious and uncontrollable mental illnesses. Especially for the 53% of dieters who are already in the healthy weight category but are still attempting to lose weight.
Psychologists define disordered eating as purposefully ignoring physical and emotional cues for nourishment. Generally, if one’s intention to adopt a new exercise regime or eat differently is to change their body shape or size, it is disordered eating. All eating disorders include elements of disordered eating, but not all disordered eating is extreme enough to be classified as a mental illness. Across this spectrum of disordered eating behaviors and diagnosable eating disorders, it explains why disordered eaters make up an alarming 75% of the female population.
If these numbers seem shockingly high, I want to remind you of this: Our vocabulary has been replaced with I’m so bad, I’m such a pig when eating birthday cake or celebrating holidays with loved ones. These words betray the true meaning of food, a basic necessity to fuel our energy for a full life.
But food is also importantly synonymous with culture, tradition, and human connection, something I truly understand after living in NY, LA, Hong Kong, and Milan. Using words that assign morals to food, like bad and good, ultimately manipulates our behaviors and our cultural beliefs. If we eat junk we, ourselves, are bad. If we eat clean, we are good. This is why wellness is not health; it’s diet culture.
Disordered eating is not a female-only problem. Men statistically account for 8.7% of global eating disorders, according to an outdated 2003 study. But in the UK and Australia, men make up 25% and 38% of all eating disorder cases. It’s hard to know the true number because men face immense stigma and societal pressure to post their gains.
Influencer David Laid (1.8M IG) rose to fame for his plan “works” because he was very thin when he started bodybuilding. Sharing body measurements harmfully promotes unrealistic ideals and puts followers at risk of eating disorders like bigorexia. Formally muscle dysmorphia, bigorexia’s statistically male sufferers obsess over muscle gains with supplements, workouts, and disordered eating. Men and women alike use popular diet techniques like cutting and bulking, which involve under- and overeating to build muscle. To be clear, this is disordered eating behavior. Or for some, like myself, it's a full blown illness.
Even as I denied my own anorexia, I was acutely aware that someone I loved was battling muscle dysmorphia. This was one of the few times I understood how my loved ones must have felt watching me struggle. The overwhelming worry and helplessness, knowing that I couldn’t save them. And fearing that if I said something about my worry, they would push me away.
(Which is exactly what ended up happening). During my fight with anorexia, I also pushed away friends and loved ones who expressed their fears to me. Some forgave me when I chose recovery, but many didn’t. As hard as it is to watch someone struggle with an eating disorder, I’ve learned now that it’s essential to speak up.
Now that I’m in remission, I know it was not me who loved restriction and exercise’s toll on my body and mentality. My eating disorder loved it. And I am not my eating disorder. Nor am I only an athlete. I’m also a sister, voracious reader, long walk lover. It’s possible to start again. I had to recognize how diet culture has poisoned the way our culture views self worth in relation to food and body size. I had to heal from all the friends I lost after canceling plans to workout, or to skip meals and stay home alone. It would be remarkable to see what would happen if we channeled our resources into mental health care, education, and wellbeing instead of this toxic, so-called wellness.
