What’s Worse for Mental Health? Losing Five Pounds, or Buying All New Clothes?
Trigger warning. This post is about weight loss and dieting.
I put on a little bit of weight recently. After a recent injury, I was forced to stop exercising in order to heal. Add to the mix all the new foods I’ve added to my diet, like sugar and dairy, and it’s the perfect storm for gaining weight. The five extra pounds aren’t noticeable to anyone else, but my clothes tell me a different story. My pants are too tight, and some of my shirts are a tight, uncomfortable squeeze.
I’ve never struggled with weight, so I don’t usually pay attention to the number on the scale, or my clothing size. But I have struggled with slightly disordered eating in the past. I can look back on my orthorexic eating patterns and see how damaging they were to my mental health. So I have come to reject the diet industrial complex and the fake morality play of “bad” vs “good” foods that make you either a good person or a bad person.
Diet culture is damaging and I hate it. The phrase “clean eating” has done a lot of harm to a lot of people, inducing shame around eating normal foods that exist in the world, like cookies or chips. My goal with food is not to label anything with a value. Instead, I pay attention to the way foods make me feel, and avoid foods that make me feel bad.
