Statistics may vary to the exact % but one thing is clear: most women are dissatisfied with their body.

Research released by Dove, for their ‘Self-Esteem Project’, found that 96% of women in the UK reported feeling anxious about the way they look, compared with 86% in China, 72% in Brazil, and 61% in the US. Only 4% of the women in all the countries surveyed would consider themselves ‘beautiful’, and by the time girls reach 17, 78% will be ‘unhappy with their bodies’.

Women don’t diet because they enjoy dieting. Women who diet do it because they think they have to. These women think they are their body, thus,  their bodies’ ability to meet the diet culture expectations define their worth.

Helping women leave and recover from diet culture is a feminist issue.

Why a non-diet approach for women?

Feminism and diet culture

The intersection between diet culture & women history

Women socialization to diet culture

Women internalization of diet culture

Dieting is a feminist issue

Women empowerment

Non-diet Approach for women Professional Training

Non-diet Approach for women mentorship

If you would like to listen to the article in audio format the Going Beyond The Food Show – Pro Series Season 1 Episode 6

Links mentioned in the episode…

Mentorship Program

Free Intake Forms

Free Training & resources

Undiet Your Coaching Podcast

feminism and diet culture

Why a non-diet approach for women?

When women first seek to stop dieting, they think they need to “fix” their “food issue”.  After years of dieting they’ve been told in many different ways that the issue was them, not the food. That if they could eat “normally” they would finally achieve their “normal body”. Sounds familiar?

It’s normal that your future client thinks like this… that’s all they’ve ever known. They’ve spent their life wondering why they struggle with food and if they could only “fix what’s wrong with them and food,” life would unlock their dreams.

The truth is: they have no issues with food. In fact, as we discovered in S1 EP 1 Intuitive eating Mentorship – First do no harm for us, as practitioners, to validate their thoughts about food and them being the issue can cause more harm. The way they engage with food now is the result of the restriction of dieting. Dieting is the issue not food. But why do your clients diet? As we’ve learned in the last episode: fatphobia: the fear of fatness.

A weight-neutral approach to health

The non-diet approach helps clients stop dieting, make peace with food and body image. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health that helps people reconnect to their innate power and become their own expert at their bodies.

Although the non-diet approach is gender-neutral, I believe that a segment of the healing approach should address the specific forces pulling at each gender/ sex: Cis-women, Cis-men, Trans, Genderqueer, non-binary, etc… I believe that each gender should have non-diet professionals that understand the specificities and struggle for each group for the best care.

The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is for people that identify as women. I created this methodology based on my experience as a cis-woman over the last 45 years. As a person in a women’s body who has been exposed to the force of patriarchy and its attempt to control me as a woman and my body.

feminism and diet culture

Feminism & diet culture

First, let’s take a step back and understand patriarchy. Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, and control of properties. Patriarchy views men as dominant and women as submissive.

One of the many ways in which patriarchy attempts to dominate women is by exerted forces that dictate how women handle their bodies: reproduction, sexuality, beauty, and yes, body size and shape.

Most recently over the last 100 years, Diet Culture has become the cultural form of oppression on women’s bodies. Diet culture judges women’s worth based on their physical body size and looks. It assigns moral values to the ability of women to meet up with their standards.

The diet culture keeps women focusing on their bodies. Dieting keeps women distracted on food, exercise, and trying harder at restricting instead of using their innate resources to achieving much more important things in their life. Given that the tools proposed to women to achieve their “ideal body according to patriarchy” doesn’t work, it keeps women thinking they are the problem and not the diet. Women keep doubting themselves, their abilities, their capacities, and their obsession with trying to make up for what they are told are a personal failure to achieve the “good enough body”.

It is my belief as a health professional that women must understand why they “chase” a smaller body to their healing and recovery. For women, to truly liberate themselves from diet culture and its chain, they must know why society created it in the first place.

The intersection between diet culture & women history

If you look through history, their beauty or body didn’t always control women. Instead, their ability to procreate and religion controlled women. It’s not until recently that women’s bodies became the center of attention.

The mid 19^th century

The feminist movement was beginning to form as women gain access to education. Women involved themselves in the abolition movement and women continued asking for their own political power. As women become more vocal and demanding more power, patriarchy responded with pressure on women’s bodies to be smaller.

feminism and diet culture

The Gibson Girl

The Gibson Girl was born in 1880. This was the personification of the feminine ideal of physical attractiveness as portrayed by male artist Charles Dana Gibson. This body female ideal was heavily promoted and published via the new magazine and printing industry. So, ensure product advertisement ways to look like Gibson’s girl: beauty products, pills, cream, arsenic pills, etc…Diet culture was born. This period also introduced ready-made clothes and women needed to “fit” clothes when up to then clothes were made to fit women.

feminism and diet culture

The Flapper girl

As the suffragette movement began to gain the right to vote in many countries, the Flapper girl was born. Women became “liberated” from the Gibson girl corset only to find themselves binding their natural feminine curve into the linear look of the 1920’s. Thinness was a sign of “perceived freedom” for women. This solidified the diet culture.

feminism and diet culture

Twiggy

With every gain in socio-economic power, women gained a smaller and smaller body ideal. Whereas the first-wave feminism in the early 90’s focused mainly on suffrage and political power, the second-wave feminism that began in the late 1960’s was focused on equality issues. That’s when Twiggy became the first supermodel; willowy, thin, adolescent physique.

feminism and diet culture

The 80’s

In the 80’s as women affirmed their new equality, came the low-calories, low-fat, and aerobic era with Jane Fonda as the leader. Calories counting began and this is when women became obsessed with dieting.

feminism and diet culture

And it continues up to today. The 90’s saw Kate Moss as the body ideal for all women. With an even smaller body than Twiggy, women’s ideal was body waifish, extremely thin described as “Heroin Chic”.  The ’00s saw the Victoria Secret angels, and today we have the influencer healthy body ideal throne by the Kardashian.

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one”

– Naomi Wolfe

Women socialization to diet culture

Socialization is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. It may lead to a desirable outcome and in certain aspects of life ensure our survival.

Socialization to diet culture and female body ideal happens at a very young for women. When were you gifted your first Barbie?

Among many societal behaviors, Their body, their beauty, and being a “good girl” defined women. Society conditioned women to please using their bodies. While society defined boys to be strong, intelligent, and non-emotional.

Most women who diet chronically today encountered their first diet in their early teens. They first observed their female caregiver being “dissatisfied” with their body and dieting. As these women entered their puberty and began awakening to being attractive, they engage with their first diet. Worse, some women experienced diet before the age of 10 as their parents wanted to prevent the “shame” of being in a non-conventional body.

feminism and diet culture

Women internalization of diet culture

The process of internalization pertains to the person’s acceptance of a set of norms and values established by others and learned through socialization.

Women internalized diet culture in their teens leading to adulthood. This is when of having to please, as a woman, using among other things our body moves from outside of our own mind to being part of our own mind. At that point, diet culture has shaped who we are as a woman.

As we discussed in a previous article Non-diet Approach: Addressing the root cause, fatphobia is at the root as to why women diet. The process of diet culture internalization leads women to be fatphobic. They fear of being fat. They fear others judging their body as a fat body. It’s said that women fear weight gain more than illness.

Women’s fear of being in a non-confirming body is validated daily. Hundreds, if not thousands of times, marketing images and words, social media, conversation with other women, medical treatment, the beauty industry, etc… remind women that they should fear to be in a non-thin ideal body.

To cope with this constant pressure, women adapt. Diet Brain is a term I coined that best expresses how women adapt to diet culture socialization and internalization. To adapt, women become people-pleasers, we expect perfection for ourselves in the hope to offset our inability to be in a confirming body ideal. While the solution to achieve this thin ideal, “dieting” has a 91-95% failure rate, we blame ourselves for it not working so we adopt an “All or nothing” mindset when it comes to food and health.

This adaptation process is unique to people identifying as women and is the reason why Non-Diet Coaching Certification is essential for health professionals helping women recover from diet culture.

“Your dislike of yourself is a side effect of the POISON you are being fed. None of this messaging is real. Your inner bully has learned the lies society fed it, and is giving you fake news about your looks, your value, your worth, your right to be happy. I’m so sorry you have to deal with this crap. Diet Culture is just making you hate yourself for a profit”

– Naomie Wolfe

Dieting is a feminist issue

Opting out of diet culture as a woman is more than simply stopping dieting.  It’s a feminist act. When we stop buying into the diet culture definition of what being a woman is, we reclaim our power back. We say no to being our bodies. We say yes to trusting and respecting ourselves first.

Helping women recover from the diet culture must include the education to how we got to be where we are today as women. That we were capable to feed ourselves, to care for ourselves, and to be more than our bodies. The socialization and internalization of diet culture are what created the beliefs that lead us to dieting and trying to fit in using our own body against ourselves.

One of the paths to reclaim our power from the diet culture can be with intuitive eating. Using our source of shame, that is food, can actually rebuild a relationship of trust and respect towards our own selves. As we reconnect to our innate body wisdom, we get to witness the power that is within us.

As we build confidence in our innate capacity to feed ourselves, we can continue to use diet culture source of shame to regain our power as women. Healing our body image and crafting a new way to be in our human body shell is not only necessary but very empowering.

“If your self-esteem is dependent on external result, you have given all your happiness and agency away. It’s an exhausting, and powerless way to live.”

Women empowerment

Individual autonomy is this idea that refers to the capacity to be one’s own person, to live one’s life according to reasons and motives as one’s own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces.

Leaving the jail of diet culture is a revolutionary act for women to not only be autonomous but to claim their power back from a patriarchal society that suppressed our empowerment.

In today’s society, the greatest punishment is to take away people’s autonomy and freedom by sending them to jail. Diet culture has taken women’s autonomy and freedom. Diet culture robs women of the capacity to be in their now body, to feed themselves naturally, to wear clothes they desire, to decide their own beauty standards, etc…

Helping women recover from diet culture is truly about empowering women to live their full life today… unconditionally. Choosing to accept your body is hard but doing hard “things” is what builds confidence in women… not body size. Saying ‘no’ to outside control and ‘yes’ to inner power is what builds self-esteem in women, not beauty.

Non-diet Approach for women Training

The non-diet approach is the exact opposite of dieting. It’s a weight-neutral approach to health and nutrition that empowers women to become the expert of their own body. That shifts women from being their body to supporting their body so they can live their full life… right now!

The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is our proprietary methodology that helps women to recover from diet culture and learn the non-diet way of life. Firstly, our 4 pillars are Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality. Secondly, our framework is composed of 5 steps process: Intuitive Eating, Body Neutrality, Self-Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, and Mindfulness.

You can learn and transform your life with the Going Beyond The Food Method with our two signature program.

Undiet Your Life Program was created for women to learn self-coaching, a powerful mindset self-coaching tool to unlearn diet culture & patriarchy socialization along side with Intuitive Eating and Body Neutrality.

Non-Diet Coaching Certification was created for providers and coaches wanting to deliver the Non-Diet Approach in their practice following the Going Beyond The Food Method.

Want to know if the Non-Diet Approach and The Going Beyond The Food Method can be of support to you? Get my starter pack and complete the three assessment: eating, body image and mindset.

You can also listen to our non-diet podcast.

Non-Diet Approach Certification program

The Going Beyond The Food non-diet coaching certification program is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best non-diet professional. It’s a program that will refine your non-diet professional skills set to empower women and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women.

It helps you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.

Me: “… but I need to lose weight”.

Her: “Ok… I can see how you can think that.”

Me: “Everything you are sharing with me makes so much sense and I can feel it inside of me, that it’s what I need [pause & sigh]… but I need to lose weight”.

The tears started to roll off my cheeks. Uncontrollably crying. The tears were coming from the depth of my gut. It was one of those moments when you want to stop crying because you really don’t want to cry in front of strangers but you can’t… it’s not in your control.

Her: “Stephanie, your desires to lose weight are valid. It’s normal that you want to lose weight. The society in which we live, an environment that is full of weight stigma, body size discrimination, and fatphobia encourages these desires every day. It makes perfect sense that you want to lose weight.”

I was deeply confused.

But I need to lose weight…

I was 38 years old and the last 25 years of my personal life had been a series of pressing “pause” and “play”.  I only allowed myself to “play” my personal life when I was at a weight that others recognized to be ok. If I was gaining weight or not working hard to lose the “abnormal excess weight”, my personal life was on “pause”.

Her: “So, let’s work through this, Stephanie. Why do you want to lose weight? What do you feel will happen when you lose weight?”

Me: “ Uhhh….. “

No one ever asked me this question. I never asked myself this question either. My brain was stumped… blank.

Her: “It’s normal that you don’t know how to answer this question. You likely never thought of the desire to lose weight as optional therefore never considered why you desired it.”

She was right. At that point, it had been 27 years. Since my teens, I had lived on and off diets always chasing “another body”. My happiness was conditional to the way my body looked. Even when my body looked “ok”, it was such a battle to keep it up that I didn’t have the mental space or time to fully enjoy my now “allowed happy life”.

Me: “I guess you’re right...”

Her: “Until we see each other again, I want you to ask yourself these questions: Where is the desire to lose weight coming from? What do you feel will happen if you lose weight? Will you be treated differently? Will you feel beautiful? Worthy? Healthy? “

As a good perfectionist, I did my homework.

I had so many Ah Ah moments… so many realizations. It took me a while to fully accept what these questions forced me to see: As a strong, independent & feminist woman, I had given away my power.

The last time I lost weight: 2008 Stephanie and 2010 Stephanie

My power was in my body size

The way others view my body affected my capacity to be myself. My power was in my body… size. Over time, I had acquired a deep sense that “I wasn’t good enough” so nearly everything I did was serving the purpose of proving to the world that I was enough even though my body wasn’t.

It was hard to prove my worth all the time. I had to strive for perfection, be sure to make choices that would appease and please others around me not to give them another reason to reject me beyond my body.

I was working so hard that my health had collapsed 2 years earlier. It was the time that I was trying to feel better, be healthier but nothing was working, not even… weight loss.  I had spent a lot of $$$$ with many health professionals trying to “find and fix” my weight loss resistance without success. My body didn’t want to collaborate anymore… no matter how hard I worked: nothing.

Love versus fear

“Maybe it’s time for another approach…” That’s what my very expensive functional medicine doctor told me after doing all the tests and protocols possible. She said to me, “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with your body… what if you try to love it?”.

To be honest, I was pissed when she said this. I invested a lot on her. “Loving my body? WTF… that’s not a solution.” It took me time to accept these words and gave it a try. But I did.

By now, you might have guessed HER was a professional I was seeing to teach me how to “love my body”. When I sat and reflected on the questions, she had left me with after our first appointment, I realized that I was living in fear.

Fear of not being good enough, being rejected, not being loved, not being promoted at work, not being healthy and live a long life, …. I was powerless in the face of my body.

The journey back to my power

The hard truth was that patriarchal social conditioning had kept me very busy dieting and chasing after the false currency of beauty instead of chasing my dreams. Diet Culture taught me how being consumed by the fear of my body not being “thin’ enough was the way to be a woman… and that indoctrination kept me quiet, and most importantly, conform to patriarchy.

For 27 years, I had fully embraced the lie that my power as a woman was in the looks of my physical body. That lie was the real reason why I was struggling, anxious, and secretly depressed.

Her: “So now you are ready to do the work, sister?”

Me: “ F*ck yesss… let’s do this!”.

The journey to Undiet My Life

The first layover was to unlearn diet culture and patriarchal thoughts & beliefs that had lead me to dieting for 25 years! All that societal conditioning was showing up in my negative self-talk. What I now call Diet Brain had to be reprogrammed.

From there, I was able to conquer my beliefs around food and let my innate power guide my food choices instead of some “weight loss guru” tell me what my body needed. My body and I are smart enough to know what to eat.

The most powerful part of the journey was becoming emotionally intelligent. I had to shift from being the victim of my emotions to using my emotions as a source of information to make the best possible choice for ME. That’s how anxiety and depression left and confidence and compassion came into my life.

That led me to thrive in my relationship with my body. What I sought in my life was no longer the outcome of my body’s look… that gave me freedom. I could care for myself unconditionally and beyond dieting which is the key to bringing back my health.

I now have a relationship of trust and respect with my body. My female body wisdom is my power. I love myself, care for myself, and I thrive in my relationship with myself.

I found my power. The power to live my life now. I gave myself the permission to be enough unconditionally to what my body looks like or weight.

That’s my true power.

Are you ready to do YOUR work? If so I’d love to be your guide and support

Stephanie

What is Body Neutrality and how is body neutrality going to help me ? That one of the most frequent question from client inquiring to work with us. before I answer this let’s consider the following statistics…

In Glamour Magazine study found that 97% of women are “cruel to their bodies” every day.

Research released by Dove, for their ‘Self-Esteem Project’, found that 96% of women in the UK reported feeling anxious about the way they look, compared with 86% in China, 72% in Brazil and 61% in the US. Only 4% of the women in all the countries surveyed would consider themselves ‘beautiful’, and by the time girls reach 17, 78% will be ‘unhappy with their bodies’.

In fact, current media ideals are achievable by less than 5% of the population – and that’s only if we’re thinking about weight and size. When we add shape, face, muscle tone etc into the messed-up mix, it’s probably going to be around 1%. 1 percent

Are you a statistic?

I was for years until I discover Body Neutrality.

That’s a question I receive very frequently… we are somewhat used to term body positivity but body neutrality not so much.

What is body neutrality?

What is body neutrality?

Body Neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself.

Its focus is to avoid self-hate while simultaneously reliving you from the pressure of having to love your body.

The goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.

Body Neutrality recognizes that not everyone is going to love every part of themselves all the time because that’s  an unrealistic expectation to say the least.

The reality is that some days you’re going to look in the mirror like ‘Dam it, yeah, thank you legs for letting me travel, thank you arms for allowing me to type this inspirational post and thank you belly for creating life!

And then there’ll be those days where you stand in front of the very same mirror, focusing on that cellulite you hate or the wrinkle that suddenly seems so obvious.

Body neutrality versus body positivity

Embracing Body Neutrality over Body Positivity allows you to experience negative feelings about yourself, but without the pressure that comes with having to be positive all the time.

In other words, it’s a middle ground between positivity and negativity (shaming) – that’s neutrality.

Body Neutrality is the safe bridge between body shaming and body positivity. It’s about being grateful for your body and everything that it does for you because it does a lot. You are alive right now right!

So Body Neutrality is centric to the process of accepting your body.

Body neutrality & intuitive Eating

For many of us we’ve have years of suffering thru body shaming and along the way we’ve picked up coping behaviours to neutralize the pain the pain associated with body image struggles.

Being the victim of body shaming, most of it from our own mind, is difficult to say the list so now wonder that many of us have become along the way emotional eater or binge eater.

Combine the suffering that comes along with body shaming with the notion that food is the gateway to “loving our life and body” food has become this enemy that we need to control in order to end the suffering.

Healing our relationship to food is necessary in order to make peace with our body. Intuitive eating is the way in which you can achieve both: body neutrality and peace with food.

Intuitive eating teaches to respect your body.

Intuitive eating teaches to respect your innate body messages such as hunger and fullness so you can have a healthy and respectful relationship with your body.

What is intuitive eating?

Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that makes YOU the boss of YOU.

Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.

Get started with intuitive eating

If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide.

This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).

Body Neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself.

The focus of body neutrality focus is to avoid self-hate whilst simultaneously alleviating the pressure of having to love your body. The goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.

Body neutrality recognizes that not everyone is going to love every part of themselves all the time. The reality is that some days you’re going to look in the mirror like ‘yess, thank you legs for taking me places, thank you arms for allowing me to reach for the biscuit tin, and thank you stomach for keeping my organs where they should be’, but then there’ll be those days where you stand in front of the very same mirror, focusing on that cellulite you hate, or the belly rolls that suddenly seem so obvious

Body Respect

My physical body is a vehicle for me to experience my life.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The moment I realize that I had my self-worth all tangled up with the appearance of my body is the day that my new life began.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The notion of body respect came into my life. Respecting my body was essential for me to feel better about myself. To increase my self-worth.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Body Neutrality is the safe bridge between body shaming and body positivity. It’s about being grateful for your body and everything that it does for you because it does a lot. You are alive right??.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

My body neutrality journey

To say that accepting my body was easy is a wild understatement…

The act of accepting my body required of me to be courageous. To be vulnerable and lots of tears.

Choosing to make peace with my body was scary. Scary as shit to be honest!
Frightening to be a health professional in a larger body. In a fat body. In an “overweight body” as my colleagues like to categorize my body.

Nerve-racking to stand up in front of my audience and say that I no longer recommended to chase weight loss. That the most efficient path to health was thru acceptance.

Body neutrality and intuitive eating

Going Beyond The Food has taught me that courage is not the absence of fear rather the ability to act in the presence of fear. That’s what accepting your body requires in a society controlled by diet culture and the concept of thinness=happiness & health.

Intuitive eating teaches to respect your body. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Intuitive eating switches our perspective from wanting to control our body to need to respect our body. We can’t respect what we hate right?!?

No matter, where you are now sister on your path of body acceptance, know that I feel you.

I hear you. I see you. I know how you feel and the fear of what could happen…. You aren’t alone.
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Be reminded of one universal law: Love always win in the end. Not hate, shame or fear.💞

“Show up, be seen, answer the call to courage… ’cause you’re worth it. You’re worth being brave.”

Brene Brown

What is intuitive eating?

Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that make YOU the boss of YOU. 

Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food  empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.

Get started with intuitive eating

If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide. 

This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).