Photo Credit: Made on a Generous Plan
Thank you to Meredith Noble of GenerousPlan.com for allowing me to share her “Stop Performing Dieting” graphic and her Facebook post here:
From Meredith:
“In our culture, dieting has become a performance.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Think about the last time you got together with friends who are using food and movement to try to manipulate their bodies.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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They told you all about it, right?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Because if a diet restricts in the woods and no one is around to see it restrict, it doesn’t raise our social capital. (This wordplay is a little tortured; forgive me.)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Letting people know that we’re dieting, and all of the myriad methods we’re using to do so, is essentially a humblebrag. “Look at me,” we’re saying. “I’m doing the morally right thing, and I want you to think more of me because of it.”⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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But what happens when we question the whole paradigm? What happens when we question why dieting implicitly provides social capital? Why we think we’re better humans because we’re sacrificing our mental health (and often our physical health too)? The actions of dieting fall flat in a world that isn’t sizeist, ableist, and racist. A system of ‘body currency’ can only thrive when there’s a social hierarchy of bodies to climb.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Let’s stop performing and start eradicating the hierarchy. 👊 ”
DO NOT SACRIFICE YOUR WELL BEING TO BE THING, friends. Please. Your are more than your body size.