Unpacking Diet Culture With Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy
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Ah, January 1st. New Year, New You. The start of a new year sees our social media feeds inundated with detox products, workout programs, and restrictive ways of eating, all promising to turn you into a vision of perfection. Intermittent fasting, juice “cleanses” and weight-loss supplements reign supreme this time of year and can entice people with the lure of losing weight. Hoards of hopeful consumers join a gym and start a “healthier” way of eating at the beginning of each year, only to later feel like they have failed when it doesn’t go as planned.
We’re here to tell you it’s not you that failed. Dieting and exercise that isn’t nurturing, simply is not sustainable and will fail every time. These New Year’s resolutions to lose weight or change your body are a direct result of diet culture. What if we resolve to step outside of diet culture and start to free ourselves from the self-loathing and obsession with weight, thinness and appearance? It is possible. You don’t need a “new you.” You’ve got everything you need for healing within you already.
“Diet starts tomorrow,” you may tell yourself. “Oh my gosh, she looks great. She lost so much weight.” “Sugar is so bad for you. I need to cut out sugar from my diet.” “I can’t even stick to this diet, I’m never going to lose weight.” What do these statements have in common? They are all a result of diet culture.
In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, we focus inward and work with our own internal systems. In this blog post, we will do that, but we will also talk about how external forces impact our Parts (us). When we learn how to spot harmful diet culture messages, we can begin to work with the Parts that get activated by the messages we receive. We can eat and relate our bodies from a Self-led place, and be attuned to our needs and the internal messages we receive. When we connect to ourselves in this way, we make decisions about food and movement that are grounded in what our bodies truly need, rather than reacting to the unsustainable and unfilling messages of diet culture.
What is Diet Culture?
Firstly, let’s get clear on what diet culture really is. Christy Harrison, a registered dietician, author of Anti-Diet and the popular FoodPsych podcast, gives this thorough perspective: “Diet culture is a system of beliefs that:
Worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue, which means you can spend your whole life thinking you’re irreparably broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin “ideal.”
Promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, which means you feel compelled to spend a massive amount of time, energy, and money trying to shrink your body, even though the research is very clear that almost no one can sustain intentional weight loss for more than a few years.
Demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power.
Oppresses people who don't match up with its supposed picture of “health,” which disproportionately harms women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities, damaging both their mental and physical health.”
Within this definition, you may notice that diet culture intersects with many other aspects of our lives. People who are already marginalized and oppressed will be even more impacted by the detrimental effects of diet culture, but it spares no one. Sonya Renee Taylor, in her seminal book The Body is Not an Apology, notes that diet culture hierarchy places white, straight, cis, thin, able-bodied males at the very top, so that anyone who is not one or more of those things, will be increasingly impacted by the detrimental effects of diet culture.
In fact, even young children are harmed by these messages. Our broader culture, local community and family of origin all contribute to our beliefs and behaviors. Early influence from parents/caregivers around food, appetite and body size inform the beliefs held by Parts of us. The messages around food and bodies vary from culture to culture and family to family, but diet culture affects us all.
Diet Culture’s Pervasive Messages
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Let us now consider what messages about diet culture we received in our early years. In a culture so entrenched, it may be difficult to separate what ideas are our own and those driven by diet culture. Disordered eating is so common that calling to mind a loved one, friend or coworker who has a peaceful relationship with their body, with food and with eating can be a real challenge.
Did your caregivers comment on your weight, your appetite, or the amount of food you consume? Did you get teased for your size? Did you witness a parent or loved one make negative comments about their own body, food intake, or see them involved in the cycle of dieting? Were you exposed to adults who did not put any focus on weight and instead acknowledged the inherent worthiness of their bodies as instruments, rather than ornaments? Were you recognized for your appearance, either positively or negatively?
Going Inside with Internal Family Systems
If it feels tolerable to do so, take a few moments to allow any feelings about this to arise. Notice if there’s chatter in your mind, and be attentive to what it is saying. There may be anger, sadness, regret. There may be Parts that feel grateful that you’ve lost weight, that feel more confident when you’re dieting, or that fear what would happen if you disengage with the pursuit of weight loss. Grief that you don’t have the body you long for. Likely, there are beliefs within you about body size being linked to health.
Try to allow these to be there without judging them as right or wrong. As we begin to allow our feelings to surface, we will notice that we may have opposing ideas within our thoughts. For example, you may want desperately to lose weight, and hope or believe that, once you achieve a lower weight you will feel happy and good; that your self-confidence will emerge. Yet, you may also become aware of the belief that you are good enough just as you are right now; a part that knows or fears that losing weight will not bring you happiness, and that dieting is not sustainable.
In IFS, we call these opposing beliefs and desires polarizations and they are important because they indicate the presence of different Parts in our internal system. Many people feel anxious, uncomfortable and stressed by polarized Parts. It can be described as a war within our mind. By getting to know these Parts over time, we can help them understand each other which tends to reduce the friction within. Our Parts can carry burdens and diet culture can certainly create these burdens.
American culture is steeped in conflicting messages around food, bodies, beauty and appetite and it makes sense that we struggle in this area. The intersectionality of culture, gender, race, religion, and disability influence every aspect of diet culture. What do you notice about beauty ideals in American culture? One need only watch TV, read magazines or scroll through social media to determine that White, thin, cisgender and able-bodied women are most prominently featured.
Our own implicit biases will impact our relationship to our body and our appetite, as well as the judgments we might make about others. Sabrina Strings, PhD, writes about our fat-phobic culture and the psychological effects of telling people that their bodies are wrong. She recognizes that it is impossible to completely extract ourselves from the culture into which we are born and raised, and from the impact of fat-phobic and white supremacist diet-culture. The burdens created by these harmful messages are carried by parts of us.
We might have proactive parts who make lists of what and what to eat, who track caloric intake and who tell us we “earned” something yummy because we restricted ourselves all week or did a hard workout earlier in the day. Maybe they try to keep us accountable because they fear that if they didn’t, we’d never stop eating. Parts that revel in the sense of purpose that dieting provides, that believe we will be “fixed” once we attain a thinner body.
Sometimes reactive parts enter the scene and tell us “Screw it! This won’t work, just eat the whole thing.” Some parts may feel connected to peers and family by centering weight-loss, and fear losing that connection if they disengage from diet culture. In some families, dieting together is a way of bonding. The never-ending pursuit of weight-loss or changing our bodies is so commonplace in American culture that to leave it behind can feel terrifying. But who benefits from our never-ending desire to change our bodies? If you can start to identify these parts of yourself and understand how they are helping you to fit in
Are My Restricting/Bingeing/Purging/Overexercising Parts Really Trying to Help Me?
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It may seem like a stretch to consider that disordered and sometimes dangerous behaviors can be led by Parts that are actually attempting to help, but I have found it to be true. Once we start to form a relationship with our internal system, to understand the beliefs, roles, hope, fears and burdens, we can begin to appreciate the intentions. Often, these Parts serve a very important purpose in our lives; distraction, dissociation, attempts to be viewed as more or less desirable to others, to fit in, to disappear, to release feelings we don’t feel safe to communicate in other ways, to please others. Seeking safety and attempts to control are at the root of many behaviors related to dieting and over-exercising, but the control is an illusion.
Authentic safety comes from building a culture of trust among our parts and and between them and our Self. Much in the way you don’t need to eliminate food groups, in IFS we don’t try to get rid of our parts. By turning towards them, rather than having them take over, we can build a relationship with them that, over time, allows them to take on safer, more peaceful roles in our system. This might look like a part that previously engaged in bingeing behaviors shifting into a role of expressing itself through writing, advocacy or movement; a restricting part that spent hours scrolling through Instagram, comparing your body to others might use that same dedication to fight diet culture; a self-objectifying part that insists we owe it to ourselves and others to fit an unattainable standard of thinness and beauty. It’s important to know that we can help our parts release the burdens of diet culture.
As you have read this blog post, what points struck a nerve or rang true for you? At the beginning of our healing journey, we often have strong reactions to information that challenges the beliefs held by parts of us and that’s okay. Take note of what you’re reacting to, and see if you can access some curiosity. Given the pervasiveness of diet culture, we can benefit from having help as we heal.
If you’re in California and would like support with recovering from body shame and disordered eating, reach out today for a free 15-minute consultation. Our team of compassionate, trauma-informed therapists is ready to help. You don’t have to do this alone.
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