On this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck discuss the anti-dieting movement. Yes, you read that right – anti-dieting. Essentially, this movement started as a response to the dieting culture in the world, particularly the United States, that has people believe that being overweight means you’re both unhealthy and unattractive. The anti-dieting movement rejects both these ideas and encourages people to reframe their relationship to food. Much of this movement is based on a concept published in 1998 called “intuitive eating,” but the anti-dieting movement goes even further. Chuck and Josh discuss all the facets of the movement, what’s missing from the conversation, and call out a few popular diets through the ages that have proven to be incredibly unhealthy.
Intuitive eating states that instead of restricting our food or our portions, we should instead re-learn to listen to our bodies. As children, we eat when we’re hungry and we stop eating when we’re full. But adults eat for reasons unrelated to hunger, often overeating due to stress, and diets require us to ignore our hunger for as long as possible. Intuitive eating is about listening to your body. When you’re hungry, eat – and eat whatever you like. Then – ”and this is the important part,” Chuck says – when you’re full, stop eating. The idea is that we’ll eat more slowly, giving our body time to tell us that it’s full. Not only will we be less likely to overeat, we’ll also enjoy our food more. And though it’s okay to start an intuitive eating practice by allowing yourself to eat Oreos for lunch, if you do it right, you’ll begin to eat more healthfully – our bodies crave nutrition, and if we’re truly listening, we’ll give it more whole foods than junk foods anyway.
This all makes a lot of sense, and intuitive eating is widely embraced by nutritionists and dietitians. The anti-dieting movement takes it even further, saying that all dieting, any weight loss goal at all, is a form of fat-shaming and comes solely from being brainwashed by the diet culture and strict Western standards of beauty. There is some science to back this up: Diets actually scare your brain into thinking you’re starving, so it stores up more fat, instead of less. And there’s evidence that weight actually doesn’t play much into health at all; genetics are much more likely to kill you than a few extra pounds. Anti-dieting has some things right, but can also go to extremes, shaming people for losing weight or promoting healthy foods over other foods. “The Internet has gotten involved, that’s the problem,” Josh says succinctly. Listen to the episode to hear about the pitfalls of the body mass index, some truly scary diets, and much more on Stuff You Should Know.
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