Diet Culture Deception: Exposing the Realities of Under-Eating

Welcome to a bite-sized episode, a quick chat on the dangers of undereating. What if the very diet culture we are immersed in is the root cause of our physical and mental health struggles? Are you ready to break the chains and liberate yourself from the fear of eating too much and the obsession of achieving the thin ideal? Join me, Jamie, your dietitian and body image specialist, as we shine a spotlight on an often overlooked issue - under-eating. We will be confronting the detrimental effects of undernourishment on our overall well-being.

This enlightening episode is set to challenge your beliefs and uplift your relationship with food and body. We'll dig into the signs of under-eating and how it can lead to a host of health issues such as susceptibility to illness, low energy and digestive problems. Moreover, we'll discuss how diet culture and fatphobia blind us to the harm we might be causing to our bodies by eating too little. By the end of our discussion, you'll understand how a small amount of restriction can negatively impact your health, and why it's high time to treat your body the way it deserves. So, tune in, and take a step closer to true food and body freedom.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Bites in Body Love. I'm Jamie, a dietitian and body image specialist. Join me to liberate yourself from diets and body shame, embracing true freedom and confidence with food and body. Take your place at the table on this transformative journey towards a life of freedom and confidence. Today, we're going to be talking about under-eating yeah, the less talked about concept.

Speaker 1: 0:22

We hear a lot about over-eating and eating too much and eating past fullness. Oh, my goodness, the fears that are spread about and that we have about over-eating. But I want to talk about under-eating because it's very underrepresented and it has significant impacts. Let's chat about it First of all. Have you ever thought about the effects of eating too little? Have you ever been concerned yourself about the impacts of eating too little? Because there are a lot of impacts. There are a lot of negative consequences to your mental health and your physical health of eating too little. But you probably answered no to that. You probably thought I worry about over-eating, but not under-eating. You may also only be concerned with under-eating because you're concerned about slowing down your metabolism because of what you were told about that as well. Again, going back to body size and the fear around our body changing if we overeat, or fear of our body changing in a way that we don't want to because our metabolism slowing down if we under-eat. So often we're really fed these fears of eating too much that we really fail to understand the impacts of eating too little. I want to ask you if you experience these symptoms these are all symptoms of under-eating, more prone to sickness, depression, constipation, skin problems. Let's go back to constipation GI issues GI issues are, my goodness, so common if you're under-eating to have GI issues Slowed metabolism, low energy, brain fog, developmental problems, anemia, feeling cold, anxiety, dysregulated hunger cues, dysregulated fullness cues, not having those at all, affected mood, headache, irritability, osteoporosis, hormonal imbalances and male nutrition, to name a few.

Speaker 1: 2:40

So often again, when you're feeling like if you have low energy or GI issues, what do we blame? A lot at the time we blame that we are not eating right, we need to more perfect our diet, get more in control of our diet, when really we need to loosen up and eat more Because we are lacking in energy, because we don't have enough of it, not because we need to find a new diet, but do quote, unquote better at the diet, but because we need to eat more. But we never think about that, and the reason for this is this influence of the thin ideal diet culture fat phobia. It tells us to fear eating too much and to not focus on our health and well-being and on our intuition, and that we can't trust it. Diet culture's promotion of restriction puts our bodies in real danger real danger. Even a small amount of restriction can be very harmful and have a lot of impacts on you that should impact your day to day, so, small or large, it is impacting your whole being's health.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Letting go of diet culture is really uncomfortable, it's super hard, but it's really important If you want to take care of your health, take care of your mental health, your physical health, and you want to have that freedom to live free of concerns with food and body. We deserve to treat our bodies the way they deserve, because they're really trying to take care of us the best they can and we want a mutual, respectful relationship with it. So we deserve to treat our bodies the way they deserve, while also learning to fight back against diet culture and weight stigma, learning to trust our body and learning to have that mutual relationship with it so we can be free of all of this. So I want you to ask yourself how do you experience any of these symptoms? Do you ever consider that you may be undernourishing? Can you try to push that and get a little more uncomfortable and experiment to push your food choices to be more flexible and to add more food in day to day to make sure you are not undernourishing?

Speaker 1: 5:05

Because this is super important and I want to invite you to another podcast episode that's going to be helpful for you. That's very related. If you are feeling like you want to learn more or if you're feeling like I don't know, I need more convincing because of the fear of going against diet culture, I want to invite you to the podcast episode about the Minnesota Starvation Study Super, super interesting. It's a study that I go through with my clients all the time. Thank you for tuning in to Bites in Body Love, ready for true food and body freedom. Apply to join my program True Body Image Freedom for Everybody, where we will guide you every step of the way. Dm me at jamieRD underscore on Instagram or Facebook for a no pressure conversation so we can learn more about you and your fit for the program. Remember, every step toward loving your body is a victory. Subscribe and leave a review to support our message of body liberation. Stay awesome and see you next time You've got this.