Health Influencers, My Favorite Fried Rice, and Some Great New Books
Influencers have been anything but healthy lately, even the Christian ones.
Diet culture is only getting louder. The socials have been rife with misinformation and fear-mongering the last couple of weeks. I mean, there's nothing new there; it’s just LOUDER. It’s a sad reality many of us have come to expect from our body and diet-obsessed society.
One post is a health professional sharing how she’s eating less of this and that during her pregnancy. This person gives the same type of advice I help people steer clear of when trying to recover from an eating disorder. Health professionals are not immune from eating disorders. However, they’re held to a higher ethical standard when it comes to giving (bad) advice - on the internet or otherwise. I wrote an entire chapter about this in Feed Yourself. We can mean well and cause harm.
Another post is a health influencer with a Google degree discussing how a common breakfast is dangerous. This is far more common than the health professional giving advice on how to have an eating disorder. But the result is the same - fear caused by sensationalized misinformation and culturally celebrated disordered eating. In this case, we want to stir the pot with our followers, go “viral” and cause purposeful harm.
Recently, I’ve seen more Christian pastors, leaders, and authors post things I once thought were reserved for diet culture influencers. It’s alarming and so very disheartening. These people have done good work and still are, of course, except for the posts about their “health.” I truly do not think malice is involved here, but diet culture certainly is. Health is an individual thing - one journey isn’t like another. Suggesting that someone else can just take control of their “health” the way they have isn’t just harmful; it’s ignorant.
Some of the tactics I’ve seen include promoting weight loss coaches or diets they’ve (temporarily) found helpful and before and after pictures of bodies. You can say all the body-positive stuff you want to, but wrapping health and self-care up with fat loss gurus, weight loss goals, or before and after photos just doesn’t add up. The “if I can do this, you can too” way of thinking is incongruent because it assumes we’re all offered the same benefits in this life, like worldly health, financial privilege, food security, able-bodiedness, a sense of community belonging, and non-stigmatizing healthcare, just to name a few. While I wish we all had an equal starting position, we don’t. Not only will that look like varied levels of “health,” it will also look like divine body diversity.
If we aren’t willing to SEE diet culture, we will collude with it.
And it’s hard to turn away from diet culture when your new programs profit from it. I get it. I peddled diet culture early in my career with a trendy not-a-diet-diet lifestyle plan. It took me a few years to step away from this harmful approach. So, now, as I share my diet culture in the safe places frustrations with you, I truly wonder, are these pastors and influencers just unaware of diet culture, or are they not ready to reckon with their participation in it…
Now for Menus
It’s a leap year week, and we’re cooking up some delicious meals. We’ve got salmon, BLTs, stir-fry, BBQ chicken, fried rice, and more. I sure hope you enjoy it. Don’t forget that these are simply meal ideas for you. I don’t eat like this every single night. Sometimes, we throw Bagel Bites or egg rolls in the toaster oven and toss a bagged salad. These are options for you to choose from that you can pair with faster meals when you need them. So, lower the bar, friend, and get fed.
Get your February Week 5 Menu HERE
New Workbooks
I use a lot of resources in my office. From podcasts and audiobooks to safe social follows and workbooks, I use whatever resource lands best with my clients. Workbooks have been a great tool for me and my clients over the years, and there are several new and wonderful options. I’ve linked to them below.
The More Than A Body workbook comes a few years after Lindsay and Lexie Kite’s wonderfully helpful book More Than a Body. It’s definitely worth a read if you want to see how our culture programs us to be at war with our bodies - particularly female bodies.
This workbook comes on the heels of Dr. Hillary McBride’s beautiful and eye-opening book, The Wisdom of Your Body. It is another worthy read, particularly if you work or have an interest in the body image and eating disorder treatment space.
The 40-Day Body Image Workbook was written by Christian author and podcaster, Heather Creekmore. It is packed with practical examples of how diet culture shows up in our day-to-day lives and how to move away from its snares. If you want a faith-based workbook, this is a great starting point.
Have a wonderful weekend, and let’s keep stepping away from diet culture together.
Leslie