Wellness Culture; Diet Culture in Disguise

Most of us know that diet culture takes advantage of your insecurities and tries to sell you products (and diets) you don’t need in order to solve problems we don’t have. Well, the same can be said for wellness culture. The big difference? Wellness culture takes advantage of your health anxiety and tries to sell you products (and diets) you don’t need in order to solve health issues you don’t have. Or maybe you do have health issues, and wellness culture takes advantage of those health issues to sell you products that you don’t need because they do not work.

A classic example of this is gluten. Being gluten free is all the rage right now. Do some people need to be gluten free? Absolutely. Does everyone need to be gluten free? Absolutely not. But large wellness communities will argue otherwise. So they can up-charge you for their fancy adaptogenic gluten free refined sugar free granola that likely cost them dimes on the dollar to make (notice I didn’t say pennies on a dollar, because yes, wellness products may cost more money to make, but that does not excuse them taking advantage of you).

Before we get into the thick of it, yes, it can feel like fun to buy wellness products in the name of self-care. Wellness trends have also been life-saving for many people who need to be gluten free (one example of many) and never felt like they had many options. It has opened doors, but mostly only for the financially privileged. There’s also nothing inherently wrong about buying and consuming “wellness” products. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s go deeper.

wellness diets

Wellness diets are everywhere. What’s a wellness diet? Well, a lot of diet culture scammers and dieters out there will admit that “diets don’t work,” and instead we should be focusing on our health rather than on strictly weight loss. Sounds good on paper, but instead creates this toxic “socially acceptable” form of dieting that is just as restrictive and potentially just as harmful to health and wellbeing under the guise of “wellness.” So selling you a restrictive diet for your health? A wellness diet.

Even if you aren’t strictly dieting for your health, you can still be caught up in the culture of dieting (cough cough — diet culture). This means you might still be considering foods “good” or “bad” or are policing what you “should” or “should not” eat, or maybe you unknowingly hold healthist views on food and wellness that emphasize that you are fully in control of your health. By making it about “health,” it’s easy to skirt around the weight-centric undertones by perpetuating the good/bad binary as it relates to food instead of bodies.

Unfortunately, the “thinner is better” idea doesn’t disappear, it just gets hidden. Some may make food changes purely for health reasons (and there are ways to do that) without any intention to lose weight, but that’s rarely the case. Weight loss is usually seen as a sign that you’re “getting healthier,” but we know that your weight does not inherently indicate your health status, and even if you make food changes for your health, weight loss is not a guarantee.

Viewing your health as your personal responsibility is another way wellness diets make their way into the world. As long as they can convince you that if you go on their diet you will be in control of your health, wellness culture will profit off of you, just like diet culture.

orthorexia

One of the biggest issues with wellness culture and wellness diets is how slippery of a slope it is towards orthorexia. Orthorexia, a disordered obsession with health, can be extremely damaging in the form of disordered eating to a full blown eating disorder. The reason is, wellness culture is quickly normalizing an intense interest in healthy eating and being interested in health and wellness. No one really questions anyone else’s intense interest, or even think our own interests are disordered! It’s simply viewed as healthy. Another huge issue with orthorexia and wellness diets as well is that you could technically be “eating enough,” and still be extremely disordered and even malnourished. Our society and culture as a whole does not make it easy to identify and provide supports in healthing from orthorexia or orthorexic behaviors.

“healthy” as an identity

It doesn’t take long being obsessed with health and wellness before it really becomes a part of you. Social media is taking advantage of it and encouraging it by creating trends that revolve around waking up at 5 or 6 am, working out every day, eating “clean” foods, having a “perfect” skincare routine, diving into spiritual practices, always keeping a clean room or house, and romanticizing isolation and self-discipline. Women are documenting their “health journeys” on social media, and it’s so hard to identify when this “self-healing” is doing more harm than good.

Identifying as “the healthy one” or “the one who is super into health and wellness” or fitness can become an obsession and fixation in-and-of itself. That idea that everyone looks up to you, aspires to be/look like you, and sees you as this inspiration is totally addicting! Identifying with being “healthy” is so glorified in society, if you identify with it, you’re likely to get a lot of reinforcement from it. It becomes this self-perpetuating cycle that is difficult to break, and when confronted about it, it’s almost impossible not to defend that identity to no end.

healing from wellness culture

Healing from wellness culture can be tricky business. If you struggle with orthorexia or wellness dieting (or dieting in general), you likely won’t get the same kind of help if you don’t fit the stereotypical “eating disorder” look or criteria. Our culture is so obsessed with the pursuit of perfection, that many people choose their professions trying to find it. A lot of people with disordered eating go into the dietetics field in order to search for the “perfect diet.” I was almost one of them.

So how do we heal? Of course, awareness is so important. Educating people on why wellness doesn’t always make us “well” is crucial. It’s what I’m doing here, and I hope you might send this to at least one other person who could use the info. Community is also key. Just like wellness culture has its own set of communities that serve to harm, there are plenty of communities for healing from diet culture, wellness culture, and eating disorders.

Of course, moving on from wellness culture likely will mean grieving the wellness identity.

You have to let go of that idea that you are in control of your health.

You have to let go of the validation you’re so used to getting from others.

You have to let go of the pursuit of perfection, because perfection does not exist. Not in appearance, not in diets, not in health.

As much harm as diet and wellness culture can cause, there are ways to escape and find community and healing within spaces that will help you cultivate a positive relationship with food and your body.