MSN: Holiday Indulgence, Diet Culture Could Create an Opportunity to Rethink Relationships with Food

There’s no shortage of advice about diets and eating habits on social media and television. Dr. Supatra Tovar warns that some schools of thought, like those about eating lots of animal protein and no carbs, could lead to unhealthy habits. “Diet culture tells us a whole bunch of lies,” Tovar told Scripps News. “There’s no good food and there’s no bad food.” Tovar is the author of the book, “Deprogramming Diet Culture.” She says that when people have a neutral mindset about food, it mitigates negative eating habits like binging. As the holiday season approaches, many people include a diet culture mindset into their behaviors around eating during the holidays. Tovar said that in working with her clients she found that rejecting diet culture was the best way to start on a pathway to success. She says in her work, there are two main categories: “Lookism,” or the obsession with staying thin; and “Weightism,” also known as fat-shaming and fatphobia. “Deprogramming Diet Culture” guides the reader through seven steps that are meant to help people break out of programming that leads to destructive types of diets. Tovar says that it’s important to eat slowly and mindfully but to have a healthy and neutral mindset about food that doesn’t assign morality to each type of food.

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