The BMI is Bullshit: What Diet Culture Doesn’t Want You To Know 

The BMI is Bullshit: What Diet Culture Doesn’t Want You To Know 

Shira Strongin

Content Warning: This piece discusses diet culture, weight, body image, and size in a way that some people fight find upsetting or even triggering. Please practice self care while reading! Resources are linked throughout, including a link to the The National Eating Disorders Association hotline at the end. 

If you or someone you know is currently struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating, please find the resources below for support:

  • In crisis situation text “NEDA” to 741741 to be connected with a trained volunteer at Crisis Text Line.

  • Our complete list of resources for eating disorders, mental health, and recovery can be found here, which has a comprehensive list

  • The NEDA Helpline is available Monday-Thursday 9AM-9PM ET and Friday 9AM-5PM ET. The hotline can be reached at 800-931-2237.

  • Instant messaging with a trained professional can be found here.

  • The ANAD Helpline is available Monday-Friday 9AM-5PM CT. The hotline can be reached at 630-577-1330.

  • A 24/7 Free Confidential Hotline can be reached at 866-957-6953.

Diet culture thrives off of lies. It tells you that you are not enough and the only way to become enough is by losing more of yourself. How oxymoronic (emphasis on the moronic) is that? And there are plenty of other inconsistencies too. I mean, how can the keto diet (low carb, high fat) and the vegan diet (high carb, low fat) be simultaneously recommended as the best way to lose weight? And if calories just translate to energy, why on earth would we want less of them? 

The only way to combat these horrendous lies is by being armed with the truth. This is probably the most important truth to understand: your body is smarter than you. Diet culture tries to trick and manipulate your body, but in response, your body will improvise, adapt, and overcome all to keep you safe. So here are five scientifically-backed things that I can guarantee your body wants you to listen to and diet culture doesn’t want you to know. 

The BMI is Bullshit

Fun fact: The BMI, or Body Mass Index, which is so widely used by medical professionals to determine patients’ health, was actually created 200 years ago by a Belgium mathematician, Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. Yes, you read that right — it was not created by a scientist with any kind of biology background, but by a mathematician. Also, it originally was not even created to determine health! It was actually created for the government to know how to best allocate resources. As if all of that is not enough reason to say goodbye to the BMI, being overweight has actually been medically proven to have far less of a causational relationship with increased health risks than previously believed. 

Health At Every Size/All Foods Fit

The Health At Every Size (HAES) movement began about three years ago by dieticians after research began circulating that weight itself did not have all that much of an impact on health, but rather how a person gets to that weight. If someone is starving themselves to get to a lower weight, they will have repercussions in a way someone else whose body falls there naturally will not have, the same goes for someone at a higher weight. This is why a critical component of HAES is the all foods fit mentality. All foods serve a purpose whether it’s a fruit or a fruit loop — it all has something in it your body wants. The more we tell ourselves we cannot have something, the more we’ll want it. This kind of restricting that is inherent in diet culture starts a vicious cycle of associating self-worth with perceived self-control, and when that fails, it can lead to binging behaviors.

Set Point Weight

The day you’re born, your body comes programmed with the  weight called the set point which is the number it feels the most comfortable at for optimal function. That doesn’t mean that if you are not at that exact weight you’re unhealthy — in fact, the set point comes with a range of ten pounds on either side. It is important to understand that you can have serious health consequences if you are too far outside of your set point weight range at either end of the spectrum. 

Set point weights are determined by a number of factors, but primarily genetics, which means that all the dieting in the world will not be able to change where your body really wants to be. The more you fight against your body, the more it will fight back. 

Yo-Yo Dieting

Diets are not a solution for weight control. In fact, the only guaranteed long term result to expect from engaging in diet culture is your body’s distrust of you. Going on a diet means depriving your body of key nutrients it craves—from micro- to macro-nutrients along with a calorie deficit—essentially putting it into starvation mode. Once you hit your goal weight, which, to be clear, is usually not a person’s set weight, you typically stop the diet. What happens? Your body gets desperate — it doesn’t want to starve again, so it stores up in anticipation of such a future starvation mode leading to weight gain, often beyond the weight at which it was before the diet. Thus the vicious cycle begins ensuring that diet culture will forever have customers. The scientists at Weight Watchers and other companies? They know this information and prey off of it to make more money. I could go on and on about the capitalist conspiracy that is diet culture and the wellness industry as a whole. 

Processed Foods

The US Department of Agriculture defines a processed food as anything that is not in its original form, meaning if you eat a washed apple, then you’re technically eating a processed food. Mind blowing, right? Processed foods actually serve a purpose. If you drink cow’s milk or even a plant-based alternative, it is likely fortified with vitamin D because research has shown that calcium is better absorbed in conjunction with vitamin D. Most of the weird, hard to pronounce ingredients in Oreos? Those are actually vitamins, too! Like riboflavin, which is just a B vitamin necessary for cell growth. 

So who told us we needed to rely on “whole foods” vs processed foods in the first place? White, thin men with no background suggesting expertise in nutrition. That’s right, in an unsurprising twist, the patriarchy is to blame for the spread of diet culture misinformation. Instead of viewing living in a larger body as simply a state of being, diet culture says that it is a sign of lack of discipline. In a relevant article, Virginia Sole-Smith writes, “We can’t ‘just eat whatever we want’ because we’ve been conditioned since childhood to view our bodies as unruly, undisciplined, and in need of constant vigilance. And so we blend smoothies, cut out gluten, and start January diets because we long ago internalized that whatever we’re really hungry for is wrong.” Going back to the idea of your body being truly brilliant: it can use the carbs from a cupcake and the carbs from an orange in the exact same way, so screw the patriarchy and eat the cupcake!  

To summarize: everyone deserves to live their absolute best life no matter their size. Do not allow diet culture to tell you differently. 

I know this overwhelming amount of information can be a lot to process, but if you do find yourself wanting to go even deeper down the anti-diet riot rabbit hole, here are some informative resources:

Books:

Instagram:

If you are concerned about your relationship with food and fitness, you are not alone and you do not have to be “sick enough” to reach out for help. NEDA provides not only a screening tool, but also a free hotline with professionals available to answer questions. 

About the Author

Shira Strongin is a third year student at the George Washington University majoring in Political Communications. Originally from Southern California, Strongin is an award winning advocate and writer who took her personal experience with rare disease and founded Sick Chicks, a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to uniting and empowering women with varying illnesses and abilities.

Not Your Muse: How 2019’s Alt-Pop Musicians Redefined Womanhood 

Not Your Muse: How 2019’s Alt-Pop Musicians Redefined Womanhood 
Heard It in a Past Life: A Queer Complication of Time

Heard It in a Past Life: A Queer Complication of Time
0