Featured image: graphic created by Tara Davies, images from Canva
The majority of 2020 was spent behind closed doors. We’re living the WFH life and daily step counts have been slashed from 10,000 to 100. There’s been nothing to do but snack and drink copious amounts of sauvignon blanc. It’s no surprise a lot of us have gained the Quarantine 15 – a phrase that began on social media as a joke but soon became an aggressive term used by news outlets.
Social media pressured us to use 2020 to work on ourselves and our bodies. Anyone who didn’t take this approach felt unnecessarily ashamed. Despite Joe Wick’s and Chloe Ting’s best efforts, the motivation to stay fit was too much to think about. The pressure to obtain the ‘perfect’ body whilst staying home was most definitely overwhelming and even triggered some people’s disordered eating.
Emily Cox is one out of 1,398,000 in the UK with Binge Eating Disorder. Understandably, she finds language around weight loss and weight gain uncomfortable:
“I try to steer clear of anything that could be majorly triggering, like articles on lockdown obesity, because the guilt is overwhelming.”
The UK lockdowns have really fed into diet culture –– the idea somebody is only desirable, happy and attractive if they’re slim. A survey by King’s College London and Ipsos MORI suggested half the UK’s population have gained weight since March. In response to people having to buy bigger jeans, magazine and news sites have been inundated with ‘How To Lose Lockdown Weight’ articles. Emily added, “Lockdown has really caused me to zero in on what I’m eating, especially with the media focusing on the overarching themes of weight gain.”
Emily now 27, started her first diet at just 12-years-old and attended Slimming World meetings with her mum. From a very young age the idea of good and bad foods was drummed into her, “It gave me a robot food complex because Slimming World refers to bad food as SYNS.”
Slimming World also calls some foods free. On their website they define this as: “You can eat it in unlimited quantities (no weighing or measuring needed!) to satisfy your appetite.” Foods on this list include pasta, potatoes and general fruit and veg. In reflection of this Emily continued; “My portion control is completely destroyed because I sat in these SW meetings as a kid.” Emily suggested her eating disorder was brought on by the various diets she’s tried over the years, including Slimming World –– a diet she’s joined on and off around 6 times.
“I know some people lost incredible amounts of weight on it and it’s worked really well for them,” added Emily. Different diets work for different people. But you need to know how to incorporate them into your life safely. Emily admitted, “The likelihood is that these people also had the ability to practice portion control and be able to look after themselves.”
This year not even the news was safe from the themes of weight loss. In late July, Boris Johnson launched a obesity strategy, asking the British public to lose 5lbs each to reduce strain on the NHS. At a time when we were being reintroduced into a life outside of lockdown, the UK Government were starting to guilt-trip the nation about their weight-gain. “It can’t be healthy to throw another blanket of guilt over everyone in such an unprecedented time. I think the government’s decision to begin a weight loss campaign during a pandemic was in particularly bad taste,” says Emily.
(Ironically, Eat Out To Help Out was announced early July to begin on the 3rd August.)
Also in the obesity strategy, there were talks of forcing restaurants into calorie labelling their menus. It received a lot of criticism from the public. Some pointed out this could cause people with disordered eating issues to spiral. Lana El Assaad finds calorie counting triggering, stemming from taking part in a few crash diets: “I never realised they were toxic. I think in my mind I thought, Oh, it will help me lose a little bit of weight. Then it developed into ‘I’m not allowed to eat more than this amount’ and that’s where my obsession with calories began.”
Lana uses her Instagram, @dietculturerebel , to spread word about the toxicness of crash diets and diet culture as a whole. The 18-year-old, who is diagnosed with anorexia, also felt the lockdowns dug up her anxieties over food and weight. “It caused such a huge fear of weight gain and I almost relapsed quite badly. Although thankfully, I used that almost relapse as an opportunity to take a step back, understand my triggers and regain a healthy relationship with food and myself.”
That same survey by King’s College discovered 48% of people found lockdown made them more anxious and depressed than normal. Food restrictions or binge eating could seem like an easy coping mechanism for a pandemic that cannot be directly controlled.
Naturopath and specialist in healthy living Glenys Collings says: “Those with eating disorders will claim the one thing in their life they can control is what they eat. But I would like to turn it around the other way; you can control what you eat. So let’s give ourselves what our bodies need and what they deserve. What we feed ourselves also has a massive effect on our mental health.”
Study by Kings’s College London and Ipsos MORI
Diet culture completely surrounds us. From celebrities advertising weight loss products on Instagram to the UK Government telling the whole country to knock off some pounds. Glenys Collings adds, “Some people will say 80% of their brain space is taken up with thinking about body image and the moods and feelings associated with it.” Therefore it can only be anticipated that the average Brit will attempt three diets a year, totalling to 189 failed diets in a lifetime.
Collings says, “These diets are not sustainable. People tend to rebound. So they have this whole lifetime cycle of weight gain, weight loss, weight gain, weight loss. And every time they gain weight, it’s more difficult to lose.”
40% of people in the UK made ‘to lose weight’ their New Year’s Resolution for 2020. Whilst the idea of weight loss isn’t wholly bad, New Year diets tend to be a restrictive quick-fix that cannot be sustained for more than the whole of January.
Wanting to shed a few pounds doesn’t make you a victim of diet culture but, living an exhaustive lifestyle because of that desire does. Whilst endless studies prove a calorie deficit is the key to weight loss, you shouldn’t be cutting calories down to anything near 1000 or less. An extreme deficit and cutting out favourite foods only encourages binges, setting back weight loss progress –– says Rosie Breen.
Rosie’s most known for being the face behind TikTok, Instagram and Youtube accounts @WeightLossWithRosie. She posts low cal recipes and content about how she sustainably lost weight. In regard to dieting she said, “When I started my journey, there was another girl doing it with me. Whenever we’d go out for dinner, she would bring her weighing scales with her to weigh her rice or curry.” Rosie added, “She was counting her calories for every spritz of oil, every gram of salt and pepper, spices, everything. And I just thought how would you sustain that for the rest of your life?”
Intuitive eating is being pushed by many anti-dieting dietitians across Instagram and Twitter. Intuitive eating just means you listen to your body, eating what and when it tells you. Despite weight loss needing a calorie deficit, Rosie is a strong believer in intuitive eating. She emphasises it’s something which has stopped her from rebounding in her nearly two year weight loss journey.
“I had three Options hot chocolates yesterday and only added one to My Fitness Pal. That’s like 80 calories I’ve not accounted for. It won’t even set me back anything. But let’s say it has set me back half a pound Monday to Monday. I’m still living a sustainable life instead of restricting. Once I achieve my weight loss goal, I know I can go back to ‘normal’ eating habits and not regain it back like other people will. This is because I am still eating what I want.”
In one of Rosie’s recent YouTube videos, looking back on her pre-weight loss body, she tells her viewers: “If I was that size for ever, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t beautiful. I would’ve asked me for my number!”
This time of the year, we’re surrounded by New Year, New Me weight loss products and programmes. Just because you’re seeing everyone else embark on a new diet, it doesn’t mean you have to. For those adamant to kick start their weight loss journey in 2021, eat good and well and don’t fall victim to bad unsustainable habits.
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