How can we remove diet culture from movement spaces?
please & thank u!
As a movement facilitator with a deep desire to facilitate change in the hideousness that is the “fitness industry” I spend a huge amount of time thinking about the complicity of the very industry of which I am a part, in perpetuating diet culture. Diet culture is so insidious it is pounded into the very fabric of what most people consider when they think about moving their body. The definition of diet culture I find the most helpful is Christy Harrison’s, from her book Anti-Diet. Christy defines diet-culture as “… a system of beliefs that equates thinness, muscularity, and particular body shapes with health and moral virtue; promotes weight loss and body reshaping as a means of attaining higher status; demonizes certain foods and food groups while elevating others; and oppresses people who don’t match it’s supposed picture of “health””.
Weight loss, aesthetic goals and the never-ending pursuit of health, whether physical, mental or emotional, are the cornerstones on which the fitness industry has built itself. In spite of this, the radical fringe of fitness in which I’ve found a home in recent years, is deeply resistant to the framing of movement as a means for weight loss above all else and instead promotes an anti-diet approach. In my classes I suggest that movement can be neutral (or perhaps even joyful!) and that participants can move their bodies in a way that feels good to them in a specific moment, they do not need to follow a prescribed routine to the tee and will never be called out for a perceived lack of effort or capability.
I’ve learnt so much since I started working in movement, yet in many ways the radical fringe I am honoured to be a part of feels even more fringe. Things happen to me constantly, in the course of my movement shenanigans, that I refer to as “annoyingly diet culture-y” and there are vanishingly few classes I feel safe going to/would recommend to anyone looking for a radical fuck diets approach.
One question I often ponder is, if the instructor cares how THEY look then how can they lead a radical class? When I became an instructor in early 2020, one of the first things that happened is that I was asked to attend a photo shoot where promotional photos and content would be shot, for the purposes of my profile on the studio website and for social media. I’d be able to use the photos to essentially “advertise” my classes, as would the studio. This was the first time it occurred to me quite how much I would be required to “advertise” or essentially “sell” the spin classes I’d be facilitating and, by extension ME (or me-ee-eeeeh in Tay’s voice 🤣).
I remember that first photo shoot only for the complete terror I felt throughout. I found every moment completely excruciating. All I could think about was what the team would think of someone like me, a soft bellied and completely untoned human being, trying to teach classes. At that point I hadn’t even taught one class and was filled with my own fears and anxieties about whether I’d be able to do it at all. I didn’t know how my body would handle the physical requirements and I was as far from a fitness professional as it’s possible to get. I’s been plucked from the front row of classes I attended in my lunch break to try and shake off the STRESS of what I then called my day job (human rights lawyer) by a head trainer who saw what it would take me AT LEAST A YEAR to see myself - that I could and WOULD contribute something meaningful to the fitness world. I think pretty much every instructor who taught at the studio was there that day and the way it worked was that we’d get photos taken one by one whilst everyone else waited around, watching and offering encouragement. Everyone was kind and welcoming and lovely but inside my mind was screaming WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TRYING TO FIT IN WITH THESE PEOPLE?
I can now recognise that I had deeply internalised the diet culture messaging I have since worked every. day to banish from my class. I worried that I didn’t “look fit enough” and that I’d be judged for it. On top of that, I worried that no one would ride with me because of it or that I’d be shamed (or worse, ridiculed) by the classpass reviews of riders who came to and hated my class. I wish it wasn’t the case but, a metric movement professionals cannot run from, is bloody class numbers. Something I’ve learnt since becoming an instructor (in 2020 no less) is that studios are business and numbers MATTER. In order to “succeed” and be able to keep teaching, I’d need to get bums on bikes, and it seemed photos of myself (in some capacity) would be required to help with this.
I’ve reflected often on how I felt the day of that first photo shoot. I’m proud of myself for making it though that day and every single class that first year. I was (and am) surrounded by a profession of people who (with a radical fringe of exceptions!) conform to every single body and beauty standard. The fact my body is softer, rounder, less toned is something I am genuinely so much more at peace with today than I have ever been in my life. But, being surrounded by people who just don’t have, or seem to want my softness, has been triggering AF. Working in fitness means I’m surrounded by people who look the way I spent a decade of my life trying to force my body to look (and making myself unwell in the process).
That first year was so hard. As I write this, I’m struggling to articulate exactly what I found so difficult. Because the modern fitness industry is built on diet culture its impact is insidious. It’s inescapable. It’s in the less obvious classpass review that mentions my audible breathing. It’s in the yoga class I attend on national fitness day, whilst injured and unable to spin but wanting to move in community that day, at which the instructor asked me if I “wasn’t even going to try?” when my injury prevented me from participating in a specific posture. It’s in the bodies and companies I’m surrounded by at an industry festival which the year before last (in 20-fucking-23) is sponsored by an appetite suppressant gel. Like what the actual F is this STILL… I despair.
When I’d been teaching for a year or so my (much!) younger sister studied to become a personal trainer. During her studies and into the beginning of her working with clients we had so many interesting conversations about bodies, diet culture and the concept of “fitness goals”. I was shocked to hear that (approximately) 99% of clients of all ages still signed up for PT sessions with aesthetic (predominantly weight loss) goals. I thought things had improved since my own teen-hood which, catastrophically for my own self-worth and mental health, coincided with the depths of “heroin chic”. One day, when I was teaching a Big Babe Energy ride (basically riding to a playlist of very explicitly f*** diets songs/coaching) my sister reflected on how she prefers no talk about her body at all whilst she’s working out. I’m the complete opposite, I like to (and greatly benefit from) acknowledging and extending compassion to my softness, the folds of my belly and the speed of my breath as I move my body. This practice of gratitude extends into the online space where I make a huge effort to consume images of and words from a variety of bodies which, in a roundabout way brings me back to where we started: photographs.
The fitness industry is saturated with images of bodies that uphold the diet culture status quo. In a personal sense, outside of teaching classes, I have been working for at least a decade now to root out the diet culture conditioning that insidiously set up camp in my brain from the moment I could comprehend the world around me. That first photo shoot reinforced the pillars on which the fitness industry is built, placing me into a situation in which my brain couldn’t help but regress. But, it also showed me the importance of resistance: of standing at the front of rooms reminding people that abs aren’t the be all and end all and that all bodies are deserving of love, care and respect JUST BECAUSE. That we owe no one health. And… over time I’ve been delighted to remind myself that photos of me on the bike can and do capture the immense joy I feel when I ride. And that is something worth sharing, whether to promote my classes, or otherwise.
