Diet culture VS. dieting
At the moment, there's a bit of a battle between some social media fItNeSs iNfLuEnCeRs.
There's one side saying "losing weight isn't hard, calorie deficit, obvs". They imply (or say outright!) that losing weight is simple and that if you're struggling, you're lazy or you lack discipline. That is simply NOT true and ignores all the many complex factors that play into weight gain and weight loss
Then there's the other side, saying "diets don't work, you can be healthy without losing weight, you don't need to change your body". While I agree that weight is not the SOLE determinant of health, at the moment, to the best of our knowledge, being outside of a healthy BMI range is associated with worse health outcomes, *even when we control for other lifestyle factors*. So, if someone *wants* to lose weight, encouraging them NOT to do so, and even shaming them for wanting to change their body... 🙅♀️ That is not OK.
As a PT, my job involves helping people with their weight loss goals. This inevitably means that weight targets, calorie tracking, portion awareness, etc, are all things that I talk about on a daily basis. For a while I was a bit conflicted and it took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that acknowledging that diet culture is a toxic fuckery does NOT mean that dieting in itself is a "bad" thing
I think there is room for a middle ground in between the two approaches. Blanket statements like "diets don't work, you shouldn't want to change your body, be happy as you are" or "just stay in a deficit, it's not hard, if you can't do it you're lazy" can be equally dangerous.
The most important thing when we consider dieting is context. When my clients talk about wanting to lose weight, we talk about a whole host of things, like...
Why they want to lose weight
If there is a specific problem they think losing weight will solve
How they feel about their body
How they feel their weight holds them back currently - is it more of a confidence issue?
How losing weight will improve their health
What other benefits they'll get exercising, that have nothing to do with weight
....
TLDR; diet culture is toxic, but that doesn't mean dieting and weight loss is a bad thing.