Differentiating from diet-culture

Much of my psychotherapeutic work with clients is centered around increasing their level of differentiation. Differentiation is a Bowen Family Systems concept that refers to having a strong sense of self and relating to others in a way that is in alignment with this sense of self, practicing emotional and relational maturity. Dr. Kathleen Smith more accessibly describes the concept in her book Everything Isn’t Terrible as first, being able to separate your thoughts and feelings and second, being able to separate your thoughts and feelings from the thoughts and feelings of others. Someone with increased differentiation is able to be responsive rather than reactive with themselves and with others.

Part of my work with people who are struggling with food, body image, and diet-culture-laden mindsets is to support this differentiation of self so that they can be responsive to daily input from diet-culture messaging rather than reactive to it. In addition to separating our thoughts and feelings from those of others, the work of differentiation is identifying what exactly one’s own thoughts and feelings are. Oftentimes, I find that people have accepted diet-culture’s perspective on weight, bodies, and worth without really interrogating whether these are their own thoughts and feelings.

I like to ask questions that necessitate this self-reflection work. I might ask, “Where did you learn that?” or “How do you know that fact to be true?” when someone shares a food rule or “fact” about weight and health. I might point out how their fatphobic thinking doesn’t really align with the other liberal values they’ve shared with me. I might ask, “How do you measure the worth of others?” (rarely will someone say, “By their looks.”)

An appeal of diet-culture is its dogmatism. In a world where we are inundated with more and more pulls on our attention, with ever-increasing decision fatigue, with constant information overload, having an external voice telling you what to think is tempting - it can even feel like a relief. The problem is, accepting diet-culture’s thinking as your own may be actually making your life harder in the long run.

Are you ready to start thinking for yourself? To decide what you think about food, weight, and bodies using facts and your values as guiding lights rather than a patriarchal, white-supremicist, out-dated rule book? To practice differentiation? Excellent! A great place to start is my series on what intuitive eating, diet-culture, and health at every size® are.

Digging in? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Shoot me an email: brianna@bodygrace.org.