detox

What is that annoying voice telling you not to have any cookies before dinner? Judging your current pants size… comparing your size to your very active cousin. No, it’s not your mother, despite her comments can be a part of the problem too, but it’s diet culture. The dieting and weight loss industry in the USA alone is worth around $72 billion and yet over 80% of diets fail!

Dieting and weight shaming is everywhere and was especially hard-hitting from the advent of lockdowns in 2020. Queue the social media posts and challenges suggesting that we needed to “use this time to become better” by learning new languages, skills, starting a business and losing weight. How rude! Living a healthy lifestyle is important, but not defined by the number of a scale. And, with everything that has happened last year and this one, you’d think we would have learnt to address people and health much differently.

I’m personally a fan of snuggling up at home, watching my favourite shows and enjoying a giant bowl of popcorn and too many Oreos to count. Lockdowns and the anxiety that came with it made many of us seek more comfort in these small things. While 2020 was an unexpectedly strange and tough year for all of us, just like years before, our problems don’t just go away because someone tells us they should.