Diet Culture - How I see it 🙅🏻‍♀️

It’s been a weird couple of years, learning, acknowledging, improving.

You know the saying ‘when you know better, do better’? That’s how I’ve been living my life and changing my messaging on instagram over the last couple of years.

I used to think that I was helping so many women by showing them what was possible in such a short space of time by using my dramatic transformation photos.

I really thought I was using the photos to encourage women to lift weights and not make all the dieting mistakes that I had made in the past.

I was so proud of how disciplined and focused I was.

I was in my mid-twenties. All I cared about was looking sexy and feeling strong.

I was deep in the #fitfam culture.

(are hashtags still at thing?)

I had so many women see my transformation and want to pay me to help them have a similar transformation.

I loved coaching women and teaching them about resistance training and nutrition.

But then, around 2018/2019, I started hearing and reading about ‘diet culture’.

I was angry. I thought the anti-diet advocates were personally attacking me and my business.

(Anger is a natural reaction when you are triggered about something you haven’t fully acknowledged in yourself)

But once I was able to clear the anger and actually listen to these voices, I realised that there were perspectives and privileges that I had never ever acknowledged.

I didn’t realise that, no matter what the caption was, using transformation photos automatically places negative emotions on the ‘starting’ photo, which can be triggering for people - especially anybody with an eating disorder.

I didn’t realise how many people out there had eating disorders or even disordered eating.

I really thought I was helping people just feel better about themselves.

I then decided, by teaching people about energy balances and training for aesthetics - that I was a huge part of the problem and needed to shut down the Oh Fitness Furnace immediately!!

I remember speaking to one of our coaches, Kate about it. She helped me realise that what we were doing, was actually ok. She reminded me that we are helping women get stronger, and educating them about nutrition, in a way that helps them see through the BS of crazy diets.

The more I read about diet culture and the effect that dieting can have in the long run, the more I realised that most people would be better if they had never ever started dieting.

But the sad fact is, so many women, especially my age, want to change their body. So many women think that they ‘should’ lose weight.

So many women spend every day thinking about their next meal and how much they move.

We are so bombarded by diet culture and gluttonous food consumption, that we find it so hard to listen to our actual hunger levels.

Having worked with thousands of women over the years, I started to realise that women who wanted to lose a lot of fat, weren’t simply uneducated on nutrition, but really needed to work on the psychology around it.

I think (and I am open to being wrong on this or changing my mind), that simply telling women not to diet, will just push these women who are desperate to change their bodies, into the traps of the coaches who are not working as ethically and putting women through transformations/challenges that might change their body, but in the long run - create lasting mental damage.

I want to bridge that gap.

I advise most clients to track calories, not to make sure that they aren’t eating too much, but to make sure that they are eating enough.

I want women to learn to trust their bodies and hunger levels. I want women who are tied up in diet culture to feel how good it feels to not be hungry all the time. I want women to to eat carbs. I want women to be happy.

If you think you need to cut out your favourite things, or go very low calorie to lose body fat - you need to join The Furnace.

In 12 weeks, you will have cut through all the BS from diet culture and will lose weight, *if you want to* and not because you feel like you *should*.

It costs €89 per month, and it's a 3 month program. If you don't feel like it's for you after the first month, there is no obligation to stay on.

If you sign up today, you can access the content straight away. Once you fill in your questionnaire, I will be back to you with more personalised instructions on workouts, nutrition etc.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reply! Or click below to get started!

Thanks for reading,

Siobhan "Always learning" O'Hagan