Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating

by Christy Harrison

We also sure as hell would not be exercising for the purposes of weight loss or body shaping—another way that diet culture subtly sucks away your time. Sure, it can be great for your overall well-being to move your body in ways that feel good, and some forms of movement are fun in their own right. But let’s be real: shrinking and “sculpting” are major motivations for many people who exercise, and diet culture is to blame. Too many of us have gritted our teeth through workout classes and personal-training sessions we hated, all with the goal of changing our size and shape (or perhaps maintaining them, if we were already at a place that diet culture deemed “acceptable”). Think of all the ways you could’ve spent that time, from doing a less-intense type of movement that you actually enjoyed to working on a creative project to volunteering or doing political organizing to sitting on the couch and having some much-needed downtime.