I adore you - THIS is why I left my initial job as a coach for "the one who shall not be named". Also, your way of explaining diets and bodies was pivotal to me healing from my ED. Knowing there are men who AREN'T judging, and who understand that bodies and weight and shape is a constant flux and that's ok, coming from a scientific slant - was more helpful than you understand. Literally life saving/changing.
No, there is no huge monolithic entity, but there a lot of individual scumbags in the fitness industry who rip people, and harm them, for money. You're one of the good guys. Keep it up.
Scumbags who try to rip people off and harm them for money is basically the human experience. From dumbass fitness gurus to dumbass health at every size ones. The uninformed have always been and will always be preyed on.
Usually when women specifically are criticizing “diet culture”, it is a wider ranging systemic (I hate that word, but here we are) & pervasive message driven by the types of influencers you hilariously blast on your channel. It’s perpetuated by people who hear a buzzword from 20 years ago (10,000 steps, cortisol, carbs, etc) & never stop saying it (my mother says “carbs” so much my sister & I have turned it into a drinking game). It’s “trainers” with weird programming touting the best full body exercise. It’s fake fitness on TikTok & bizarre trends (like WaterTok). Snake oil salesmen, in other words. Thanks for continuously fighting them, btw.
Love this video. It's unfortunate how people take systemic critiques as positing a conspiracy. There's nothing magic happening in any secret smoke-filled board rooms. Or at the very least you don't need that assumption to explain large scale social issues. It's honestly naive to think that they actually have to keep this stuff secret. It's just that there's an incentive structure that can systematically create and reinforce certain problems. When there's awareness the incentive structure can sometimes work in the opposite direction and treat the problem. The issue is that there's money to be made in obscuring people's awareness. I highly recommend the book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming for a detailed and destructive example of how this worked and is working. An analogous thing occurred when certain parts of the food industry (eg Sugar Research Foundation) obscured research about how massively sugar was contributing to the obesity epidemic. Ideally, the profit motive shouldn't interfere with good science but history has shown us repeatedly that industries find immense success and profitability when they do so. And few to no consequences. The opioid epidemic is another horrific example. So I feel like people's cynicism is warranted, although often misplaced. The fitness and diet industry just wants what all businesses want: to turn a profit. There doesn't have to be a formal conspiracy because the industries don't care about externalities because that's not profitable. There's eventually money to be made in cleaning up the mess a totally separate industry created. No cross talk has to happen for this pathology to perpetuate itself.
Sometimes corporate interests do in fact lead science astray, but not often and usually not for long. To your specific examples, as far as I'm aware: 1.) There was largely a consensus in global warming research early, unlike the book suggests. 2.) Second hand smoke is in fact not very dangerous. 3.) Sugar probably had no major role in the obesity epidemic (the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity has been thoroughly debunked). - Dr. Mike
Sugar didn't cause the obesity epidemic, high PUFA vegetable oils did. Just look at a graph of sugar consumption vs. obesity rates, they don't line up at all. Then look at a graph of PUFA consumption vs. obesity rates, it lines up pretty well.
Add to your list - the culture of buying shit you don’t need or can’t afford and then working your life away to pay at the cost of your health so the healthcare industry can make money off your illness and keep your health in the toilet :P - which then makes you a terrible person to be around, giving other people reasons to go to therapy lol
I think the Capitalism "junk food-diet culture" cycle criticism makes sense if we look at fitness companies as two subsets. We have fitness companies like RP that sell diets based around whole foods and changing eating patterns, whereas there are "diet" companies like slimfast/Jenny Craig that promote meal replacements until a goal weight is hit. Diet companies are probably where we see the cycle of "hits goal weight, goes back to old eating habits, goes back on diet, repeat ad nauseum".
Thank you for this video, it really helps. I let RU-vid autoplay and it eventually brought me here. I'm working on losing 80lbs after packing it on recovering from a few ruptured discs, between not being able to walk, exercise, cook for myself and being put on numerous rounds of steroids, I really packed it on. Getting back to walking and being able to exercise and being able to cook for myself again is honestly just so nice. I can walk 5 miles now and I'm allowed to exercise with no restrictions 🥳Sometimes I start to forget how bad it was not being able to do those things, then I lose determination. Luckily it's pretty easy to snap out of that and find my motivation again ..... I've been pulling together a garage gym, between that and then memories of what it was like not to be able to do things I wanted to and the memories of the pain - I'm finally making progress. However, I think more often than not, those of us that have weight to lose get in our heads more than any bully could ever - so it' s nice hearing something logical and positive. Much appreciated and congrats on surpassing 1 mil subs.
Dr Mike has a couple of videos on the benefits of strength training for fat loss, if you haven't watched those, highly recommended. :) I dropped 20lb of my 70lb excess - built over years of bad diet and aggravated by knee surgeries - in the last couple of months with two medium intensity trainings a week (also look for Dr Mike on "newbie gains"). Another awesome fitness communicators with a really solid scientific background you may want to look up for support and knowledge are Brad Schoenfeld, Jeff Nippard and Menno Henselmans. Dr Mike and Menno also have tons of good free content on their websites too. Wishing you a very successful journey!
The industrialized food industry in this country really does employ an army of food scientists trying to make their food as addictive and profitable as possible regardless of what it will do to your health.
Agreed. Throughout my life I‘ve lived in Slovenia and Switzerland and have visited the US twice. I found it hard to find healthy (convenience) food at reasonable prices in the US and it was also hard to stay active ‚casually’, as walking/biking/public transport were less accessible. I felt like having an active lifestyle meant taking deliberate time to work out (gym, hikes, etc.) compared to the 10k steps I take on an average day in Switzerland, where I live now, just commuting and walking between places.
30 years ago I weighed 270lbs(5'10"tall), now I'm 160lbs with single digit BF%, I have stayed lean for 20+ years running on self-hate, self-shaming and a ton of self-discipline. Diet culture isn't going to work for you, you really have to want it for yourself, you have to want it enough to do the work and stick with it as your new lifelong lifestyle.
4 years ago i went from 462.8lbs to 320 in 6 months and all i did was up my step count from roughly 3k steps a day to 15k steps a day and i switched to fasting and only eating 2 meals in a 6 hour window. Usually between 12-6 whole food only no fast food besides subways chicken bacon ranch protein bowl. And when i hit 320 my mother passed and it fucked me up pretty hard and ended up going back to all my gross habits of eating fast food 4 times a day etc. Gained all that weight back over the last 3 and a half years. And im 2 months into doing it all again same strategy and i started at 454.6 and am currently 418. I did it once and i can do it again. End goal is to sit between 240 - 260 and im a 6ft 2 male age 28. And i gotta say even tho the lowest i got was 320 i felt 50x better. I felt ontop of the world. Sex drive was back headaches and daily heartburn went away. I seriously cannot understand how a single person can be obese and seriously look at someome with a straight face and say theyre healthy at any size.
Hmm… I do think there are some points missing from this video. The idea that no one had to tell people or “incept” people to be leaner and that they already wanted to be leaner in the first place I think is missing some real sociological discussion-namely, about how nurture and conditioning and environment and so forth might affect people’s internal sense of chasing leanness. Kind of a chicken/egg thing, do people want to be leaner just because that is the natural condition of humans, or do people want to be leaner because of other sociological reasons. As a mental health therapist, I think it’s always important to consider both. Now, that’s not to say there is a monolithic “diet culture” shaping and making people feel internal desire to be leaner. But I do think there is a crucial nuance lost if we just assert that since 95% of people seek weight loss when reaching out to the fitness industry, that just reveals people just naturally in their heart, totally independent from the world they live in, always want to be leaner. I do appreciate the nuance given to that there isn’t just a single monolithic diet culture being, and agree that we can’t reduce diet influence to that idea-it is indeed BS. But I do think some of the larger supplemental discussion of what people want and the interpretation of that as a “natural state” (versus something that is indeed shaped by larger sociological, cultural, and psychological factors, as well) is missing some completeness. All that said, appreciate you diving into these complex topics and trying to tackle all the nuances. Love your videos!
Yeah, I felt the same way. Although he probably meant leanness in the sense of "not overweight/obese". "Natural" is often a term that conceals more than it clarifies. Usually people mean "natural" to mean something like "not artificial." But fat is just as natural as muscle or any other type of tissue. And the fact that hunter-gatherers probably weren't obese is irrelevant to what people's "natural" desires are. The natural/artifical dichotomy breaks down when you start talking about human desires. So it's not a useful question to ask. What do people "naturally" want with respect to adipose tissue? Who knows and who cares. Appeals to nature are fallacious and often an expression of pure ideology *sniff*. Natural doesn't mean good. But since we can be self-reflective about our desires and choose which we want to pursue for what reasons, the real question is "what does being obese do?" That's a question that will supply you with A LOT of reasons lol.
I think that the people who use the term “Diet Culture” would say that it’s much, much broader than you’re suggesting. It’s a value system that’s more or less baked into ALL the culture we consume every day. So it’s not ONLY the fitness industry OR the trolls who call women fat on social media…it’s also the people who decide which models get featured in magazines and prominently on the Internet, who casts movies and TV (inevitably with thin actors and actresses playing the virtuous characters and the fat ones playing comic relief or corrupt or evil ones), who decides what type of people are even ON TV and IN movies, who decides what health and ‘wellness’ topics get covered in the media. It also affects the people who make hiring decisions, who make decisions about health care and insurance coverage. It affects your Mom, who might sit you down one day because she’s “concerned” about your “health” because you’ve gained some weight. I don’t think they would say this is a conscious conspiracy-ie, these people aren’t meeting in dark alleys and vowing to make people feel shitty about their bodies. But their interests do converge: ie, whether you’re a “good” trainer (a caring person who’s trying to help people succeed and feel good), or a “bad” one (someone who yells and criticizes and body-shames people), you still benefit from the fact that Jennifer Lawrence, say, gets cast in the movies as a kind of ideal body worthy of aspiring to; and the makers of those movies benefit from, say, sales of “The Jennifer Lawrence Diet/Fitness Regime/magical supplement” (if that existed); and that whoever made those products benefits, however indirectly, from the magazine cover featuring the lithe model, etc etc. These interests DO converge and feed off one another. And they’re part of a value system which associates fatness with all kinds of bad things (laziness, gluttony, sloppiness, low-self esteem, lack of self-discipline and self respect) and thinness with all kinds of good things (self discipline, youth, vigor, sexiness, allure, athleticism, aspiration, ambition, effectiveness, confidence). It’s valuable for people in the fitness industry to try tease these ideas apart-and to question, “To what extent do I make assumptions about people based on their weight that might not be true? To what extent am I, as a member of the fitness industry, party to perpetuating these beliefs? How might I frame my services, or talk about fitness in a way that doesn’t simply repeat or reinforce those same, potentially harmful values?” In this way we can model ways to escape from a culture of criticism and shame and into one that celebrates not mindless conformity but autonomy and choice.
« And they’re part of a value system which associates fatness with all kinds of bad things » … Maybe because fatness is associated with all those bad things ? And reciprocally ? Of course this doesn’t mean that the vices that lead to being overweight in the majority of cases are or should be taken as the sum total of an individual, nor are all of them equally represented in all overweight people, so you could be a hard working obese person who is gluttonous or a lazy obese person who isn’t particularly gluttonous and just became fat because they weren’t super active, etc, and reciprocally for the virtues that lead to one being and remaining fit, just because you have some of those virtues to some extent doesn’t mean they’re everything you are, so you can still be a PoS fit person or be an overweight angel with a sweet tooth. But either way it doesn’t really change that to be one or the other (fit or OW) there’s got to be something right or something wrong with you to some extent.
@@nathanjora7627 That's about as textbook an example of just world fallacy as you can imagine. It helps absolutely no one to explain away obesity and overweight as reflective of moral failings (as opposed to determining their socioeconomic, genetic, psychiatric, etc. causes), except you personally, because it makes you feel virtuous for not being fat. There's no amount of caveats you can add to that central thesis that will make it anything other than self-satisfied and unrigorous.
Dr. Mike - Keep up the great work as always. Can you do a BS series on inflammation? I am interested since many influencers use inflammation as a means of knocking certain foods.
@@aspiresk8boarding i guess local muscle inflammation is different than systemic inflammation, there is no doubt that physical activity has beneficial effects on certain inflammation markers in brain, heart etc
Great video. I would add a bit of nuance though. You state "The job of the industry is to give you what you want" with reference to it being a lot cheaper to give people what they want than to try to manufacture demand. This is certainly true as a general rule, but first and foremost the job of the industry is to make money, and depending on circumstance manufacturing demand might very well be a viable strategy. For example the diamond industry had this very successful ad campaign to convince people that their wedding rings need to have a diamond in it. Or the Dairy industry telling people that the calcium in milk is good for childrens health. Or even how building cities around the idea of people driving everywhere will manufacture demand for cars and the car industry is certainly involved in public transport policy. So I don't think it is really waranted to just dismiss the notion of industry shaping demand to a certain extend.
I would add the new "Protein culture" . Food companies started to add protein to everything : water, ice cream , biscuits , etc because more protein makes makes them healthier!? 😂
I had happily forgotten that protein water existed before I read this comment. The chalky/sticky feeling that shit leaves on your teeth is one of the most irritating stimuli in existence.
Very good point. I stopped supplementing with protein, and I have no ill effects. Turns out, as an average dude who works out to be healthy, I don't need to eat 250g of protein a day.
Yeah on one hand it bothers me because supplement companies clearly went and misrepresented the research on ideal protein targets but on the other hand we have the golden age of protein products that actually taste good. Back in the 90s they had cottage cheese and that's it
@@no_limitations Exactly this. I suck at eating correctly but at least I can just shove a protein bar down my face for lunch and get close to my macros. The high protein home cooking nonsense that people like Greg Doucette peddle is still stupid though.
It's horrible that we have to say "don't be mean and don't make people feel depressed". It's a sad thing that there are people that find joy in making someone depressed. Whenever we do something bad it's only a matter of time before it comes back to bite us in the rear.
hey Mike it's so interesting to hear you you talk about this social (and perceived) social side of fitness. I think one of the hardest events for a group or activity based subculture is having their lifestyle, art and object trun into Products. this happens in music scenes, with small games or hobbies that go viral, and especially when Hollywood or documentaries are involved, like jurrasic park and ancient aliens did for archeology as a field. becoming a Product means that new newer participant is going to get the most edited mass marketable version of something, from competing companies, with very little chance of any counter narrative alongside it. it seems obvious to us that a 'diet' is constructed additively, with a lot of room for wiggle room and some linear algebra around calories, macros, micros, and preference weighting. to the gen-pop viewer with no core knowledge beyond advertising, they see 'diets' as conflicting narratives, and the messaging around each diet just feeding more misinformation and confusion to the ignorant viewer. they misunderstand fundamentally identical principles markets at different demographics as competing ideologies that viewer might then ask "why dont they agree surely the science on this is settled", and come to the conclusion that these advertisements are intended to confuse, as ads often are. intention to confuse become a malicious intent, and the explanation can vary, including conspiracy. I'd liken it to listening to the radio, every station is telling you they have the best lineup the best songs the best vibes. imagine you knew nothing about music and its variety of purposes, and you engaged with the songs on the radio in earnest, listening to their message and feeling their emotion. you could easily come to the conclusion that "the radio" was trying to bamboozle you and tax you emotionally, and that the insane lyrics in so many songs would make you question what is normal behaviour. anyway my 2 cents. I like your message here of keep it simple, they're just ads and assholes.
I mean, being skinny is definitely a social expectation/norm to some extent, but dismissing it because of that would be dumb. That's like saying "Hitler said we shouldn't step on puppies, Hitler is obviously bad so we should all step on puppies"
You have great faith in medicine. I don’t agree that we’ll ever get to the point where a pill or injection will cure obesity. I don’t share that faith. Most of medicine doesn’t result in improved health. See statins, antidepressants, cholesterol recommendations, etc for examples. But thanks for your video and call to kindness. Work on your inner self to me, means get back in your body. Listen to it.
I know this is an old comment, but I disagree with your disagreement lol. What do you think of the rising popularity of Ozempic? It clearly works for many people. Also, looking back historically, could someone have said the same thing about infections before antibiotics were discovered and refined? I think we have quite a way to go, and we haven't even begun to tap into all of our potential medically.
Changing feelings of satiety is probably possible...changing my feelings of fomo when i can't eat a full plate of deep fried ribs is probably not something science will ever find solutions for
Thank you for what you do. I feel I am being liberated one video at a time and I am about to start my weight training journey. I have a few lower weights but getting a bench in a few days and will add some more weights. I am looking forward to learning about working out with weights and leaving the dieting behind and just eating well.
I'm working on losing 8-9 stone (depending on how much I weigh once I feel lean and healthy). So far I'm 6 stone down (1 stone = 14lbs). Not being able to tie your own shoes or climb the stairs without being winded and covered in sweat is far better motivation to change than being made fun of. In fact, I wasn't even going outside/interacting with other people all that much. I wanted to change because carrying large amounts of extra fat on my body is extraordinarily uncomfortable. I didn't need strangers to tell me that.
Ive been dieting since before gymming , my old diet ,my moms , she has no gall bladder and ate a high carb low protein low fat diet with very little veg and that fucked me the hell up(dropped down to a anorectic looking 62kg) , changed to a keto diet for about 3 months just to give it a try found it's not sustainable , couldnt gain much weight but overall my health was better , kept the keto diet style but added fruit and more carb rich veg and that sorted my main problem with keto , since changing off the keto i went from 63kg to 69kg over the course of about 5 months , somehow mostly muscle as im still having the lean problems(poor sleep and libido)
Awesome video! Though I will ask, do you think that there may be a percentage of obese people who are affected by marketing and media that makes them believe being a certain type of body shape, (or body fat ect,) is desirable and is part of that "independent" desire to be less fat? Maybe that is how they are experiencing "diet culture" from their perspective? When Ive heard people use diet culture, it is in this manner, not as a monolithic subculture but as a series of societal pressures that coincides with that binge, starve, fad diet, yo-yoing
McDonalds gets a bad rap. They have hamburgers and fries for any calorie budget. Going to a sit-down restaurant is another story. Often, you have no choice but to eat half (of a 1000+ calorie entree) and take the rest home. And this is what you should do. Some people have the propensity to overeat and some don't, just like some people have the propensity to over drink (alcohol) and some don't. In today's society with 1000 calorie menu items and really good tasting food those with the propensity to overeat will gain weight. Contributing to this is lack of physical activity in that same society. It would be nice if somehow society was able to put back the food restrictions and physical activity that were in place in the 1950's, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Instead, the message needs to be simple and clear. To get back to a natural state of healthy weight, you have to exercise more and eat less. You have to do both. You can just eat less and lose weight, but you haven't changed anything and you will be in an unstable state and gain the weight back again. This message is out there, but drowned out by all of the gimmicks.
While I appreciate the analysis on "diet culture" I think it there's an important part of the equation missing. I agree that the fitness industry is simply giving us what we want, for the moment diets to loose weight and that it in of itself hasn't put the idea in our head in the first place BUT I also didn't just wake up one day as a teenager and decided that I'm fat (when I really wasn't). It was the result of what I saw in magazines, movies and models (and no I don't think all of them fit into group 1 as individuals).
True but the promotion of idéal body standards find a much simpler explanation than a diet culture or any kind of ploy to get you into a vicious cycle of dieting and fattening, it’s just humans like pretty things so naturally idéal bodies will sell.
@@nathanjora7627valid point, but how much of what we consider "ideal" is influenced by the images we've been shown our entire lives on magazines, tv, etc.? yes, we are naturally wired to find certain traits attractive such as symmetry, but throughout human history the "ideal" body shape has varied wildly. so i guess my point is if media portrayed a wider variety of body shapes more positively, maybe people wouldn't feel as pressured to fit into one mold.
@@rungler But even then why would we not want people to be pressured into fitting one mold or a few molds, if those are the healthiest molds ? I totally understand that argument from the standpoint of stuff like handicaps, like representing more people with disability to show something that can be attained even by people who don’t have a fully functional body, but when it comes to just what types of body should we strive for and thus consecrate in media, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be fit bodies. Not to say we should exclude overweight or underweight people, just not try and paint them as equal to fit bodies, since they just categorically aren’t. Also reciprocally, how much of what we find in media is influenced by what people generally find attractive ? Yes, preferable body shapes have (somewhat, not entirely) fluctuated depending on the context of the time, but that goes both ways, it’s both because there were a handful of people who had their (statistically) abnormal preferences and managed to influence the culture into adopting them, and it’s also because there was a mass of people who found X and Y shapes attractive, with those standards evolving purely thanks to the evolving material conditions. Honestly though given our evolutionary ancestry if I had to choose between fitness and unfitness being attractive for more innate or more cultural reasons, I’d choose fitness, at least for males.
@@nathanjora7627 Yeah, that's how culture works. That's what "culture" means. Not a conspiracy - but the widely-shared standards, ideals, and common practices that emerge in human society. The way we developed art by living together in society determines our artistic culture - and the way we've developed practices (and pressures) towards dieting give use "diet culture".
No good in yelling somebody down who is overweight. But if someone is telling people (and makes a living out of it) that "healthy at every size" crap he or she's fair game! That's hurting and killing vulnerable people.
How can jogging (as an example of common every day exercise that is practically free) and eating less processed fat and sugar foods be capitalism? Like spending less on calories should be the opposite of capitalism. That's as great contradiction as other conspiracies. But I love the part where there's some sort of thinking involved and then it goes to "society, culture is responsible" and simplifies everything to binary level. Like really? Who make society and culture? Humans. Why does something become society and culture? Because there's something desirable to majority of people. For right or wrong reasons, but the reason it happens is because it resonates with what people want. Obesity epidemic or fitness craze, it isn't a conspiracy and people planned to brainwash everyone to desire satisfying food or abs. People sure took advantage of that desire, but they didn't just force it to people. They offered it and people happily accepted, they possibly offered to people who begged for it. And that society and culture protesting is basically the equivalent of fighting the windmills. You created your own enemy in your head and you're not really fighting anybody else than yourself. You could've taken therapy if the idea of external pressure affected you too much and made your own decisions after you accepted yourself as you are, you could've avoided people who get close to you and undermine your self-esteem. I know that is a populistic statement, you can't control everything, but you can still direct yourself and your environment towards what you prefer and what's right. You're most of the time not forced to succumb to those individual harmful events and create a world view where they form a uniform world that you can't avoid.
Wait. You're saying that diet culture can only exist if it has one, monolithic source and using the existence of two discrete groups as evidence that it's not a cultural mainstay. The idea that a culture only exists if everyone adheres to it is as illogical as me using the existence of Spaniards as proof that American culture doesn't exist. You're not giving evidence of the negative. You're giving two examples of the positive, asking the audience to infer a negative, and then using the inferred existence of the negative as evidence that the thing to be proven cannot exist anywhere.
I agree completely with the sentiment of this video. But - a burning question in my mind - if it's not "culture" that we get the idea that being thinner=better, then where? The good doctor said we just have this notion intrisically, that we arrive at this conclusion by ourselves - and perhaps some do. But we know that beauty standards throughout the ages change - that the "ideal" body shape changes... In medieval England, a much poorer society, being fat was a sign of wealth and thus desired. I think the diet industry does form part of a culture (toxic or otherwise) that does massively influence people into wanting to be thinner, BUT, given the rates of obesity across the Western world, that's no bad thing. With all advertising there is an element of persuasion - and I think people are upset when this relates to beauty standards because nature rolls the dice with all our genetics and we can't all look the same. I can see how this could be considered "toxic" if you're making people fret about things they can't really help, like androgenic alopecia, or the symmetry of their own face. But people can help their weight, and it's not merely the amorphous category of "beauty standards" that advertisers appeal to, but rather objective standards in health and wellbeing.
It stems from biology. For example, men are attracted to females with a high waist-to-hip ratio because it signals fertility. This is also why men like breasts. It's the same for every species. This is why birds have colorful feathers, why male peacocks have plumes. Everything pleasing to the eye is to attract the opposite sex and keep the species reproducing. Despite all the excuses, it has absolutely nothing to do with Hollywood at the end of the day. We're born to seek health and avoid disease.
Culture is just "The beliefs, customs, institutions, and other products of human work and thought considered as a unit, especially with regard to a particular time or social group, or with respect to a particular subject or mode of expression. The set of predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize a group or organization." "Diet culture" is just the dominant / common set of shared ideas and practices about dieting. Nobody ever thought it was a conspiracy or a monolith.
Wanting to be lean is not an innate desire, certainly not for women. If that were true, it would have been that way across culture and time. The feminine ideal has never, in any culture, been very low body fat with a ton of muscle. It's only that way in fitness circles in developed countries, and probably only because technology/wealth allows a semblance of curves (breast implants are rampant in the fitness industry) while being at a low body fat which is almost never happens in nature. The fitness model ideal is absolutely created, not by Machiavellian overlords, but by many images and videos that promote this ideal. I wasn't born wanting 40-inch glutes and a 20-inch waist with balloon-like boobs. Go back 20 years, no girl wanted big glutes. It's not innate.
I think there is an indirect collusion between fast food industry and the fitness industry, specifically when there are fad diets that urge people to undereat or overly restrict, because that usually leads to a rebound, often with binging fast food. Then due to the influence of the beauty standards the binger feels guilty, then they go back to the next fad diet. Rinse and repeat, both fitness and fast food industries get their money, the dieter's health gets worse. I think 'diet culture' does relate a lot to the beauty standards for women and men, that give people the idea that they should lose (or gain) weight. Consider: if a human is born, and we NEVER give them feedback about their weight or body composition (e.g. you don't tell them "you look fat/thin" or "you should lose/gain weight"), and you let them eat whatever they want when they're hungry, exercise when they have energy, rest when they're tired, etc... would that human even consider that they should lose or gain weight? Probably not. Kids are natural intuitive eaters, and when they're not influenced by outside beauty standards then they will regulate their food and exercise based on what feels good to them. That outside influence therefore, is "diet culture".
Dude I love your content your like so down to earth and not toxic while being very fact based and to the point your better than like 95% of the people in this space
It's beginning in family how children are introduced to food. I was bullied for being overweight. In 2019 I started finally a healthy life, started walking, cardio ,yoga, ...never felt better, so it's not about looking is about living better to me
Hi, I just know that I participate in diet culture because you do see weight loss results. So, if the word diet actually refers to the food you need to eat to live your life; why don't people realize that once you start a diet the goal should not be to deny yourself certain foods while you achieve a specific goal only to start eating them again once you reach that goal. I think that people need to realize that taking on a diet is, basically making a lifestyle change. You are literally changing your life so I don't think that you can't be happy as a part of diet culture it is a community and a movement unto itself. So if you don't approach it with the attitude that you are making a temporary change you can see good results and psychological benefits from engaging with these communities. As long as you remember that your biology is a product of your geographical environment and DNA.
I love your channel. I just dicovered it by your reaction to v shred. You are entertaining, informative, non judgemental and transparent and i admire those qualities. Best of health and wealth to you and thank you for the content. I do not like the idea of being mean to fat people either. And it is the incel movement often and they target bashing on women. A woman with some meat on her bones is beautiful.
There's a difference between the 'fitness industry' and the 'weight loss industry'. It's in both of their best interests to keep you paying them (I wouldn't categorize capitalist goals as 'help' personally, they want to keep you dependent). Fitness I agree has pros and cons, you may always be dependent on a gym if you can't afford home equipment, nothing wrong with that. The weight loss industry though especially does not want you to actually understand what you're paying for and I think people are worse off going down that road rather than just learning about food on their own. You're basically paying someone who is hiding how food works just to do simple calorie counting for you, and you're only successful while you're paying them because you learn absolutely nothing of value on their programs. With this video specifically I mean 'diet culture' is referring to the fitness and weight loss industries, not just fitness. Historically weight loss was probably the majority portion of that up until the reality TV craze, the biggest loser type shows have spread misinformation and everyone thinks sweating to death is actually going to make them thin. It seems like anti-diet culture people don't really know anything practical about weight loss which is really disheartening.
💯 agree that there is no conspiracy. 💯 disagree that the basic desire to be leaner comes from within. People see that leaner people get more attention, have more success, and are considered more attractive. The societal incentives point in the direction of leanness and away from fatness. Those incentives grew organically, not because of a grand conspiracy, but the desire to be lean is not purely innate.
It’s « innate » as much as any desire is innate, all that matters in that regard is just whether it’s been engineered or whether people want to be healthy and therefore run after that. To some extent, when there’s a product it’s as much a matter of the desires of the people that leads to people making what you asked for, as it is a matter of people making stuff and making you want to buy it, however in this case given the effects of obesity there’s no need for any merchant to try and create the desire for the desire to already be there is the point, even if of course those people also exist. Meaning that even if they didn’t exist, you’d still have OW people having issues with using facilities, dying young, having trouble doing any kind of physical activity, etc, not mentioning the fact that yes people generally don’t find unhealthy bodies attractive so you’ll have less social recognition if you are OW because you’ll look unhealthy
They don't want to talk about the vastly bigger "food culture" that spends billions of dollars in order to get people to eat more food than we need, the government subsidies, ethnic cultures and local restaurants that encourage eating all kinds of things that aren't based on what would be best for health
Take someone who is smart, informed, balanced, compassionate, and has a LOAD of real world experience in multiple arenas. That’s the person I want explaining cultural intersections to me.
Fitness industry has the problem that fitness doesn’t actually require spending much money. So most of the industry sells nonsense to people that don’t want to put in the work.
That's fitness industry but fitness culture is the attitude that everyone should have the ability to spend working out and cutting so that they will be able to show their six pack abs on Instagram posts every day otherwise they are just lazy
McDonald's loves the "calorie is a calorie" brand of dieting. That school tells people McDonald's is fine as long as they keep it under 2k calories a day. Weight gain becomes a personal failure that totally isn't affected by processed crap upsetting the body's hormone balance.
tbh if you eat junk food strictly below your maintenance, you lose fat. that's just physics. 2 problems with that: 1) yeah, hormones take a piss 2) high saturated fats don't satiate you enough, so you feel hungry. but it can be done. first month of my cut, i basically ate junk food and steadily lost 2 kg. later of course i started eating healthy, otherwise i'd be hungry all the time
When i think of "diet culture" i think of all those celebrity workouts and gwyneth paltrow diets that people somehow feel compelled to follow in order to be "fixed"
I agree with the core of what you say, but is not true that corporations don´t want to influence customers opinions, they do all the time as long as they are big enough and there is enough of a profit incentive. Cereal por breakfast and bacon are popular because they naturally rose to the top, they were pushed for decades, because they are so cheap to manufacture corporations can make a huge profit out of them
I´m not saying people don´t naturally want to be lean, I think that much is obvious. Ancient greeks didn´t have diet corporations but you can see in their statues how they wanted to look
Society definitely glorifies food. Not sure how women feel, might be different for them, but i feel like whenever im "thin" (i used to be fat and im now kinda thing) i get comments from everyone saying that i should eat more, that i should just enjoy life. There is a misconception that eating trash food is enjoying life. I do enjoy my pizza or burguer every so often, but thats why i enjoy it, because i dont eat it that often. And its not just about personal comments i get, just a quick look at instagram and you'll see people eating. All the time
Enjoying life is not about constant happiness and dopamine. That is a huge misconception and a big contributor to why so many people are sad, angry, hateful, and disillusioned. Eating tasty food may provide a moment of happiness, but constantly pursuing that moment adds up to bad health and obesity and chronic disease and a much lower quality of life. So how is that enjoying life? The constant pursuit of a happy feeling is short-sighted and destructive. Why not go out and empty our bank accounts and "live life" every single time we get paid? We all want new, shiny stuff! Feels good! Why not heroin or cocaine? They both feel great! Why not burgers and pizza and milkshakes at every meal? Delicious! We all know why those are not the right things to do. So to say that to someone making healthy choices is dumb. Misery loves company is just as right today as it's always been.
Also "organic" being a scam exists on a spectrum. On one hand, yeah, especially in the USA, corporations have the habbit of labeling something "organic" just to squeeze more money out of health conscious but gullible people. That's undeniably a fact. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as real organic food. Simply going to the open market to buy fresh produce directly from the villagers growing it is technically "organic food", even though they're not putting the label "organic" on every piece of fruit/veggie/eggs/dairy. Americans love this "black and white" mentality and oversimplifying things by putting them into one of the 2 categories: good or bad. But that's not how reality works. The world is full of nuance and spectres. By having a simplistic 2-sided thinking and polarized views, people(especially Americans) are missing the point.
There are cultures around some diets like Carnivore and Vegan, but I mean I think its mostly people just trying to better their lives by not being fat/generally unhealthy. The mudslinging and shaming are kinda extremes. I personally mudsling at "carbophobes". But cause I did extreme keto for a long time and hated it and I genuinely think carbs add to quality of life. Anyway Yeah there's people who like to shame fat people, and they are generally unlikeable assholes. However saying being morbidly obese is healthy or amazing is just insanity. Just like how Nvidia selling an RTX 4080 that is half as powerful as an RTX 4090 for $1,199 When the RTX 4090 is $1,599 is insane.
Dr Mike, this is some of the best advice I've heard on the internet. Not just on dieting, but in general. Make your own goals and find a company that's willing to help you achieve them.
Slight disagreement with what you said on 7:56. It might make sense for the fitness industry to want companies like McDonanld's to thrive to some extent, because then there are more sad fat people to sell diets and programs to. If everyone was lean, the customer pool would be smaller. However of course I agree there's no grand conspiracy or something to make everybody oscillate between fat and thin.
As a skinny European, trying to gain weight(not only muscle but also some more fat to go along with it), I'm sick and tired of the American(but not only) fitness propaganda that gaining weight is bad and that carbs are always bad and that the lower the calories, the better. Just because the FDA is a joke and the food regulations in the USA suck and most people struggle with being overweight/obese, because of all the terrible food and lifestyle choices, doesn't mean that their recommended lifestyle and diet applies to everyone.
Shaming (guys specifically) for not having dating success is always acceptable, and it's just something we're gonna have to deal with. It stems from this idea we're sold that it's all up to you. Just confidence and all that, you know the memes, I'm sure. And since it's all up to you, and not just genetic lottery, it's completely okay to shame you for that. It's ironic how body shaming is not okay when it's the ONE thing you can control lol. Height and face shaming? Totally okay, though.
I think it's just that we have such an internalized pressure to be thinner that makes fad and scam diets profitable, so they are everywhere. And those two things just feed off each other. That's what I would call diet culture. It's just that pressure and things that don't actually help in a vicious cycle. At the same time, we are in an environment where it's so, so easy to overeat and there is a pressure to live life to the fullest, which means enjoying all the delicious things with abandon. I used to think losing weight meant I should eat 1200 calories and go to the gym 4 times a week. I'd give up after 4-6 weeks because it was way too much and I just thought I couldn't lose weight because I couldn't stick to doing that. Turns out, I can eat 1600-1700 calories and walk 30-60 minutes really easily. I've maintained this for nearly 2 years, lost 20% of my body weight and have maintained the loss for a year. The legitimate side of the fitness industry and a registered dietician probably could have told me this.
As a male virgin I'm supposed to get all riled up by Dr Mike's 'incel' shaming language but he's going to have to try much harder than that. Sticks and stones, my friend.
outside of the incel community people use the word to describe a particularly toxic type of incel, not simply any male virgin. Aside from that, as a former incel myself i wish you the best of luck on your fitness journey. I hope you build the confidence and self worth you'll need to be kind to yourself and the people around you.
@@Nox-q8k People use incel to describe literally anyone they have a mild disagreement with, including married men with half a dozen kids who talk about some random irrelevant thing about grocery store goods. Either the normiesphere is all braindead, or all members of the incel community.
> they're not incepting people with the idea that they should want to be on a diet Just steelmanning diet culture, I think the *idea* is deeper than a capitalistic ploy, but precisely that those beliefs are already embedded in culture - excessive fixation on certain body types as well as dieting to achieve that body type. And probably you can talk about beauty standards and attainability of bodies we see in media.. But I mean, obesity probably causes 100x more harm than eating disorders, so I'd say "fat culture" is a much, much larger problem if anything is.
I don’t think there needs to be any conspiracy at all for capitalism to be the primary culprit. We have 3 primal drives, fuck, eat, and survive (by eating and fucking). The fitness industry wants to maximize profits by having as many people as possible participate. The fast food industry wants to maximize profits by having as many people to eat their food as possible. People want to look good to be able to fuck, so they diet. Also being healthy obviously will help you survive. They also want to eat delicious food, this fast food. They don’t have to conspire to create this dichotomy of diet then fast food, it just happens naturally under the current material conditions. Can’t really blame the companies for participating in this fashion, it’s just the system that exists. No conspiracy required
I think there’s a strong discussion on what we mean by the term ‘culture’ here. There’s nothing about the term that requires monolithic views, or even that people like each other. The dynamic between the groups you mention can be easily described as a culture even if groups hate each other. I.e. yes you an v shred are part of the same RU-vid fitness culture whether you like it or not.
Okay, fair enough, but for us to use a singular term like 'diet culture' there should be some explanation of in what sense there is one thing there. I guess there is an open question of whether people who say 'diet culture' mean 'culture' as a mass term that applies to various things that are culture and pertain to diet, or whether they mean it as a singular abstract entity, such as when we speak of one culture having certain traits as opposed to some other culture. I would guess that people don't always have a clear idea in their heads and sometimes people mean it one way and sometimes the other way, and assume every one understands everyone but really they are not on the same page. I think this happens with various terms that people don't explain often enough.
While that is true, "culture" is an inherently vague term. It can basically refer to anything people can think about. Dr. Mike seems like he's responding to a particular way that term is used. Where it seems to express a harmful belief that uses broad (often vague) social critiques in order to justify an unhealthy, self-destructive pattern of behavior. This can manifest as desperate rationalizations for why one's obesity should be accepted as practically unchangeable ("most diets fail" "diets don't work"), and desires to improve one's self are actually part of a deeper pathology ("diet culture damages mental health" "it causes body dysmorphia and toxic self-hatred"). And that's something that absolutely should get pushback. "Diet culture" "capitalism" "heteronormativity" are broad terms that can refer to a lot of different things and they're often used to vaguely gesture at some problem over there, and therefore the problem can't be here, with me. But in reality things never are that black and white. So regardless of the validity or lack of validity of the broad social critique, the fact remains that obesity is a serious health problem that causes a lot of suffering.
@@hamm0155 That’s the thing, the specific term only goes back about five years, so we’re just getting to where sociologists can cobble together a meaningful definition. We saw this too with “highly palatable foods” and “ultra-processed foods”; the food itself has been around for decades, but empirically-useful definitions were only established in 2019.
@Jason Hardin Strong statement and one that can be applied to society in general. There is a destructive nature to wholesale acceptance of every aspect of every culture. Every culture has destructive aspects to it and there are some cultural differences that will never align, no matter how much propaganda attempts to make it so.
@@tomisaacson2762the other thing is that many in the anti diet culture group don't believe that obesity is a problem, don't believe that cico works all the time, don't believe that some foods should be called junk or unhealthy
Omggg I absolutely hate the whole “there’s no good or bad foods. It’s all diet culture” trope kills me. It’s ok if skittles are bad for you but it’s also ok if you eat them. It’s just a way to shrug off the accountability of eating junk food. If you eat junk food just own it and move on don’t blame it on diet culture
I agree 100%. There’s no such thing as “moralizing food”, people often use that as an excuse to avoid accountability for what they’re putting in their bodies. There absolutely are foods that are good or bad for you and it’s so important to acknowledge that. Not saying you can’t treat yourself periodically- but “bad” foods are supposed to be eaten in moderation
Mike Israetel himself supports the idea that there is no "good" or "bad" food, and that moralizing food is counter productive. EDIT: Tedx Talk titled, The Landscape of Healthy Eating
I think you kind of missed the mark on this one. While everything you pointed out is true, there is one big thing you didn't touch on: attractiveness. There are certain ratios of height to weight that people view as more attractive. Yes, it differs from person to person what they deem is attractive, but most people generally overlap in their preferences, the biggest differences originating from the gender of the person being evaluated and the gender of the person evaluating with some cultural variance. Why is this important? Because attractive people get treated better. This is extremely well documented in the psychological literature, a type of "halo effect." People understand this intuitively. So, putting together my points from above, fat = unattractive = poorer treatment. This might not necessarily be outright negative treatment, though as you mention in the video that certainly does happen particularly in the form of verbal abuse, often it is just less or no preferential treatment. This is why you don't have to convince people to be thinner: everyone understands that society will value them more if they are not overweight. From that perspective, there definitely is a diet culture, the specific manifestations you pointed out are just the most overt manifestations. It's probably better described as a "collective human instinct to provide various forms of motivation to other people for them to maintain a proper body fat ratio" than simply "diet culture," but people typically perceive the method of achieving a desired weight as dieting, usually because their diet is the problem. In short, fat people think society wants them to diet, and they are fundamentally correct. Really society just wants them to not be fat, but people perceive that as a need to diet. Now one thing worth pointing out is that a lot of people have problems reading the "strength" of the signal they are getting, that is getting in their head that they need to be slimmer/buffer when no one else thinks that, but that is just a malfunction of our natural desire to meet social expectations. It's the same as a moody teenager who reads hostility in the actions of everyone around him. Is some degree of hostility/antagonism/frustration present? Probably, but almost certainly not to the degree your average 16 year old thinks. In the same way, a lot of fat people are hyper sensitive to both verbal and non-verbal "you should lose weight" signaling, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Dr Mike, you are great at many things. Critique of ideology just isn't one of them, because we have philosophers for that. There are many embarassing moments in this video that would get you kicked in an instant from any university in this world.
@@youknowitstrue3826 no, I don't remember the video because it was so so bad and 4 months ago. Also I love my time and dr Mike's takes in fitness too much to ruin them both. It was fine until he was talking only about conspiracies, than he started extending the scope of the video to every critique of the industry and was soo bootlicky it made me puke, that's what I remember, won't articulate forward
@@Riccardo-kw5dc That's literally the entire point on the video. Read the title. Yeah, that's what it's about. And he's more than qualified. You also didn't produce a single concrete objection.
Hey Dr. Mike! I appreciate this video and you going into your point of view on this. I recently watched the intro episode of a podcast called “Maintenance Phase” that was pointing out a lot of problems with “diet culture” and using points I recognized from around here and also StrongerByScience, but interspersed with some ideas that I’m not as comfortable with. It very much felt like a correction from the norm, but a slight overcorrection if you know what I mean. I feel like watching this video after that one, I feel the same way, though. Your points feel more correct than theirs, but it again feels like you went just slightly too far. I think it would be awesome if you could explore some of their ideas and maybe even invite them to one of your famous debates to try and come to some sort of a synthesis on this! Also, just wanted to point out that SBS has created a dieting app, if not a plan, called MacroFactor in case you weren’t aware. I’m a very active user of it and have read extensively into the science and design choices behind it and am absolutely enamored by it. Much love! A fan
I’ve been training several years but until recently not all that scientifically. Your videos havd caused me to adjust a few things in my program. Cheers bro. 💪🏼
I'm a massive proponent of the, "Greasy Change" diet. It's helped me achieve the figure I've always dreamed of. Not to mention whenever the wife wants to buy something I just take a massive dump and we pluck out the pennies.
I think you're attacking a straw man. Diet culture is a set of values, assumptions, and folk beliefs about body shape, health, and nutrition. The diet industry exists because it's serving a culture that would still exist even if the companies went away. Some parts of the fitness industry have shrewdly positioned themselves as an alternative to diet culture, and that's good for business as well as for clients, as long as they actually reject it and offer an evidence-based alternative that encourages people to eat better and exercise more without falling into the self-defeating mindset that they're either "on" (or "off" a diet). That's what I see you doing with RP.
The word culture against words like diet, grape, etc annoys me a bit. I've always thought of culture to refer to cultural things like Mongolian throat singing, ancient tribal dances, even Christmas celebrations.
6:06 A counterpoint here is media aimed at women. Pay attention to the cover of old school women’s magazines at the grocery store checkout line next time. The big print is very fattening recipes for your family…and the smaller print in the corner is how to lose 10-15 lbs in a week. Alternating diet/feeder marketing is definitely a thing in women’s products.
My ex-personal trainer was a juiced to the gills body building 10 yrs ago but was a flabby fat guy when he was training me and would regularly buy Maccy-D's sandwiches and burgers from the value menu like 2 burgers for less than a buck and give them to me, I requested another trainer after him but he turned out to be an asshole, so 🤷♂️
I love your work Dr Mike but it did make me sad when you fed into the alt right incel cliche. A typical argument for any male who disagrees nowadays. Sometimes an asshole, is just an asshole.
For people who eats 5000 calories per day as something"normal" it's obvious that eating around maintenance (way less than that) is a conspiracy and a criminal action... You are oppressing them!!
I choose to be empathetic instead. There's a lot of people who have faced negative stuff their entire life about their size. I can't blame them for being pissed off.
I love this video! Thank you! Body builders can look how they want… when they want… to a science, and are mostly healthy, yet very few people listen to their advice!
