Eating disorders awareness week: the time is now

Eating Disorders Awareness week is February 24th - March 2nd, and this year’s theme is “The Time is Now.” According to the National Eating Disorder Association, this week is dedicated to “efforts to create urgency around the need to recognize eating disorders as a public health crisis because The Time is Now.” 

As a woman in America in recovery from an eating disorder, I couldn’t agree more. There was a time in the not so distant past where I thought real change was happening. Intuitive eating and body positivity were growing movements. Representation improved, albeit slightly. Then it felt like they became stagnant, like somehow this collective understanding that our worth is not determined by our bodies just…went away.

To be clear, eating disorders are complex, and influenced by both internal and external factors.

For the purpose of this post, I’ll be focusing on the external—specifically, diet culture. Diet culture is the misguided child of capitalism and the patriarchy. It features a system that aims to create a sense of low self-worth associated with appearance, companies that profit off of that messaging, with an element of ingrained misogyny thrown in for s & g’s.

Diet culture is deeply tied to American culture. The idea of controlling women’s bodies as a form of oppression is not revolutionary. From Puritanical beliefs about depriving yourself of pleasure as a virtue (look up the invention of the graham cracker,) to a beauty ideal that emphasizes thinness and whiteness, to the on-again off-again relationship we have with women’s healthcare, we Americans have normalized the objectification and violence of women’s bodies since the start.

We are not new to this, we are true to this.

It’s always been interesting to me how the beauty ideal has evolved here. In the 1950’s, postwar America saw a rise in the nuclear family. Gender norms influenced the beauty ideal, promoting a curvy, traditionally feminine figure  - think Marilyn Monroe. Androgny was in vogue in the 1980’s, and with fitness trends and more women in the workforce than ever, we aspired to an athletic, more masculine shape. And let us not forget, try as we might, the "heroin chic” 1990’s or when fashion demanded an impossibly flat stomach in the early aughts with all the low-rise jeans and skirts. 

It’s not lost on me that celebrities and influencers circa now are trading their BBLs for Ozempic. It’s kinda keeping with the times that we are expected to shrink - metaphorically and physically - as much as possible right now.

So how do we fight back? Thrilled you asked!

To resist diet culture, we need to stop seeking external validation. When we do this, a few things happen:

We are not as easily influenced to overconsume beauty and wellness products. When we are not buying the $90 cellulite cream, we can put our precious resources toward our own financial stability and things that truly bring us joy. 

We can reframe what healthy means. Health is personal and individual. We can take the wellness practices that serve us like adequate hydration and prioritizing sleep and leave or modify what doesn’t. For example, engaging in physical activity for overall wellbeing and not for weight loss, or nourishing our bodies in ways that feel good to us instead of turning nutrition into a math problem. At this point, we’re probably not interested in expensive diet foods and health gimmicks, either.

We have more mental capacity for what really matters to us. When we are not constantly adding calories in our head and planning our day around a diet, we can get so much more done for our own fulfillment. We have more time and energy to put toward a cool hobby and hanging with the people we care about. We have more space in our brains to question the world around us and formulate creative solutions to help us move forward, as opposed to…whatever it is we’re doing now.

All of this really pisses off those interested in protecting the status quo. Totally an added bonus, but what’s really beautiful is the growth and empowerment that happens when we can look inward for acceptance and validation. 

If all this isn’t enough to shift the narrative, consider this:

Eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate among mental health conditions.

One person dies every 52 minutes from an eating disorder.

The time is now.

Federal research funding per individual diagnosed is as follows:

Eating disorders: $0.73 

Schizophrenia: $86.97

Alzheimer's: $88.00 (1)

Despite these numbers, outpatient support services remain scarce and inaccessible for many. The time is now.

It’s so important that we do what we can to stop further oppression of women’s bodies. It’s so important that we disengage with a culture that literally objectifies and devalues us to death. The time is now to liberate yourself from harmful messaging about your value as a human.

Finally, I think it’s really important to recognize that a huge part of your wellbeing has to do with joy. It’s important that right now we center joy. Seek it out. Practice it throughout the day. Have the coffee because it tastes good. Dance because you can. Learn because it’s fun. 

Because you’re good, just as you are.

1  "Eating Disorders Awareness Week." National Eating Disorders Association,

    www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/edaw/. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.