ten years ago, when i was studying to become a dietitian and public-health professional, the idea of stepping outside of our culture’s weight-centric dieting paradigm was almost unthinkable. most of us have lived our entire lives in “diet culture” — a belief system that views being thin as a mark of health and moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status and better health, demonizes some foods while elevating others and oppresses people who don’t match culture’s image of health and beauty. it took years of study and professional and personal experience to arrive at the anti-diet paradigm i now embrace. so it’s not surprising that many r eaders of my op-ed, “i help people recover from disordered eating. don’t give your child this app.,” expressed doubts and concerns about taking this approach to food and body size. as a dietitian specializing in disordered eating, i wrote the op-ed to express the concerns that many of my colleagues and i share about how the new weight watchers (or ww, as it has been rebranded) app for kids could set millions of children on a path to a lifetime of pain. i hoped to help both kids and parents avoid the struggles i see every day in my work: fixation on weight and shape, internalized prejudice against people in larger bodies, harmful yo-yo weight cycling and compulsive exercise, not to mention compulsive tracking and logging of food and exercise. i don’t expect to completely change the thinking of readers with one article, or even several. but i would like to further the conversation by responding to some of the themes and questions that emerged from the more than 500 comments on the piece. i hope these exchanges can help people start to view issues involving food and weight in a new light that could significantly improve their well-being.
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