Latest news with #dietculture
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Riona O Connor: ‘I was counting points on Weight Watchers when I was 15'
'Skip the bread, get ahead.' 'Summer bodies are made in winter.' 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.' Just thinking about slogans such as these makes Riona O Connor shudder. 'My brain is horrible,' the Kerry-born comedian says over a video call from her home outside London, as she reflects on the words beamed to her over the years from television shows, women's magazines and celebrity interviews. READ MORE 'My brain is a sh*t storm. The line 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels' – I bought that hook, line and sinker. But I share that with a lot of people because we were brought up in the 1990s with diet culture.' No more. These days, O Connor still hears prescriptive media messaging, particularly in summer, but she doesn't let it dictate to her. In defiance of Instagram 'thinspiration' beauty standards, O Connor has become famous for her photos and videos on the social media platform where she poses in a bikini or swimsuit but does not contort herself to suck fat in or twist her body to find sharper angles or use filters to smooth out wrinkles. O Connor faces forward and speaks frankly, persuasively and hilariously to her followers about her body, and the ridiculousness of not just wearing a bikini or swimsuit whenever you want to wear one, without feelings of shame or insecurity. O Connor is sparky, funny and warm. She has more than a million followers on her social media platforms. She receives constant feedback from fans who appreciate the empowerment messages she's offering, particularly now the pendulum seems to have swung back from a period in the 2010s where body positivity and 'glow-ups' were in vogue, to a new era where #SkinnyTok is driving the agenda to such a degree that European regulators recently convinced TikTok to ban the term as a search option. 'I do so many different things – sketches and comedy – and it just seems that, for whatever reason, me talking about how my brain works in a bikini seems to be resonating with a lot of people,' she says. 'I didn't realise people were so self-punishing. I thought people were a lot further down the road. But apparently we're all trying to figure this out together.' Riona O Connor. Photograph: Lissette Arenas O Connor is a graduate of LIPA, the performing arts institution in Liverpool co-founded by Paul McCartney. A talented singer, she arrived in England with the dream of making it in musical theatre. She landed a role in Roddy Doyle's The Commitments in the West End in 2013. But the long days and nights of musical theatre were incompatible with raising a family: O Connor has two young sons. 'It's eight shows a week, six out of seven nights. I didn't want that lifestyle.' So she turned to social media. 'It started off with me wanting to scratch the itch and sing and do sketches and share that part of myself. I started writing songs, and a lot of those songs were about the pressure to bounce back after you have a baby, and how I felt that pressure.' Growing up in Tralee, O Connor was often on a diet. 'I never had a little bum or small legs. I never fitted into that paradigm of what makes you, quote unquote, 'attractive'. I was counting points on Weight Watchers when I was 15. I was doing Slimming World. I didn't lose a pound at Slimming World because I wasn't weighing the potatoes.' She laughs. 'My ancestors were survivors. Our DNA said, 'Hang on to every bit of fat, you're going to need it to get through the war'.' [ Summer bodies: Your body is not a 'before'. It's not a problem to be solved Opens in new window ] But a point came when she realised enough was enough. She didn't want her energy taken up with worrying about food or weight. And she didn't think other people needed to be so burdened either. 'Have you ever done exposure therapy?' she asks. 'I originally did exposure therapy for my arachnophobia, because it was so horrendous. But in the live shows I do, I do a whole section on exposure therapy.' In this case, the 'exposure' is O Connor putting on a bikini and learning that the world continues to turn. 'We discover in the show: nobody's dying at the sight of my size. Everyone is alive: everyone is okay,' she says, laughing. 'It's just a person in a bikini, it's just a body. Exposure therapy is the way forward: the more we see people in different bodies, the less we're going, 'Oh my God, they're so brave!'' No matter what any algorithm spams you with, says O Connor, you can train yourself towards a healthier self-image and it will bring benefits. 'The voice is there, but you don't have to listen to it. I've found [being] brutally vulnerable and honest about my body is freeing. It's given me confidence because I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not.' Follow Riona O Connor on Instagram @rionaoconnor_ and , where details for her spring 2026 shows in Ireland will soon be announced. The helpline is at 01-2107906, or email alex@
CBC
3 days ago
- Health
- CBC
Dieting culture stole years of my life. Then, I unlocked the key to break free
This First Person article is the experience of Natasha Ngindi, who lives in Saskatoon. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. For most of my life, I believed my body was a problem. I believed that if I could just lose weight, everything would be better. I'd be more confident, I'd be happy and I'd finally feel good enough. So I dieted. I exercised obsessively. I lost weight. And for a moment, I thought I had won. But the truth? Diet culture stole years of my life before I broke free. As a child in South Africa, I grew up surrounded by family, culture and food that felt like love. There was no counting calories, no "good" or "bad" foods. We just ate, and we enjoyed it. I never once thought about calories and I never thought about the size of my body. I moved, played, danced and ate with joy. But when I was eight, my family moved to Canada. That was the moment everything changed. I realized that I didn't fit into Western beauty standards that seemed worlds apart from the beauty standards in South Africa at that point in time. I was the Black girl in a mostly white school in Brampton, Ont., and I became hyper-aware of my size, my skin colour and just how "different" I was. I quickly learned that I was the bigger girl in a society that praised thinness. WATCH | Natasha Ngindi shares her journey to self-acceptance: Saskatoon woman shares her journey from dieting to food freedom 2 days ago After moving from South Africa as a child, Natasha Ngindi felt the pressure to fit in with Canadian beauty standards. She spent years dieting and cycling through weight loss and gain before getting the help she needed to change her relationship with food and embrace her body. Now, she's helping others find food freedom. Diet culture crept into my head, whispering that I wasn't enough. I started feeling insecure and fearing loneliness because I didn't feel I was good enough. I used to love movement — figure skating, dancing and even climbing trees. But as I got older, I felt like spaces for movement weren't made for bodies like mine. So I stopped. Food was something I used to enjoy without guilt. But here in Canada, I learned that thinner meant better. I went on my first diet in high school. It started small — cutting out certain foods here and there and working out more. But then it became an extreme obsession. I was counting calories, tracking everything and skipping meals. I believed that if I could just be smaller, I'd finally be accepted. I even fell for the idea that my worth was tied to my weight. And when I lost 50 pounds, suddenly, people noticed and praised me. They told me I "looked amazing." That I had "glowed up." I thought: "This is it. I've finally made it." I truly believed I was the healthiest I'd ever been. With all the praise, I thought I could help others as well, so I decided to study nutrition science in university, thinking I could teach people how to lose weight just like I did. I thought I was happy. But the truth? I was exhausted. Nobody tells you this, but when your confidence is built on weight loss, it's never enough. The fear of gaining it back consumes you. And like most people, I couldn't keep the weight I lost off, because our bodies are designed to fight against restriction. Despite this fact, I tried harder. More diets. More guilt. More shame. About three years into studying nutrition science at the University of Saskatchewan, I hit my breaking point. That's when I sought professional help and met a dietitian who introduced me to intuitive eating. This self-care approach encourages people to focus on listening to their body's hunger, fullness and satisfaction cues rather than following external diet rules. Learning about intuitive eating changed everything for me. My dietitian helped me realize that I was spending more time thinking about food than actually living my life. I was skipping meals to save calories or punishing myself for eating cake. And for what? I asked myself: "Is this how I want to live forever?" The answer was no. I deleted my diet apps. I stopped labelling food as good or bad, and I let myself eat what I loved. For the first time in years, I listened to my body instead of punishing it. I also rediscovered joyful movement — working out because it felt good, not because I wanted to shrink myself. I started dancing again. I became a Zumba instructor. Slowly but surely, I started to feel free. After spending years studying and working in nutrition science, I knew I wanted to help others. I started sharing my outlook with others through social media, encouraging people to make peace with food, love their bodies and find joy in movement — free from diet culture. I am also trying to inspire others to practice the self-compassion I wish I'd shown myself when I first moved to Canada. I know now that my body is enough, just as it is. And so is yours.
New York Times
02-07-2025
- Health
- New York Times
The Unrepentant Return of Christian Diet Culture
'Less Prozac, more protein.' That quote, uttered by the wellness influencer Alex Clark, jumped out at me from coverage of the Young Women's Leadership Summit, a gathering of around 3,000 hosted by Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit organization focused on the next generation. Clark went on to discuss the melding of diet, exercise, religion and politics that, as she sees it, defines the conservative brand for 20- and 30-something women. 'The girls who lift weights, eat clean, have their hormones balanced, have their lives together' are right wing, the 'cool kids' and 'mainstream.' By contrast, liberals are 'TikTok activists with five shades of autism, panic attacks and a ring light.' My first reaction: Enough about protein (that macronutrient needs a rest) and grass-fed beef from Whole Foods is neither Republican nor Democrat. I lift weights, married and got pregnant in my 20s; yet by Turning Point standards, I am basically a Marxist career harpy. But my second reaction is that our ever-present diet culture once again has a conservative, Christian bent to it. I had recently seen some social media postings about sinfulness, gluttony and 'SkinnyTok,' and since Trump's re-election there have been magazine articles tying thinness to conservative values and the idea that women should take up less physical space in the public sphere. But it was the explicit pushing of diet and exercise at the Young Women's Leadership Summit that tied it all together for me: religiosity, conservatism, the Make America Healthy Again movement and diet culture. Despite rumblings about 'body positivity' that peaked about 10 years ago, for decades the white American beauty standard has been thin. As part of the focus on body positivity in the 2010s, it became unfashionable to talk about skinniness as a goal, so it just got rebranded as wellness, health or self-care, though the pressures to conform remained the same. In the '90s and '00s, thinness had a debauched, libertine air to it; if anything, I guess it was default coded as liberal, but it wasn't really tied to electoral politics or health. The image that comes to me is of the model Kate Moss at the famously muddy Glastonbury Music Festival in 2005, where her uniform was tiny shorts, Wellington boots, a troubled rock star boyfriend on her arm and a cigarette dangling from her mouth. The subtext was always that the skinniness came from cocaine and dancing all night, or simply not eating. Many women of my vintage can quote a relevant line from 'The Devil Wears Prada' (2006): 'I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Times
01-07-2025
- Health
- Times
M&S releases ‘punishment juice' for health-conscious consumers
Marks & Spencer has been criticised for calling its latest health drink 'punishment juice'. The retailer released the seven-vegetable, cold-pressed drink last week but marketing experts said the name felt like 'a throwback to an outdated diet culture'. The 250ml bottles, which contain the 'superfoods' spirulina and hemp, as well as cucumber, spinach, celery, lime, kale, aloe vera, mint and parsley juice, became available in stores on Wednesday at a price of £2.25. M&S said the product was 'fresh-tasting' and 'healthy' and described the unusual name as 'disruptive' but others accused the company of being irresponsible. Rebecca Hopwood, the director of the marketing agency Youbee Media, said: 'Framing something genuinely healthy that's one of your five a day as 'punishment' undermines the positive steps many people and brands are trying to take towards better overall physical and mental health.
CNN
19-06-2025
- Health
- CNN
Can Weight Loss Drugs and Body Positivity Coexist? - The Assignment with Audie Cornish - Podcast on CNN Audio
Can Weight Loss Drugs and Body Positivity Coexist? The Assignment with Audie Cornish 34 mins Just a few years ago, 'body positivity' was everywhere. Then came Ozempic. Audie talks with Virginia Sole-Smith, who spent the past decade writing about 'diet culture.' She weighs in on the future of the body positivity in an Ozempic world, and whether the movement and the revolutionary new class of weight loss drugs can coexist. Virginia Sole Smith's book is called ' Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. '
