Last year, I was having dinner with a group of friends, and one of them was telling us how she started walking for better health. She felt better, had better stamina, and had lost a few pounds. I listened quietly, but inevitably it came down to what it always comes down to — a healthy-weight person telling an obese person that if they want to lose weight, all they have to do is eat less and move more. As if it was that simple.
For years, I thought something was wrong with me. I’d start a diet full of hope, follow the rules, grit my teeth through the hunger, lose a few pounds… and then crash straight into the familiar wall of exhaustion, overwhelm, and quiet shame. And every time, I blamed my willpower instead of questioning the system that kept spitting me out.
Diet culture is the belief system that ties your worth, health, and success to your weight and your ability to control food. It promotes rigid rules, “good” and “bad” foods, and the idea that discipline fixes everything, while ignoring real bodies, real lives, and real biology. Instead of supporting health, it creates shame, exhaustion, and an endless feeling of failure. Diet culture doesn’t teach people how to care for themselves. It teaches them how to override their needs.
But here’s the truth that took me way too long to learn:
Diet culture didn’t fail you because you’re weak. Diet culture failed you because it was never designed for obese women in the first place.
Let’s break it down in plain English.
1. Diet culture was built on speed, not science
Extreme diets, staples of diet culture, promise fast results because “slow and steady” doesn’t sell. But when your body is carrying a significant amount of weight, losing it at high speed is like slamming the brakes on a semi truck. Something is going to snap, and eventually it does.
Rapid weight loss isn’t safe or sustainable. It triggers:
- Metabolic slowdown
When weight drops too quickly, your body senses a threat and shifts into energy-conservation mode. It burns fewer calories, increases hunger, and makes weight loss harder over time. This is a protective response, not a personal failure. - Intense hunger signals
- Hormonal chaos
- Muscle loss
- Rebound weight gain
Your body isn’t failing you, it’s protecting you.
2. Diet culture ignores the reality of living in a larger body
When your body is heavier, everything takes more energy. Everything. Walking, stairs, standing up, getting in and out of a car… all of it. And every diet that tells you to “just move more” without acknowledging the lived experience of weight, pain, mobility challenges and fatigue isn’t helping. It’s fat shaming.
You deserve compassion. What you got were commandments.
3. Diet culture treats obesity as if it were a character flaw.
Diet culture loves storylines where people “get their act together” and magically transform. So do people. But the truth is, medicine sees obesity as a complex condition with biological, emotional, social, environmental, and historical factors, among others. Diet culture flattened all of that into one big insulting conclusion:
“If you really wanted it, you’d just do it.” Honestly, that kind of thinking keeps too many women stuck.
4. Diet culture punishes rest, nuance, and humanity
Those all-or-nothing plans? They teach you that a single skipped workout is a failure. That a slice of cake means you’re “off track.” That life should bend to your food plan instead of the other way around.
Nobody can live like that. Not forever.
5. What actually works for women with obesity is the opposite of all that
If diet culture is the toxic boyfriend shouting “try harder,” then what works is the wise friend quietly saying “start where you are.”
Women with obesity don’t need punishment. We don’t need 75 rules. We don’t need a meal plan printed on a color-coded spreadsheet.
What we need is:
- Small, doable habits
- Gentle progress
- Movement that makes your joints sigh with relief instead of scream
- Consistency that fits into real life
- A community of women who are living this struggle every day and get it
- Tools for mindset, not just menus
- A pace that your nervous system can actually tolerate
When you build from this foundation, something wild happens. Your body starts healing, your confidence steadies, your habits stack, and your shame softens. The weight begins to shift in a way that doesn’t break you in the process.
6. Why Health Warriors Tribe is different
I created Health Warriors because I need a place like this. A place that spoke honestly about obesity without judgment, with women who understand how heavy the journey can feel and doesn’t demand perfection or punish simply being human.
I built it because I got tired of feeling like I was the broken one. I wanted a space where women like me could finally breathe, slow down, and approach health in a way that feels human. Not perfect, just possible.
Inside the Health Warriors Tribe, we don’t rush. We don’t chase diet trends. We don’t pretend change is easy or linear. We build slowly, steadily, wisely, because that’s how real transformation happens. And those small steps you think don’t matter? They save lives quietly, powerfully, and consistently.
If diet culture left you feeling defeated, exhausted, or broken, hear this clearly. You were never the problem. The approach was.
You deserve an approach that treats you with respect, dignity, and compassion. You deserve simplicity, hope, and a community that refuses to give up on you.
We’re in this together, step by step.