Don't Let Diet Culture Stop You From Feasting This Thanksgiving

Each year after the holiday season comes to a close, diet culture looms as the new year approaches. Many resolutions involve dieting, and with it often comes anxiety and guilt over weight gain or eating habits.

But author and fat studies scholar Virgie Tovar is encouraging everyone to stop that cycle, which she says not only is personally damaging but also fuels fatphobia.

Fatphobia — the fear of fatness — is “a form of bigotry that essentially says that fat people are inferior and that weight gain is a sign of moral inferiority,” she says. Diet culture — a culture that equates weight loss and thinness with being healthy — exists because of this fear, she explains.

“A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of our food restriction and our fear of food really comes from the terror that we’ve been taught to