Are YOU a Brainwashed Captive of the Diet Industry?

I just heard my friend complain to another friend about her "thunder thighs". "It's time to go back onto Weight Watchers", she told her. I shook my head remembering how many times she's been on WW's and it didn't keep her weight off.

That's when the memory of Patty Hearst came back to me. She had been kidnapped by a terrorist group. In order to survive the ordeal, her unconscious mind made her develop a bond with her captors. She took on their cause and believed what they told her. She even went to FIGHT for them! She was a brainwashed. Psychologists have a name for that reaction: Stockholm Syndrome.

I realized that's very much what has happened to women who try diet after diet because of their intense dislike for their body size. Women take on the pronouncements of their captors: The Diet Industry. Women are convinced they must constantly diet to be acceptable to others AND themselves!

1. The Diet Industry aggressively promotes the idea that any extra weight is unacceptable - and then you start believing you are unattractive and unlovable and start hating your body.
2. The Diet Industry tells you that you did this to yourself by over-eating and not exercising enough. - You forget that you don't typically over-eat and you are physically active and blame yourself.
3. You Diet Industry captors convince you that you will die from being overweight - You ignore the actual evidence from non-biased sources who tell you otherwise. In fact, heavier people who are fit live longer than underweight people (from the CDC).
4. The Diet Industry convinces you that it's your fault dieting hasn't allowed you to lose and maintain weight loss. You believe it even though practically every source says that 95-98% of dieters regain lost weight and add additional weight as a natural reaction to a slowed down metabolism created by dieting

“When a victim is showing admiration toward their abuser or refuses to escape the relationship due to the emotional bond that they have formed with them, it is essential to help this person.” (https://www.theravive.com/therapedia/stockholm-syndrome).

We've become attached to the belief we must diet to be thin- it's been conditioned into females practically from birth.

How to Escape the Diet Industry Captors Brainwashing

It takes time and willpower to reject the diet mentality which causes you to stress eat and diet:

• Read Myth-busing information that teaches you the truth about how dieting actually ends up causing weight gain. 
• Avoid looking at and admiring thin role models. Look for heavier role models and notice and admire them for their confidence and appeal.
• Develop new associations by finding others like you to form a support group.
• Transform negative self-statements about your body by substituting positive statements as soon as you hear yourself. Be kind and compassionate to yourself. 

It takes time, but you can escaper the Stockholm Syndrome and have the freedom to stop emotional eating and be free from food restrictions.