A new wave of diet culture: How GLP-1s are dredging up old image standards

Nothing made me—a woman about one decade into her eating disorder recovery—more excited than the body-positive and body-neutral movements of the 2010s. Finally, we were being shown a diverse range of bodies on TV, in movies, in ads, and everywhere else the media touches.

But today? My occasional Reddit scroll is interrupted by ads for GLP-1s.

Headlines are declaring “the 2000s are back,” referring to an era of heroin-chic aspiration.

Images abound of celebrities who are suddenly unrecognizably thin.

As I’m accosted with these images and words, I can’t help but feel like I’m in a time warp. I ask myself, “Wait, what happened to learning to accept our bodies as they are? What’s behind this reimagined and repackaged obsession with thinness?”

I waver from confusion to grief to anger, unsure where to place my feelings but certain that none of this feels right.

In light of GLP-1s shifting our interests from body acceptance to body shrinking, I’m riddled with fear. What will the consequences be for people who use these drugs recreationally? What if they don’t have a medical need, but simply want to be thinner? And what does this mean for the future of body image?

I’ve said before on this blog that diet culture does not experience latent periods—it simply adapts and re-emerges as something different. So in this post, I want to explore:

• how diet culture is repurposing its main messaging pillars,

• what’s being purposefully left out of the conversation,

• how this shift affects people, both in active eating disorders as well as recovery, and

• how to ground yourself in recovery amid the noise.

What GLP-1s do—and what they don’t do

I’m not a scientist and I’m not a physician, but I have done my fair share of research on GLP-1s, especially their impacts on eating disorders.

But first, back to basics.

According to a recent webinar hosted by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) called “The GLP-1 Era: Navigating Weight Loss Drugs and Disordered Eating Risks”, GLP-1s are approved in low doses for diabetes and high doses for weight loss. They work to reduce hunger, increase fullness, and decrease “food noise,” that is, constant, intrusive thoughts about food.

It’s important to note a nuance here: some very limited studies have shown GLP-1s to be effective in reducing binge-eating episodes, which may be tied to biological pathways. But this mixed research, based on small sample sizes, lacks sufficient long-term data to substantiate this claim.

Per NEDA: “The only thing we understand with long-term use is with type 2 diabetes.”

When diet culture goes medical

Diet culture has continually toed the line between suggesting behavior alterations when it comes to food and taking medical action to achieve desired results. For decades, weight-loss companies have brought on “experts” to espouse the benefits and safety of medically supported solutions, and as consumers, the onus has been on us to determine what’s being advised versus sold.

What was once dieting has now become chronic disease management, especially with the introduction of “diseases” like obesity. (If you want to dive into this can of worms, check out this post from Christy Harrison’s Substack, Rethinking Wellness.)

Pharma ads of people in smaller bodies and reinforcement of weight loss as medically necessary perpetuates the idea that thinner is better, but now the necessity of these drugs is being argued as a matter of a person’s health, which makes their claims harder to scrutinize.

This insidious rebrand can leave people at a crossroads: if they are indeed trapped in bingeing behavior and there’s a new drug that can help ease their symptoms, but also causes weight loss, what does this mean for both their physical and mental health?

What’s missing from the GLP-1 conversation

If you were to ask someone on GLP-1s about the benefits of the drug, what might they say? That they’ve quieted the food noise. That they’ve lost weight they never thought they could lose. That their bingeing episodes have decreased. But what might they leave out?

With less hunger, patients might forgo meals, resulting in nutritional deficiencies, nausea, and fatigue. They may lose muscle, their concentration may suffer, and they may experience uncomfortable gastrointestinal (GI) issues.

Although we’re aware of GLP-1s’ long-term effects on patients with diabetes, researchers don’t have as much data for weight-loss doses, which limits our understanding of long-term use.

According to research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, “We don’t yet know the long-term consequences of sustained GLP-1 receptor activation in the brain. One unanswered question is whether long-term use could lead to reduced responsiveness over time. Long-term studies are still needed.”

This incomplete narrative serves marketing strategies well, but it doesn’t erase the real-life stories from patients.

At their core, GLP-1s have been shown to influence biology, but they do not address emotional, sociocultural, or psychological drivers of weight loss, like self-worth, food morality, and diet culture messaging.

What this means for eating disorder recovery

Recovery teaches us how to trust the body, nourish ourselves, and decenter food from our lives—all while attempting to ignore messaging that tells us to suppress and control. Amid what feels like a powerful cultural shift back toward glorifying thinness, eating disorder recovery can feel like a radical act.

Those with histories of disordered eating may see GLP-1s as an easy route to old behaviors and a familiar opportunity to exert control over the body. But even if a patient loses weight and considers themselves “cured” from a lifetime of body shame, the drugs don’t address this shame, internalized weight stigma, or fatphobia.

This can be incredibly confusing, not only for people in recovery but also for users without a history of disordered eating. But feeling lost in this mess of messaging only shines a light on a greater societal conundrum. It doesn’t signal a recovery misstep.

Another step in diet culture evolution

Diet culture has adapted, and it will continue to do so. So long as we continue to find something wrong with our bodies, even if we’re not the originator of these beliefs, we’ll be fed solutions that are faster, easier, and less expensive than the last.

But participating in this cycle is optional. We can choose to believe we’re damaged, deformed, or needing to be fixed, or we can learn how to be enough as we are, which isn’t only radical, it’s beautiful.

---

Pause & Prompt

When I hear GLP-1 medications discussed or in ads, what emotions come up?

---

More posts like this:

---