National Eating Disorder Awareness Week

“In the United States alone, 30 million Americans will suffer from an eating disorder at some point in their lives” (NEDA, 2026). As a mental health therapist, I often hear eating disorders being minimized and misunderstood. Eating disorders are complex mental health conditions that affect emotional wellbeing, physical health, relationships, and self-worth. They are not choices and they are not signs of weakness.

Body Dissatisfaction: The Seed Beneath the Struggle

While not everyone with body dissatisfaction develops an eating disorder, nearly everyone with an eating disorder experiences body dissatisfaction.

Body dissatisfaction is more than disliking how you look. It can involve constant comparison, body checking (mirror-gazing), harsh self-criticism, and not feeling “good enough” in your own skin.

There is a powerful video called Poodle Science that I often think about when talking about body image. In the video, society suddenly decides that poodles are the ideal. Other dogs- bulldogs, dachshunds, greyhounds- begin comparing themselves to poodles. They diet, they feel inadequate, and they try to reshape themselves into something they were never meant to be. It is no different when it comes to human beauty standards. Cultural ideals shift over decades, and bodies that were once celebrated become criticized. The truth? Most of us are trying to become poodles when we are built differently.

The Word “Diet” Isn’t What We Think It Is

Here’s something interesting: the word diet is actually a noun. The dictionary defines it as: the kinds of food a person habitually eats- their nourishment (Merriam-Webster, 2026). But somewhere along the way, diet stopped meaning nourishment and started meaning restriction. Now when we hear “diet,” we might think of meal plans, elimination rules, good foods and bad foods. We think of programs designed to shape bodies into something smaller, tighter, more acceptable. Most diet plans are built like a one-size-fits-all. They assume everybody has the same needs, the same metabolism, the same medical history, the same stress levels, the same hormones, etc.

But bodies are not mass-produced. Your body has its own story, its own genetics, and its own nervous system. When we try to force everybody into the same template, many people don’t just “fail” the diet, they internalize that failure and shame grows.

Therapy can be a wonderful way to help aid body dissatisfaction. Through deconstructing diet culture beliefs, practicing body neutrality and body compassion, reducing comparison behaviors, and developing identity outside of appearance, we can shift the focus from how our body looks to how it functions and supports us; because we were never meant to all be poodles.

Take Care,

Stephanie