The Sunday Session with Francesca RudkinLotta Dann: journalist and author pushes back against diet culture in new book Mrs D is Not on a Diet
Kiwi author Lotta Dann is no stranger to sharing her struggles with the public, and she's turned her attention to diet culture in her latest release.
In 2018, Lotta shared her experience with alcohol and opened up about ditching the booze for good in her popular blog and subsequent books.
Her focus then shifted to her weight - and she's since detailed her experience with extreme dieting and obsessing over calories, as well as her subsequent recovery in her new book Mrs D is Not on a Diet.
"It was just so full-on, but it worked and I just got so skinny and the praise - it was incredible. So I kept going and then I just couldn't make it work, and I tried every trick in the book, and I couldn't make it work."
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Dan is no stranger to publicly sharing her life. In twenty eighteen, Lotter shared her experience with alcohol, admitting she was an alcoholic. She has since become a go to voice on alcohol issues and living sober. But after quitting alcohol, her focus switched to her weight. After some weight gain, Lotter discovered an online diet guru. What followed was two years of extreme dieting and obsessive behavior around food. Lotter has written about her very personal journey with diet culture in her new book Missus d is Not on a Diet and Lotter Dan joins me now from Wellington. Good morning, Lotter.
Mor Dina, How are you really good?
So nice to talk to you. I love this memoir based approach you use. It's brave, it's personal, it's so relatable. Can you set the scene for us? How did sobriety affect your diet and body?
I mean, now that I look back, having been through the nightmare, that was this extreme diet? Not that badly, honestly, it was you know a little bit of weight gain because I was turning to food. When I would normally be having bubbles to celebrate, or you know, whiskey to commiserate, or red wine because it's Friday, I would have a foody treat instead. So I was putting on a little bit of weight, but not extreme. I just had this constant which I'd had all my life, you know, sort of paranoia I suppose about putting on weight and not being super thin. And this diet guru just sort of entered my world at the perfect time, and she was talking about food addiction, and I thought, well, that's me because I've had alcohol addiction. And next minute I'm down a rabbit hole of misery and hell, which I've now for some reason, completely exposed to everyone in a book.
Well, we very much appreciate it. Tell us a little bit about this diet that you're on. What did it entail.
It was cutting out entire food groups, so no flour, no sugar, and it was no snacking rigidly so only ever allowing any food to pass through my lips three times a day. And then this was the final step, was the weighing all of your portion sizes. So those three meals I had to weigh and We're talking weighing the car at, weighing the cherry tomato, weighing the oat milk. So it was just so full on, but it worked, and I just got so skinny, and you know, the praise it was just, oh my god, it was incredible. So I kept going and then you know, I just couldn't just couldn't make it work. It stopped working, and I tried every drick in the book and I couldn't make it work.
I was going to say, how easy was that to maintain? Because you did manage to maintain it for a couple of years, which is quite impressive.
Well, that's what happens. And because because even though my whole life I had been influenced by this diet culture that tells us we need to be skinny, I actually hadn't done a really extreme diet before. So my body was in a bit of shock and just kind of dropping the weight and letting me do it. But then what I now know is that biology fights back. It thinks that my body literally thinks it's in a famine, and it starts working to combat that. And so you know, it turns against you or for you in the form of cravings and then binging, so physical cravings, mental and emotional cravings and obsession, and then I was just I just could not stick to the rules, and man, I tried everything, but I just couldn't. And then I started waking up to the fact that this is the most lightly outcome of diets. And then I got angry.
So I shouldn't laugh, but I love the way you're just so wonderfully honest about it because and this is the thing, I think it's so relatable when you started gobbling on that diet. What impact did that have on you kind of mentally, what kind of in a dialogue was going on as you were struggling to stick to this weight and determined to remain super skinny.
I mean, it was terrible and it was really depressing, honestly, and I can't overstate that. And it might sound people might think I'm over exaggerating, but a day after day, when you let yourself down, you make a promise, I'm not going to snack, I'm not going to have, you know, the biscuits, I'm not going to eat popcorn when we go to the movies, and then you do, and then you feel guilty, and then you have this terrible kind of flip flop in your mind of I want to do this, but I'm not, but I'm not doing it, and it slowly erodes your sort of sense of self and the shame and the guilt. And it was so reminiscent of my drinking days, the end of my drinking days, and here I was supposedly outwardly this fabulous, you know, achieving, sober person, and yet I was doing secretive, shameful behaviors around food and it just killed me. It was awful. And when I wrote that chapter in the book, the Painful Chapter, my editor actually said to me, you know, this is a bit depressing. Can we lighten it up? And I got tearful when I read a note and I said to her, I actually need this to read depressing, because it was. And it underpins everything that came after that, and the fight that I've been doing in my head to push back against dark culture and accept my body which has fat on it.
At what point did you go enough is enough?
It was kind of a slowish. There wasn't aha moment like with the Booze where I went enough enough and I stopped drinking that day and I never picked up again, it was a slower kind of awakening to this anti diet movement and all of the wonderful people out there who are already critiquing and pushing back against dark culture, and that kind of energized me and fascinated me. And so you know, I slowly kind of got to that point of enough is enough. I'm going to jump off the diet cliff and just fight back and start eating. But it's so much harder because you can't just stop eating. You have to moderate, and you have to eat every day, and so it's a more of a complex journey. Really. I reckon stopping diving and stopping drinking and just learning how to make peace with food and sort of trust your body and accept your body and all the rest of it. It's ongoing. I'm not cured. I mean, I write at the end of the book, I'm not like the perfect person telling you how to fix this. It's an ongoing thing. But I've got some techniques now and they work. I have far fewer sort of shame spirals or bad body image days than I used to, but they do still come.
Lottter.
What did you learn about diet culture that shocked you the most?
It's just based on lies. It's based on lies. The lie that diets work eighty five to ninety five percent of the time, and this has been proven again and again through research. Diets do not work because your body fights, and the most likely outcome of a diet is that you're going to gain back not only all the weight you lost, but probably more, and that usually happens two to three years after you started. So that's the first big lie. And then the second big lie is that fat is always unhealthy, and it's not. There are a lot of fat people who are really healthy, and we just look at a fat body and we think that's an unhealthy, weak world person and it's just not true. And so there's all these gloriously you know, strong and amazing people who are fat, who live these diminished lives because they're being judged for it, and it just breaks my heart. So yeah, it's just it's an absolute crock of bull and we all need to be waking up and pushing back.
And the other assumption that we have about weight is that if you're skinny, you know, means you're more successful.
Well that's right, and yeah, and we automatically assume a skinny person is super healthy. When I was really skinny on that diet, I was the most obsessed and messed up about food than I've ever been. I mean, I was literally twenty four to seven just thinking about it and controlling it. I wasn't healthy at all. I wasn't freely living and connecting with all the people around me. So, you know, But now I don't want to demonize people who are ask any It's really complicated and it's really individual. But I just think we have a kind of blanket belief around fat which is really just not fear and needs to change.
Should we comment on somebody's weight, Like, if you've got a friend who you know has been working really hard, they've lost a bit of weight, is it appropriate in twenty twenty five to make a comment about how good they look or how fit they look.
I want to say no. Yeah, I want to say no, because you don't know. They might be really unwell. They might be really mentally unwell, they might be really physically unwell. You just don't know what's going on that's caused that person to lose weight. There's ways that you can compliment without it being about the weight loss. You can say, look really strong, I love your outfit, your hair's glowing. You can compliment people, but the automatic and look, I've done that, and I still in my head sometimes I go, oh, they look good, you know, like a celebrity, and then I have to go no, that's the conditioning that just weight loss is always the most attractive thing. It's very hard to combat because it's so deeply embedded.
A lot of without diminishing your story, there are women out there and men dealing with that on a larger scale. Shall we say, what impact does dark culture have on them?
Well, like I said, it diminishes their whole experience of life. And I interview people in the book who talk to this. They are constantly feeling bad about themselves, beating up on themselves, not putting on togs, not going swimming, not moving like doing the dance classes that they used to lob or the sport because they get looks or they just feel self conscious. So it does just diminish people's lives. And it's that, like I say, is heartbreaking. Look and there are you also can't say that being fat all the time is a good thing, Like there are health risks associated with fatness, but what they now say is that actually fitness is the key rather than fatness. So if you are worried or if the doctor, well, I mean think about what the doctor's telling you anyway, but just think about moving your body. Don't think about weight loss. Think about your heart. Think about moving your body, getting your heart raised up, and that actually is probably going to have more benefit to your health than focusing on trying to lose weight.
Look, we're middle aged women lotter dealing with a few lumpy and wobbly bits, and I'm pretty relaxed about that. But you know, I've got a just turned sixteen year old daughter growing up with social media, and she says to me that it doesn't matter where you go on social media or the Internet and things, your algorithm will have a diet for you, and it's hidden as fashion tips. I mean, it's just really tricky for younger generations. Two, isn't it?
Oh? It is? And I interview this wonderful young woman, Heath in my book, who talks about her eating disorder and how social media influenced her. You know what I eat in a day? Videos she was watching and it was like a smoothie and a letter, sleep and it just got in her head age fourteen and sent her off on this track. Look, what I would say is, yes, the algorithm and you know, capitalism and adds for this net that's unhealthy will find its way in. But you can train your algorithm. You can actively seek out the good content, and there are amazing content creators who are creating sort of anti diet body positive or body neutral, which is the other thing. You don't have to love your body every day. You just have to be grateful for it. It is what it is. It's the least like one of my lovely favorite lines is my body is the least interesting thing about me. It's just there. It enables me to do what I do. So yeah, I would say find accounts, follow them, like, watch the videos all the way through, so the algorithm starts to learn you're interested in there and you can shift some of what you're getting through your social media feeds.
Lotter, thank you for the honesty once again, and the depressing episodes and the uplifting chapters as well and everything. Really appreciate nice to talk to you today.
Thank you for having me on.
That was a lot of down there. Missus D is not on a Diet is in stores now.
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen live to News Talks the b from nine am Sunday, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
