Demi Lovato Pens a Powerful Instagram Post Condemning Diet Culture: ‘I Don’t Count Calories Anymore’
Photo via ddlovato/Instagram
For many people, the past year has been a time for immense change–sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. It appears, however, that Demi Lovato has been using the pandemic to focus on positive growth.
On Monday, Demi Lovato shared a post to Instagram telling her fans that she “accidentally lost weight” by unsubscribing from diet culture.
On Instagram, Demi posted a video showing off her healthy-looking body accompanied by a lengthy text describing her food journey.
“Accidentally lost weight,” read the text. “I don’t count calories anymore, I don’t over-exercise anymore, I don’t restrict or purge. And I especially don’t live life according to diet culture…And I’ve actually lost weight. This is a different experience, but I feel full. Not of food, but of divine wisdom and cosmic guidance.”
She captioned the post: “I’m full of peace, serenity, joy, and love today.”
Demi posted the moving health update on the heels of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, a time when she’s been posting a lot of information with her followers.
On Sunday, she educated her followers about orthorexia, a disorder in which the person affected has an “obsession with proper or ‘healthful’ eating.”
On Monday, Demi also posted a video decrying the widespread use of photo filters that distort a person’s natural appearance. Demi wrote: “Unrealistic beauty expectations with these filters got me like: ‘But can I always look like this?’ ‘My skin is not this smooth.’ ‘Wait, do I need a smaller nose?'”
She added: “Thank god I’m realizing this now and I’m sorry for using them without realizing how dangerous they were before. Thank god these weren’t around when I was 13, but also…how are teens supposed to learn how to accept themselves with this shit?”
Back in December, Demi gave her fans a peek into the beginning of her eating disorder recovery by posting a photo celebrating her stretch marks.
“I used to genuinely believe recovery from an eating disorder wasn’t real. That everyone was faking or secretly relapsing behind closed doors,” she wrote. “‘Surely she throws up here and there’, ‘She can’t POSSIBLY accept her cellulite’… those we’re just a few of the things that I used to tell myself growing up.”
She continued: “I’m so grateful that I can honestly say for the first time in my life – my dietitian looked at me and said ‘This is what eating disorder recovery looks like.'”
