Let’s call diet culture what it is: the most brilliant, insidious, and destructive system ever created to keep powerful women playing small.
Its entire business model is based on one single, pervasive lie: that your most important work in this world is to shrink your body.
Think about that. Of all the things you could be doing with your brilliant mind, your formidable energy, and your one precious life, this system has convinced you that the most noble pursuit is to take up less space.
It’s a con. A masterclass in distraction.
Because while you’re counting calories, waging a war against carbs, and spending your precious cognitive bandwidth agonizing over a few pounds, you’re not building your empire. You’re not writing your book. You’re not leading your movement. You’re not fully present for your life.
You’re shrinking. And the world, your work, your very soul is desperate for you to expand.
The Unpaid, Full-Time Job of Shrinking
Have you ever actually audited what this project of “shrinking” costs you? Not in money, but in life force.
It’s the cognitive bandwidth you burn every single day on the endless food math. The planning, the negotiating, the guilt-ridden replays. That’s brainpower that could be solving actual problems.
It’s the emotional energy you leak into the drama of the scale. The shame, the frustration, the anxiety. That’s resilience you could be using to navigate the real challenges of your life and work.
It’s the physical vitality you sacrifice by constantly being in a state of restriction. You can’t fuel a revolution on rice cakes and regret.
This isn’t an accident. It’s the design. A culture that is deeply uncomfortable with female power has a vested interest in you voluntarily diminishing your own.
The Real Choice Was Never “Thin” or “Fat”
The choice was always constriction or expansion.
Constriction is a life lived in the narrow confines of the diet. It’s a small, managed, anxious life, policed by external rules and the tyranny of the scale.
Expansion is a life lived from your center. It’s a big, messy, creative, powerful life, guided by your own internal wisdom and fueled by real energy. It’s a life where you are taking up all the space you were meant to occupy.
To expand, your body, on a deep, biological level, must feel safe.
And dieting, restriction, and self-criticism are the very definition of unsafe to your ancient nervous system. It perceives a famine. A threat. And a body in a state of threat cannot create, it cannot innovate, it cannot lead. It can only contract and survive.
This is why the first step out of this trap isn’t about food. It’s about safety. It’s about regulating your nervous system so your body can finally come out of hiding.
You Weren’t Born to Be Small
Look at your ambitions. Your dreams. The people you love. The change you want to make in the world.
None of them are served by you being smaller.
All of them are waiting for you to be bigger. To be more you. To be fully expanded, fully fueled, and fully present.
The most radical, rebellious, and world-changing act you can take today is to consciously fire yourself from the job of shrinking.
Stop shrinking. Start expanding. Your life’s work is waiting.
If you’re done with playing small and this is landing in your bones, then we’re on the same page. This is the only conversation worth having. If you’re curious about what it looks like to actually do this work, you can find more info at www.cetfreedom.com. Or just send me a message. I’m here for the real talk.
