To give you some context as to how I became passionate about nutrition and challenging diet culture, it’s probably best to start right at the beginning. The privilege of growing up in a household where I enjoyed home-cooked meals the majority of the time contributed to me gaining a love of food from an early age. My father had always cooked as a hobby, and after finding himself assuming the role of the stay-at-home dad, my two younger siblings and I could always count on an interesting evening meal from a multitude of different cuisines. How could disordered eating have reared its ugly head from that seemingly peachy situation?

After losing his mother to pneumonia and a brother to suicide within days of each other, my father’s relationship with alcohol became even more challenging for us. My memory of the full timeline is a little hazy, but there are several things still vivid to this day; ones that I feel probably affected me more than my parents’ subsequent divorce.

As the years went on, evening mealtimes became increasingly difficult. Usually I’d get food, but my father’s once impeccable judgement of appropriate spice levels went steadily out of the window. Punished if I didn’t eat it, I grew a tolerance to chilli like no other child in my white, middle-class neighbourhood. Unpleasant as that was, it was still better than the other days when I’d be sent to bed without any food at all. Arguing never worked.

I decided that my only option was to have food stashed away so I didn’t have to wait until my mother got home late from work to eat something. As a pre-teen child I wasn’t exactly rolling in pocket money, so I resorted to slightly less legal ways of ensuring I didn’t go hungry.

There was a corner shop on my walk home from school that I would frequent for sweets and the like. Of the two aisles in the store, the one furthest away from the counter had a blind spot that I may or may not have used to get really good at pretending to look for something in my backpack, whilst simultaneously knocking a full tub of Pringles off the shelf into it. I honestly can’t believe I never got caught. I still feel guilty about it to this day but I’m happy to report that my brief stint as an accomplished thief didn’t continue into adulthood (just to clarify).

Was the act of eating an entire tub of Pringles straight after school good for me? Probably not. Did my relationship with food take a hit during that period? Definitely. May it have even led to me overeating on a regular basis since I would still ask my mother for dinner when she got home? Sure. Is the act of eating when you’re not actually hungry always disordered? No, but to do it as a child based on the fear that I wouldn’t have dinner definitely was. It taught me to rely on food when I needed to feel in control – often a valid coping mechanism, but one that has great potential to become dysfunctional if relied on long-term.

There are a multitude of complex factors that influence our weight, but childhood experiences like the one I’ve just described likely contributed as to why I grew up a larger kid than most. The first time I remember it making a difference to my life was during junior school.

There was one kid in my class who always found something to pick on me about; my hair was too long or too short; my nose was too big; I didn’t have any friends (or I had the wrong ones); or my clothes were shit. It changed weekly. At times the unpredictability became all-consuming as I tried to work out how to get through the day without giving him something new to bully me about. Having said that, there was one reason he could always consistently rely on; my weight.

There is always an element of insecurity and cowardice with those who bully. I’m ashamed to say that I ended up being one myself the following year after changing schools and both of those elements rang true with me then. I’d left one place feeling small and unimportant, whilst believing there was only one method of making sure I didn’t start the new one the same way. People who abuse others for their size as adults are no different. Add in the anonymity of the internet and it can embolden those who may not dare to discriminate face to face.

From those early years, until relatively recently, I spent a large proportion of my life trying to lose weight. My worth as a human became intrinsically linked to what I looked like and the number on the scales; I had it in my head that I was neither attractive nor worthy of love unless I was slimmer. These same insecurities continued even when I was in my first long-term relationship and ended up playing a major role in its eventual breakdown. It made me a possessive partner which, completely reasonably, resulted in being dumped. At the time, my lack of insight simply led to a doubling down on my weight-loss efforts in an attempt to be attractive enough not to be dumped again. Retrospect is a wonderful thing eh?

Growing up I had a real mixture of different career goals, from being a chess grandmaster or professional chef to being a singer. How different life would have been if I’d have succeeded in my audition for S Club Juniors! Despite doctor never featuring on that list, I came home from school at the age of sixteen and told my mother that I was going to study medicine at university. The careers councillor had been in that day, and I remember being given this thick career book to pick from. The thought of being a teacher didn’t sound fun as I knew how difficult my classmates and I could be; the broad title of scientist just made me think of working in a lab; but the last ‘match’ was doctor, which I thought sounded cool. I can still hear my mother’s understandably sceptical response to this day, along with a raised eyebrow:

‘We’ll see.’

With no doctors in my immediate family, I arrived at medical school relatively naive as to what the job would bring. Being a doctor can be really emotionally draining, from fighting against the government on changing job contracts to working long hours during a pandemic without adequate protective equipment. It’s not a job you would stick at unless you really loved it; I hope I continue to love it as much as I do now for the rest of my life.

When I graduated from university, a different reason for wanting to lose weight emerged; I believed that I couldn’t be a good doctor unless I was thinner. After the years of being stigmatised for my weight (both individually and on a societal level) I had unconsciously accepted the negative stereotypes onto myself. What I now recognise as internalised weight stigma led to me feeling an overwhelming sense of hypocrisy whenever I recommended weight loss to my patients, as I myself was labelled ‘overweight’ and therefore ‘unhealthy’. I truly felt there was no way patients would take my health advice seriously – the analogy I’d used in my head was that of a stop-smoking service being run by a smoker. The comparison made sense to me at the time as I’d been taught weight was a lifestyle choice I simply hadn’t been trying hard enough to change. We’ll talk more about that in the next chapter.

I decided to create an Instagram account in 2016 with the sole intention of keeping me ‘accountable’ during my weight loss (a logical step as, let’s be honest, that’s what so much of Instagram is used for). I remember promising myself that if I ate a biscuit, I would post a picture of said biscuit; that way my friends would tell me off for eating it and I would eat fewer biscuits and stay ‘strong’ with my diet. First, I’m not entirely sure why I’d demonised biscuits as the culprit for my body size. Second, using shame as a method of accountability was super-problematic to say the least, but I had little insight into anything about that back then.

I wish I could tell you that my six years at medical school had taught me to be able to recognise and avoid fad diets, but I can’t. The first thing I did to try and lose weight was drastically cut almost all the carbohydrates out of my meals… because carbs make you fat, right?! I wish I could have given my 24-year-old self a copy of this book after first hitting him over the head with it. I wasn’t immune to believing the nutribollocks. No one is. This book isn’t about making you feel bad for falling for it – it’s about empowering you to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

As someone with the privilege and capacity to be able to cook, I started making all my meals from scratch in order to accurately count calories. I had no real regard for nutrients; the only measurement for if I was doing well was the number on the scales.

I developed a love-hate (mainly hate) relationship with MyFitnessPal. For those of you lucky enough to have not come across it, it’s a phone app where you log all your food in order to track calorie intake. Don’t download it, unless you want to end up being that person who eats one chocolate from the staff room and then picks up the tray to scan the barcode with their phone. I’ve been there; it’s not fun.

These kinds of actions impact our relationship with food, something which is incredibly important. Food is an integral part of our lives from birth until death, yet we tend to disregard the impact of disordered eating behaviours on our health. I’ve mentioned disordered eating a couple of times so far in this chapter without really defining what it means, so let’s stop and do so now:

It’s sometimes hard to be clear about things that fall under the bracket of ‘unhealthy eating behaviours’ and ‘disordered eating’. ‘Normal’ eating behaviours are defined by many things; age, culture, situation and medical history, just to name a few. For example, religious fasting during Ramadan isn’t automatically disordered eating, but deciding not to eat during daylight hours in the pursuit of weight loss is likely to be. Altering carbohydrate intake might be useful for a diabetic to manage their blood sugar levels, but what about someone without diabetes choosing not to eat them due to a fear of supposed weight gain?

Disordered eating habits are abnormal behaviours that have the potential to negatively impact your health. I think it’s the difficulty of defining what is ‘normal’ that people really struggle with when it comes to conversations around diet. Some eating habits are disordered without question, but many are very context-dependent. We are not meant to all eat the same. Social media is full of false promises telling you that if you eat a certain way, you’ll look a certain way, something which is complete bullshit. Our decisions around food are constantly wrapped up in our desire to be thin and not fat. It’s not only ridiculous but it’s bloody tiring.

Disordered eating and eating disorders can be thought of on a spectrum. All eating disorders exhibit disordered eating, but not everyone with disordered eating will go on to develop an eating disorder. Our normalisation of dieting within society certainly doesn’t help. Dieting itself damages your relationship with food, whether you realise it or not, and may even increase your risk of developing an eating disorder.

Still clear as mud? Let me give you a personal example that might help (TW: those of you currently dealing with an eating disorder may want to skip the next two paragraphs).

With my continued use of MyFitnessPal, I started finding less traditional ways of reducing my calorie intake. Some of my favourite things to eat include anything with raisins, sugar and spices, but during this period of my life I cut them all out. No Eccles or fruit cakes. No oatmeal and raisin cookies. No hot cross buns. The restriction led to repeated bingeing on these types of food items as I found my cravings for them had amplified. My absolute favourite and the one that I struggled with the most was mince pies.

As Christmas time approached, I developed a new behaviour. I would eat a mince pie, but before swallowing each mouthful, I would spit the chewed-up food into the bin. In my mind, this seemed to make sense… yet it filled me with shame. I was always very careful to hide it, never doing it around anyone and always repositioning items in the bin so that no one else would see it. I remember one time my housemate walked in on me as I spat into the bin, so I pretended to choke so they wouldn’t suspect anything.

If what I’m talking about resonates with you, please reach out and talk to someone that can help. Don’t ignore it. Either your GP or the Beat ED Charity is a great place to start.

Let’s get back to my Instagram account, which I initially chose to call @unfattening. I went as far as buying customised running trainers with that word on the sides and was even considering getting it as a tattoo. Thank goodness I didn’t.

A couple of years after starting the account I’d somehow managed to convince over thirty thousand people to follow me despite only posting pictures of food and the occasional transformation photo. I even had the phrase ‘evidence-based fitness’ in my bio. Cringe. My world revolved around weight loss and diet culture and having lost a fair bit of weight at that point I thought myself an expert; a common theme amongst those online from Z-list celebrities to healthcare professionals.

Unbeknownst to me, it would be a random conversation about ice cream that really started to shake things up.

Hands up who remembers when Halo Top was launched in the UK? It was sold as a ‘guilt-free’, high protein, low-calorie ice cream – one where you were literally encouraged to eat the whole tub. I placed it on a pedestal and sung its praises on my Instagram, tagging the company in my stories in the hope that they would sponsor me so I didn’t have to keep paying the extortionate price it was sold at. I did get some free samples at one point, probably in an attempt to stop me hassling them.

It had become commonplace for my followers to send me screenshots of content online to ask me my thoughts or for me to debunk something. In 2018 I was linked to an Instagram story by Laura Thomas (@laurathomasphd), a registered nutritionist and intuitive-eating counsellor based in London. In it she seemed to be bashing Halo Top for encouraging bingeing and asking why anyone would want to choose it over the real thing… or that’s how I remember it anyway. I remember feeling attacked, almost personally, so much so that I felt compelled to send her the following message:

‘Except it tastes almost IDENTICAL to regular ice cream and means that I can eat a decent amount without cramming empty calories and sugar into my body!!! I get that diet culture can be a bad thing, but why attack the premise of making a high-sugar, high-calorie product better for your body and your health? I don’t get it.’

I really didn’t. I didn’t understand why a low-calorie alternative could be anything but a good thing. Laura could (and probably should) have just ignored me at this point, but she was kind enough to send the following in reply:

‘Well I think we have to be careful about calling ice cream an empty calorie, it can be a source of vitamins, minerals and protein for people. It’s really the marketing that’s problematic here; it’s not even a suggestion but an expectation that people will eat the entire tub because it’s “healthy”. It’s also a lot less satisfying so you end up eating more than a scoop or two of the regular stuff. That will leave people feeling bloated, cramping and potentially running to the loo (based on high soluble fibre). This type of product lures people into a false sense of healthy as opposed to developing a good relationship to food (which means eating a wide variety of foods without feeling guilty or “bad” for the occasional bowl of ice cream).’

I had never heard anyone speak about food in this way before. What she was saying made sense, but the mindset I was in at the time wouldn’t allow me to admit that it did. It challenged things I believed about food: even the simple statement of being able to just eat a scoop or two of ice cream was something foreign to me. At that time, I was refusing to buy food items that I enjoyed but considered ‘unhealthy’ as I ending up bingeing on them. That internal conflict made me want to know more and led to a response that I think even surprised myself:

‘I greatly respect your experience and expertise and I would honestly love to meet up and chat with you… I want to be medically accurate with the advice that I give out and would honestly love to pick your brain.’

Laura very graciously agreed to meet me. The following month I travelled on the train into central London and took up her entire afternoon asking question after question. I left even more conflicted, but realising that even if just a tiny amount of what she’d told me about weight, health and dieting was true, I needed to do some more digging. It was my first step towards the concepts of weight inclusivity and ‘intuitive eating’, and it was a game-changer.

The next 10 months were interesting. I read research I’d never been exposed to before, listened to hours upon hours of different podcasts and followed a whole slew of new faces on social media. I can imagine that the non-diet accounts on Instagram were probably very confused as to why someone called @unfattening was suddenly interested in their content! It’s really telling looking back on my feed during that time, as I can see the conflict in my head that I was struggling to put into words. The longer it went on, the more I realised that a lot of the things I was promoting were not only full of contradictions but incredibly problematic.

After I stopped actively encouraging weight loss, I began to be challenged about the appropriateness of my Instagram username. I resisted. Like, seriously resisted. I liked that @unfattening felt catchy and I didn’t want to let go of it. I convinced myself and anyone that would listen that the reason it was ok for me to keep using it was because it attracted the perfect kind of audience I was wanting to reach. I disregarded the harm it could cause, because in my head, the end justified the means. My ego got in the way.

In January of 2019, ironically peak ‘diet’ time, I finally bit the bullet and changed my social media name to @drjoshuawolrich. This turned out to be a massive weight off my shoulders. Since then, my presence online has evolved into one challenging weight stigma, health inequity, nutribollocks and fad diets.

I’m hoping there are going to be things in this book that challenge what you believe to be true about your health and nutrition. Changing someone’s opinion on a topic usually requires a level of trust not often reached through pages of text, but I’m confident that my candidness so far will have helped to build the necessary foundations. Let’s get started.

(excerpt from my book: 'Food Isn't Medicine')