I completed my Master's in Integrative and Functional Nutrition. While in school, it also came to my attention how diet culture impacted my family upbringing, leading to disordered eating and disconnection from my Filipinx culture. Body shaming in our culture has become normalized that we anticipate it in family gatherings. When we ask our elders why does our culture body shame? They respond with, "That's just the way it's always been." Filipinx peoples have been colonized for almost 400 years, and generations have been taught that our culture is inferior to our colonizers. Because of this inferior thinking among the Filipinx American community, diet culture has become our way of living. Diet culture in the United States is "pervasive norms that emphasize thinness, control, and restriction around eating and exercise behaviors, and the moralization of how food plays a significant role in contributing to body dissatisfaction" (Faw et al., 2021). 


Body dissatisfaction is associated with a host of adverse health outcomes, such as increased risks of depression and anxiety and lower levels of self-esteem. These learnings and awareness have encouraged me to further my education by obtaining a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology to understand the impacts of mental health further and change the narrative around body dissatisfaction.