Jo Sebastian is Changing Perspectives on Diet Culture
Join the conversation as we delve into diet culture, content creation, and more while getting to know Jo Sebastian, the TikTok nutritionist-dietitian who's reshaping our relationship with food!
by Marian Luisa Palo
Photos by Jo Sebastian via Instagram
December 12, 2023
As much as Filipinos love food and celebrate it as a significant part of our culture, we are also highly conscious and nitpicky about what we and others eat.
We often hear comments from relatives or strangers about our eating habits. When we eat a lot, we hear things like, "Mag-diet ka naman!" and when we eat little, it's "Kunyari ka pa!" It's no wonder that we have cultivated this toxic diet culture, leading to extreme body consciousness and unhealthy eating habits.
It's time to put an end to this, and Jo Sebastian is here to change perspectives and create a safe space for eating.
Jo Sebastian, a 26-year-old Registered Nutritionist-Dietitian and content creator, addresses health, nutrition, lifestyle, and culture. Her approach to these topics is well-loved by her followers. Even before TikTok, she had been creating videos on YouTube since 2015.
“I started creating content on YouTube during the lifestyle era, focusing on makeup, OOTDs, and similar topics. Later, I shifted towards fitness when I rekindled my interest in it,” she mentioned, describing her initial steps into content creation before honing in on nutrition.
At some point, she contemplated whether she wanted to continue as a content creator, acknowledging the importance of analytics if pursued as a career. However, her breakthrough came in the summer of 2023 with her TikTok video on “How I Order Mang Inasal,” where she emphasized adding nutrients rather than restricting (she added broccoli with her chicken and rice!). This video changed everything for Jo, allowing her to convey her message in a more relatable context.
“I’m very grateful. It has always been a dream of mine since I started creating YouTube videos. I’ve always loved performing, not in a fake way, but as a means to express and be creative,” she said, acknowledging the pressure and added responsibilities that come with a larger platform.
She now has a podcast on Spotify called “The Donut Box Podcast,” where she delves into more introspective health topics.
Before her social media breakthrough, Jo was a ballet dancer in her younger years. The experience was stressful and toxic, with strict rules about the body. “It even became part of our grades to be weighed every month, impacting my relationship with food and my body negatively,” she shared.
Exposed to such an environment, Jo sought information on weight management, eventually sharing her knowledge with fellow dancers facing similar struggles. This experience motivated her to become a nutritionist-dietitian, and with perseverance, she earned the title of ‘RND’ in 2019 after graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Community Nutrition from the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman.
Drawing on her experiences, Jo believes that Filipinos' interest in discussing people’s bodies and appearances has deep-rooted causes. She points to Filipino humor, family trauma, and societal values that prioritize weight, shape, and size over well-being.
Diving deeper into diet culture, she emphasizes the belief system that values appearance over well-being, perpetuating the idea that a specific look is necessary for good health. “Filipinos take a lot longer to realize that health and worth are not dictated by appearance. Not everyone from older generations is open-minded to this concept,” she noted.
“I guess also a part of that is that Filipinos don’t know how to set boundaries. We’ll just take whatever. They say ‘resilient’ tayo in that way,” she added, explaining why Filipinos are so critical. “Because we also don’t set that boundary, we’re not able to tell other people why these things may not be the most helpful; why these comments are actually doing more harm than good.”
Despite acknowledging these issues, Jo's primary goal in creating content remains aligned with her personal experiences in battling a toxic diet culture.
“A big part of why I create content is to hopefully change mine and change perspectives because all of us think of health as this thing that has to be hard. It has to be punishment, it has to be expensive; there’s only one way that you can be healthy, and as we dive into it, there’s so many ways to be healthy,” she said, emphasizing the need to view health in an individualistic way.
Jo has proven herself to be a reliable RND and content creator who infuses empathy and compassion into her work, contrary to the conventional ‘cut down’ mindset. She’s helped her followers—in and beyond screens—find validation in the way they approach and understand their bodies. Here’s to healing our relationships with food!
