Am I allowed to want to lose weight?
Body Change + HAES + Anti Diet + Humans
What happens if you go all in on accepting your body only to find that you gain weight, feel worse, and can’t find the balance that you were told was on the other side of the body acceptance journey?
I think we’ve coined the cultural shift of the past few months the “Ozempic Era”? Previously outspoken, prominent body positive influencers have announced their “glow up” journeys. “Glow up” being a euphemism for weight loss. The core of their message is often that they have felt betrayed by the HAES(R)1 community, that they should be able to pursue intentional weight loss, and they shouldn’t have to feel bad about wanting to be healthier2.
At the same time, brands have been decreasing their size ranges online and in stores. Magazines are publishing headlines reading “heroin chic” is back. Weight loss drugs are taking over every social media post, celebrity gossip column, and conversation with friends. And we’re entering summer. Notoriously the season when we get the highest rate of body change messaging. If you follow people in the weight inclusive space, this post probably isn’t the first post you’ve seen waving a big, red flag at the changes that are going on. It can feel like all the work of body acceptance has gone out the window and we’re in a completely new territory - one where fat acceptance isn’t high on the priority list.
I’ve had a while to marinate on this - the first influencer I saw posting about this dramatic shift from “love your body as it is, no need to change it” to “I’m pursuing my revenge, glow up body” was January 1st. Since January there has been a subtle change in the body positive social media network. Some people want to call out those abandoning ship for the glimmery hope of weight loss. Some are putting a lot of energy into disclaimers that any health promoting behavior they engage in is NOT to change their body. Others are grieving the changes and questioning their desire to be a public figure on the internet as the tides are shifting.
A note before we continue that my thoughts/perspectives/opinions come with their own disclaimers - I continue to live in a straight sized body and am coming at this from more of a healthcare provider standpoint than a lived experience standpoint. I hope to add some insight to the conversation but am also very aware that my opinion is not the most important or the full picture. I’d love to hear your experience with these shifts and changes if you feel willing to share.
Let’s start with the basics. The desire to fit in and be loved is so entirely human it is impossible to fault anyone for craving it. While it is unfortunate that weight loss is associated with more love and acceptance, it makes sense in the world of diet culture to believe that unconditional love and support is on the other side of the weight loss rainbow. Health, once again, is something that feels inherently desirable. We typically do not wish for life to be harder or to need to overcome difficulties throughout our lives. And, once again, although I do not see weight loss as a necessary step to pursuing improved health outcomes, that is not the general consensus on the internet or in healthcare today. More on that in a bit.
Seeing a previously fat and/or body positive creator sidestep out of body peace in the pursuit of body change is disorienting. A classic response from many of us immediately go to a place of, “You were our guiding light! The sign that loving myself is possible! An example of how to love every aspect of myself without feeling the need to change!” It feels like having a rug pulled out from underneath you to find out that a person who you have been using as a model was actually just faking it until they made it… and (oh god) they never actually made it.
Being an influencer sounds like a great gig, but I can imagine that there are some pretty difficult realities that come with posting your entire life on social media. Other people project their biases, beliefs, worries, and concerns onto you with every post. There’s very little room to have nuanced, complex thoughts and opinions and a person likely feels a bit trapped in trying to fit into the mold of your little puzzle piece of the internet. Obviously, this doesn’t create a lot of room for real humanity. Having doubts, feeling trapped, or wanting to explore new thoughts and ideas can make it seem like you are cracking out of a mold that other people have trapped you in. When you decide to do something as normal as changing your workout routine, there are going to be thoughts. People will have their own personal reactions to any sort of change and then choose to send a lengthy message explaining exactly why this influencer is a disappointment. It sounds like a lot.
I have a specific memory of seeing one influencer talking about how her HAES (R) aligned RD and treatment team weren’t encouraging her to exercise beyond pretty light movement on a regular basis. She was pissed that she wasn’t being encouraged to engage in a behavior that is typically seen as inherently healthy. I am not that person’s RD and there are so many reasons that keeping movement light can be important for someone’s journey in recovery or their relationship with food. But it reminds me of the WaPo article that I commented on previously where the woman that they followed throughout the article was disappointed by the ways that anti-diet recommendations worked for her.
It makes me wonder where the grey area is in all of this. My professional take on recovery (using the term recovery to generally to refer to any sort of journey to a better relationship with food/body/exercise and not just to refer specifically to eating disorder recovery) is that it is a huge experiment over many months and oftentimes years. A poor relationship with our physical self is oftentimes a result of believing that your body isn’t trustworthy, leading us to believe that you must exert control over your body in order to achieve health or aesthetics that are “correct”. To undo this messaging we have to be willing to play with different behaviors and see how they feel, see what comes of it. Strict rules can be necessary for someone who is medically unstable and at risk of severe health complications, but, as providers, I believe our job is to walk alongside our people as they figure out what life in recovery should look like for them. That means letting go of our own fears of “doing it right” or needing to control any possible outcome. Humans are strong, resilient, and smart. We can allow an experiment to “fail”. We can help a person learn from what didn’t work and explore a new path to recovery.
But what about weight loss. Are we allowed to want weight loss and be body positive/ intuitive eaters/ food neutral / non-dieters?
Bodily autonomy is a core tenet of my belief system and professional work. Any person should be able to make choices that are supportive to themselves and lead them toward a life that they want for themselves. There is one glaring issue with pursuing weight loss: most people don’t have the full picture of the risks, possible complications, and long-term efficacy. Essentially, most people do not have enough information to make an informed decision. A couple important notes -
A couple of important meta-analyses (a collection of research looking at one particular outcome, compiling the results, and looking at what the findings are for all of that research) have found that fatness is not associated with higher likelihood of mortality when we control for health promoting behaviors and the social determinants of health.3
Dieting is a risk factor for eating disorders. Females who diet at even a “moderate” level are 5x more likely to develop an eating disorder.
Very few people maintain weight loss long term. Within 5 years, majority of people regain the weight originally lost and usually gain more than they lost in the first place.
Desiring weight loss is part of a complex network of societal beliefs, aesthetic desires, and self-preservation. I would bet that majority of the information you see about fatness is negative (I just read this yesterday!). That makes it incredibly difficult to even imagine being okay with your body being fat or gaining weight. So, are you allowed to desire weight loss? Of course. Do I think it is best for you, your physical health, and your mental health? No. I really don’t.
What I really wonder is what it would be like to help the world find some balance. If we could figure out how to live in the grey area. I don’t know anything about the influencer I mentioned above or her treatment team, but I genuinely feel for her in the fact that she didn’t feel heard by her providers. I wish we could do a better job in trusting ourselves, our bodies, and, in the case of healthcare providers, our clients. Recovery gets to be experimental. It gets to be a way to explore ourselves and our physical needs. We get to mess up and learn lessons. We get to take a break from movement for a while and then we get to play with exercise. It’s okay to go for a run only to learn that your knees are telling you absolutely not. It’s okay to try out a new gym and notice that you haven’t fully processed your relationship with mirror checking and body comparison. It’s okay to start exercising for a bit only to decide that you really do need to keep resting and investigating your drive to push your body.
The same goes for food. A long time ago, I read a concept in Jes Baker’s book “Land Whale” called Donut Land/Diet Land. I actually think she cited someone else in her book, but I’ll still give her credit for introducing it to me. Basically, she explains diet land as what we all know as diet culture. Green drinks, cleanses, carnivore diets, clean eating, basically anything that has to do with body control or body aesthetics or any type of orthorexic wellness stuff. Donut land is the mystical place opposite of diet land. We have waffles with whipped cream and sprinkles for breakfast, donuts and fries for lunch, afternoon milkshakes, and pizza rolls with a gigantic side of ranch for dinner. There are no food rules and we can eat whatever the hell we want. Donut land is a lovely place to visit, but the problem with living in donut land is that it’s just a reaction to diet land. If we had never lived under the rules and stigma of diet land, would we really crave the donut land experience? I would venture to say no. Most of us are aware that we feel better in our bodies and have more energy when we eat a relatively “balanced4” diet.
When I read that incredibly annoying Washington Post article and within the first 2 paragraphs they are citing one particular woman who sounds like she dove straight into donut land without any support or guidance… yeah, I was pretty ticked. Working through the maze of recovery is incredibly difficult to do on your own. Unlearning years and years of how to control your body with dieting and exercise requires help for the vast majority of people. That sucks, because our healthcare system is expensive and confusing, but it’s the truth. Especially if there is a high likelihood of our body changing while we increase our food intake and follow fewer food rules. Gaining weight is triggering and I think for even your favorite body positive influencer, it can bring up a lot of challenging inner work.
To answer your question, yes, you are allowed to want to lose weight. It makes sense. I don’t think it will solve all your woes, but I respect you and your decision-making capabilities. I do have a couple pieces of advice before you officially decide to initiate your next round of dieting:
Explore what the desire is really about for you. Journal. Ask questions. Read studies. Will you actually be healthier on the other side of weight loss? Would you be doing the diet or exercise routine if you knew it wouldn’t make your body smaller? Who do you imagine yourself to be in a smaller body - what would change about your life? Is it possible that you are that person already, right now?
Is it possible to engage in health promoting behaviors without using weight loss as a metric for success? If you want more regular bowel movements could you maybe just play with adding a serving or two of fruits and veggies to your day? If you got labs back and your cholesterol is a bit funky, could you add in a short walk to the end of your day? If you are experiencing body dysmorphia, could you seek out mental health support?
Work with a professional. I already cited the statistic that dieting increases your likelihood of an eating disorder by an incredible amount. Eating disorders are the second most deadly psychiatric illness. If your labs start deteriorating or you have physical symptoms, you should have medical management to prevent life threatening complications.
Take a moment to consider how many years we’ve had public health messaging encouraging people to lose weight. How many new diet fads have come and gone? How many people in your life have been on and off diets for the entire time you’ve known them? If pursuing weight loss via diet and exercise resulted in long term weight change… do you really think we’d still be seeing new diet after new diet coming out?
I trust you. I also believe that you haven’t always had all the information you need to make important choices about how you care for your body. I don’t believe that you’ve been given the support required to love yourself as you are. I believe you deserve to feel peace with your body. I would love for you to love yourself enough to take good care of your body without endangering your health, your relationship with food, and your ability to find joy in moving. You deserve good things. Your body is already a good thing - it doesn’t need to change to be deserving of your love, support, and admiration.
HAES stands for Health at Every Size and is a trademark of the Association for Size Diversity and Health. It is a social justice movement supporting the rights of all human beings regardless of the size of their bodies - the right to healthcare, to pay equality, to access, etc.
There’s no formal definition to balance. See the rest of the post about exploring our relationship with food to find our own definition of balance.
Desiring to lose weight in an anti-fat world is normal. It would be wonderful if people especially fat people like me never felt that desire to radically and typically harmfully change our bodies. The individual desire is not the problem. The problem is how it reinforces and perpetuates anti-fatness.
If a person who has a typical profile (meaning not a public figure of any kind) talks about desiring or attempting to lose weight or even successfully doing so for a period of time, that person is reinforcing various beliefs about anti-fatness whether they intend to or not around family, friends and coworkers. That’s probably a few hundred people. Maybe a few thousand. If someone chooses to promote intentional weight loss online to tens of thousands or millions of people, that is a much more deliberate act that magnifies anti-fat ideas. The caveats they give are unlikely to counter the overall message, which is thinner bodies are better, change your body. Both are contributing to a culture of dieting as default. Both are buying into anti-fatness. The first can have a devastating impact on particularly impressionable people like kids. The second is trying to make money off of contributing to that culture by having that impact on many more people often including kids.
I honestly have a lot of sympathy for everyone who feels this pressure regardless of their role in it. At the same time, I feel like it matters to recognize people’s impact on others. If someone doesn’t know an alternative exists, I truly understand that they are doing their best. But for people who know about how diets fail people, who know about weight stigma and weight cycling and then choose to diet and especially promote dieting, I think that is worse. It demonstrates anti-fatness because they are choosing not to fight oppression but give into it and align with those with power by becoming/promoting them. I can be compassionate individually and there are extenuating circumstances for many multiply marginalized people (trans people denied healthcare unless they lose weight etc.). I also think we need to recognize this power and distancing from an oppressed group.
I am a fat person and sometimes I desire the power and privilege that goes with being less fat (I can’t imagine thinness for myself). But that doesn’t mean I choose that or promote it. I get those pressures. I dieted forever until I knew there was an alternative. What feels different is that it felt icky to promote dieting to friends, family or coworkers. I can’t say I never did it but it was rare compared to other people I knew. Maybe that’s because I always thought the health part was dubious or because I was dieting for social self-preservation and calling attention to it wouldn’t serve me. I know my dieting contributed to anti-fat ideas.
My main point is that while I fully support everyone’s bodily autonomy, doing things with our own bodies doesn’t make all of those things neutral actions that don’t impact others. Most of our choices are constrained and difficult and I want people to choose anti-oppression for themselves and others.
Thank you so much for this! I have been taken aback at how frequently this “am I allowed to want to be thin” question has been coming up lately, just because it’s become slightly less socially acceptable to focus on smaller body size. (So slightly!) It’s not like there is an anti-diet SWAT team ready to break down your door and shove a cupcake in your mouth the moment you have a weight loss wish or thought! For me, the most important thing to emphasize (which you’ve done here) is both that the weight loss wish happens and is totally normal, and will be for the foreseeable — along with the fact of the total futility of sustained intentional weight loss. Over time, I have been more quickly categorizing weight loss thoughts as wanting something that is just unavailable to me, such as a wish to be four inches taller or, like, an heiress. Personally I think a lot of the work is in reframing and rejecting the idea of body weight as a choice or a dial, which it just isn’t over the long term. The Ozempics of the world really aren’t helping with that!