Do you find yourself thinking,
I need to lose weight to get healthy?
Unfortunately, I hear this time and time again in my office. Often times, my clients are so ashamed of their body size it takes all the courage they can muster just to make an appointment, not alone to come see me.
They come in feeling shy and guarded. They have a look of hope but are sleeping with one eye open so to speak. They watch me closely to see if my face will show judgement or if I will confirm their worst fear and say the same thing every other health care practitioner has told them – you just need to lose some weight.
I can’t blame them. They tell me being in a larger body is far from easy, the number of micro and macro aggressions is unfathomable to anyone who isn’t in a larger body.
They have been told by doctors, friends, influencers, family and even random people in the grocery store that they are unhealthy. Over and over again, day after day. EVERY day. They have been told their body is bad so many times in so many ways they have started to believe it too. Sound familiar?
But you guys, what I want you to know, whether you are in a smaller body or a bigger body or somewhere in the great middle… is that you can’t tell if a person is healthy just by looking at them.
I know, it’s mind blowing info I’m saying here, but stick with me. I have met many recovered anorexics who were miserable and in very poor health when they were at their smallest, and people in very large bodies that ate better than most Americans on the regular. I have met people who are in bodies twice the size of me that could beat my milage time by minutes, and people who have lost hundreds of pounds and have found themselves in poor health. Turns out restricting and or alternating restricting then overeating is a fast track to weight gain, inflammation, poor body image and over all poor health.
We have to stop equating body size with health, we have to stop idealizing small bodies, we have to stop with the fat phobia and we have to stop thinking about health as a direct correlation between diet and exercise alone.
I know, it’s not what we typically hear, it may not be what you were taught in school and yet it’s the truth. There has always been a bell curve of body sizes and there always will be. Being underweight carries more risk than being overweight. Until you have a BMI over 40 (and BMI is bogus anyway – but that’s a topic for another day) you are not any greater health risk than a normal BMI, there is no increased mortality or morbidity.
You may feel uncomfortable at your current weight, but that often times has a lot more to do with our society and fat phobia than anything else. You might wish you were still the size you were in middle school, but bodies change, and that’s not such a bad thing – remember acne and hormones?
If you are ready to tackle your health goals, I’d love to help you 🙂 But, if you want to lose weight just so you can “get healthy” I’m not you’re gal. We can tackle your health goals while also putting weight on the back burner. We can improve your health, regardless of whether you lose a single pound, (although you might). And please know, I won’t ever tell you “You need to lose weight” Not ever.