Do you find yourself thinking, “I need to lose weight to get healthy”?
Unfortunately, most of us have internalized this message to some extent. Often times, my clients are so ashamed of their body size it takes all the courage they can muster just to come see me, (an anti-diet dietitian).
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.
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 by just looking at them. When we look at health through an Intuitive Eating paradigm, we begin to see health as a multifaceted thing.
I know, it can be difficult to wrap your head around, but stick with me. There are many, many, many people who are or were miserable and in very poor health at their smallest, and people who found themselves at a heavier weight but healthier than ever before. There are people who are in larger bodies that run marathons or climb mountains, and there are people who have lost hundreds of pounds or lost the same X number of pounds over and over again and have found themselves in 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. We have to stop letting an emphasis on body size actually hold us back from wellbeing.
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.
We can tackle our health goals while also putting weight on the back burner. You can improve your wellbeing, regardless of whether you lose a single pound, because health isn’t just one thing (body size) – there are multiple pieces to health such as emotional, social, spiritual, psychological as well as physical. All are equally important.
If you are avoiding dinner with friends, because you are worried there won’t be any approved foods on the menu, your social health will begin to suffer. If you are obsessing about every piece of food you put in your mouth or beating yourself up about your body size, your emotional health may be in the dumps and if you are avoiding movement because you feel shame about your body than your physical health may decline.
Working on your “health” isn’t a requirement, there is no rule that says one must actively pursue health, but if you are interested in improving your health, don’t hold yourself back by being solely focused on body size, because the number on the scale is, nor ever was, any kind of indicator of health and wellbeing.
So take a breath and meet your friends for dinner, check out the new yoga studio or take a walk with your best friend, offer your body some appreciation and gratitude for the many ways it does show up for you every day and learn to trust your body by stepping away from the scale and see if wellbeing becomes a way of life.