Why Trying To Lose Weight Might Be Preventing You From Being Healthy
Has this ever happened to you?
You start getting into some sort of movement/exercise, you settle into a rhythm with it, you actually feel pretty good. You are sleeping better, your mood is elevated, you actually feel a little better in your body. You think you’ve got a good thing going.
Then you get on the scale… and it hasn’t gone down, maybe it has gone up.
So you stop. As far as you are concerned, if you are not losing weight, then clearly it’s not working.
How about another scenario:
You started walking regularly, you love it. You decide to work on eating more intuitively and you are eating more in the morning and at lunch and find that you are no longer needing to eat everything in sight in the evenings. You even got into cooking some and you are experimenting with different recipes, you’ve even started eating more vegetables as a result. And you don’t feel denied, your evening bowl of ice cream feels so satisfying. Things feel more even and steady, you feel good, you are less stressed, and you are taking care of yourself better than you have in a long time.
Then you go to the doctor, and the doctor tells you that you need to lose weight.
And you think, what’s the point? It’s still not good enough. You feel deflated and start feeling some kind of way about the time you are taking for breakfast in the morning, for trying new recipes and walking, and so you drift back to the more chaotic way of eating that you experienced before. Or maybe you even try a weight loss plan that ends up triggering a binge/diet cycle again, creating stress and frustration over why you can’t lose weight and keep it off.
If you can relate to these or have experienced something similar then you know what happens when weight loss gets in the way of health.
Right now you might be thinking.. run that back for me one more time… how does weight loss get in the way of health? Aren’t they one in the same?
They are not.
Yes, weight loss and health are very much conflated in our culture, both in society and in the health field. But actually, weight loss does not always equal health. Furthermore, thinness does not equal health. Someone can be thin and unhealthy and fat and healthy, but unfortunately, unhealthy behaviors in thin people don’t often get acknowledged because of weight bias toward thinness and healthy behaviors in people who are fat don’t often get acknowledged because of, well, biased toward thinness.
So weight loss should not be conflated with health.
As a matter of fact, making weight loss a top priority often causes people to abandon health promoting behaviors when they don’t result in weight loss. This is what happened in the two real life scenarios I presented to you.
You know what I didn’t present in those scenarios? The person’s weight. But I bet you got the sense that they were doing things that were health promoting. You don’t need to know their weight to determine that. They were feeling good, sleeping better, experiencing improved mood and stress management. They were moving regularly and eating a variety of foods. These are health promoting behaviors and resulting positive experiences.
Weight loss is not even a behavior let alone a health promoting behavior, so focusing on it often does not lead to health but quite the opposite.
This is why using a Health At Every Size® (HAES®) informed approach to nutrition is health promoting. It allows you to pursue health regardless of your size BECAUSE you are not focusing on your weight as top priority.
Health At Every Size® is an approach to care that is based on five principles (all of these have been recorded from and can be found in greater description on the Association For Size Diversity And Health (ASDAH) website:
Weight Inclusivity – Accept and respect for inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.
Health Enhancement - support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional and other needs.
Eating for Well-Being - Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control
Respectful Care - Acknowledge our biases and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma, and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.
Life-Enhancing Movement - Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose.
When you can focus on health promoting behaviors without getting discouraged that the scale is not moving downward, it creates space for you to notice and appreciate positive outcomes such as an increase in energy, decrease in stress, improved sleep, improved mood, better gastrointestinal function (i.e. digestion), improved mental health, increase in strength, and sometimes an improvement in body image.
If you can relate to the scenarios I presented above or something similar, know that you are not alone. I put these together from stories of clients and other people who have been willing to share their stories with me. Feeling like you have failed in some way or that you are not healthy because you are at a higher weight is super discouraging to put it super mildly. But a mindset shift toward a non-diet and weight inclusive philosophy such as HAES® can create freedom to pursue the you that feels good.
If you are interested in learning more about HAES® you can get more info here and you can also join Fork the Food Rules and watch our recent masterclass on HAES® immediately upon joining.
I’d love to know if you have ever had a similar experience to the one’s I’ve shared. If you have, will you comment below and let me know?