Hello, jello! I know it’s been a hot minute (ahem, a month), so I’m super excited to get this post out, because I’ve been thinking about it for so freaking long.
Nutrition and health are seemingly centred around weight loss—and we can largely attribute that to the diet industry. This is so prevalent in our culture that it’s the actually the default: we associate weight loss with health. It’s step one. But not everyone needs to lose weight. In fact, for some people it can do more harm than good. The problem is, we’re so conditioned to see weight loss as the only metric that matters when it comes to making healthy changes.
So today, we’re diving into why we need to stop focusing on weight loss, ditch dieting and focus on health first. Ready? Okay let’s do it.
Weight is not the best marker of health.
This is really important to understand, because we kind of treat weight loss as though its synonymous with good health. And that’s not necessarily true.
In fact, there’s research to back up that you can still be healthy and be overweight. (And of course, that you can be sick and be thin.)
- this study found that when people followed four different healthy principles (eating fruit/vegetables, getting exercise, not smoking and moderate drinking) that the risk of death was lower, and about the same, in all groups, regardless of size. In fact, being obese only really seemed to matter when it was paired with unhealthy habits (but of course, the same is true for thin people).
- another review looked at 9 studies, and found that only two showed that weight loss improved health; 4 had no association and 3 found it diminished health.
- Finally, this study found that weight loss could actually contribute to risk of death.
There’s a lot of other studies out there, and to be clear, there’s a lot of nuance to this. For one, these studies likely include chronic dieters (or yo-yo dieters) and we know that chronic dieting wreaks havoc on your health and metabolism.
The second thing is that I’m not saying being overweight doesn’t come with its own health issues (for example, joint pain). I’m not saying that you’re not allowed to choose to lose weight if that’s what you want (we’ll talk about that a little more later). What I am saying, is that weight is not the only, and arguably not the best, marker of health.
Treating weight as though its the only metric that counts stigmatizes people who are overweight: weight bias contributes to people with a higher BMI getting less quality health care, both from a lack of health education from anti-fat physicians, and from fear of being judged preventing overweight people from going to visit their doctor in the first place. The result? They have poorer health, not from their weight, but from the stigma of their weight.
(Here’s an interesting article about how health care fails fat people)
Our obsession with weight loss is rooted in diet culture (and the patriarchy).
So now that you know that weight isn’t the same thing as health (and there’s research to back it up), let’s talk about why we treat it as though it is.
First of all, it’s important to remember that weight loss is a multi-billion dollar industry (as in, over $70 billion). So at the end of the day, not only are we bombarded with daily messages (culturally, and through social media) telling us to lose weight, but it’s actually more profitable if we try it and fail.
Because if it worked, then how would they make a profit? (And if it worked, you probably wouldn’t be here, reading this post, looking for an alternative.)
And because this is so pervasive, people (women, especially) think they need to lose weight, even when they have a BMI in normal ranges. I have first hand experience with this: for years, even though I was a healthy weight (the same weight I am now), I ate and dieted as though I had to lose weight, because I had been conditioned to think like that. This took years to unlearn.
Diet culture isn’t just disordered eating. It’s rooted in sexism and racism. It’s a way to police women’s bodies and dictate how they should or shouldn’t look, regardless of health. It’s literally asking women to take up less space. And, I would argue, it keeps us focused on our bodies and what we eat, instead of more important things, which ultimately hold us back.
There’s this quote I like from Naomi Wolf, author of ‘The Beauty Myth’:
“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
So instead of asking ourselves, “how can I nourish my body with enough fuel to give me energy for my busy life”, we ask ourselves “how can I earn this meal? How can I be worthy of eating today?”
And again, as someone who has been there, it’s an awful place to be. (And not effective, to boot.)
The BMI is problematic
So first of all, the BMI calculator was created by a Belgian mathematician in the 1800s to be population tool and was never meant to be used on individuals. That is, until Ancel Keys (the very same guy who told you dietary fat is bad for you) started using it. This tool was based on the weight of men (white men, at that). And it looks at all body weight.
So there’s a lot of problems there:
- BMI doesn’t account for different body types, particularly non-white, female bodies.
- It also doesn’t account for different body mass, including muscle and bones.
- Circling back, it also assumes that high BMI is a sign of being unhealthy, which contributes to weight bias and overweight/obese people not getting the medical attention they deserve.
As an added bonus to all the reasons BMI is no good, the math also doesn’t make sense. It’s a quick hack formula that doesn’t actually work. What?! Why do we use this?!
Beyond Weight: Better Ways To Assess Health
Okay, so if weight shouldn’t be our focus in assessing health, what should we be looking at?
- blood sugar levels
- blood pressure
- how much sleep you get/how rested you feel
- energy levels
- regular bowel movements (as in daily)
- waist-to-hip-ratio (indicative of visceral fat, the fat that surrounds internal organs and is linked to increased risk of disease)
I was going to write another section about who would be a good candidate for weight loss, because I know the reality is that people will still want to lose weight (and I get it: it’s your body). But I think I’ll have to save that post for another day.
In the meantime, what I hope you takeaway is that your size does not define your worth, nor does it define your health. And if you’re looking to improve your health, and track it, there are better ways to go about it.
With love,
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