January is usually when the dieting industrial complex revs its engines and polishes off its most seductive marketing. This year is no different, except we now have the addition of constant ads from online “wellness” companies selling GLP-1 weight loss drugs. But if you’re not feeling great about your eating habits or exercise, energy levels, or general well-being, the answer is not to try to “fix” your body by changing its size or shape.
If your eating habits and exercise habits could benefit from some changes – you may realize that you haven’t been giving your body what it needs to feel good, panic is not a helpful reaction. A more measured answer would be to calmly evaluate what you want to add to your life and what you want to take away.
- Maybe you want to eat more vegetablesto get a new veggie cookbook or look up veggie recipes from a food blogger you already like and trust.
- Maybe you decide this is the year you want to get strongso you look for a personal trainer who understands your goals or get some resistance bands and do workouts at home.
- Maybe you want to put limits on social media scrolling so you have more time to move your body, cook a delicious side of vegetables, set and achieve a reading goal, or engage in more meaningful hobbies.
You could call all this a return to wellness – both physical and mental – but the word “wellness” has unfortunately been so adopted by the nutrition industry that it rarely means what you think it means anymore. Many commercial diet plans – including those sold by big companies, “wellness influencers” and doctors with a new book to sell – are quick to say “This isn’t a diet… it’s about wellness.” We see the same rhetoric around weight loss drugs.
It is strange how these entities almost universally offer wellness to people whose bodies are considered “too big”. What they call “wellness” unfortunately tends to take the form of restrictive diet plans and exercise prescriptions that are much more like work than play, while ignoring other aspects of health. This is discriminatory on two fronts.
- One, that if you don’t fit into a culturally acceptable weight range, you better make it up.
- Two, that if you fit into that weight range, then you’re fine. You don’t need to do anything else.
Case in point for #2: a partner of one of my clients had a late cancer diagnosis because he was tall and thin and “healthy”. Despite trips to their primary care physician and even the emergency room, their symptoms are ignored. It took me suddenly not being able to walk for the medical establishment to take them seriously. I’m not going to lie, I kind of wanted to punch a wall when I heard that.
What does “wellness” really mean?
Physical and mental wellness should be promoted and celebrated for everyone, at any weight. Weight is not synonymous with health, and despite the “folk wisdom” or “common knowledge” that it is, the science does not support it.
Study after study has looked at “correlations” between weight and health, and yes, some of these studies show a correlation between higher weight and poorer health outcomes, but correlation does not prove cause and effect.
(Example: If people who drive red cars are more likely to have brown hair and less likely to have blonde hair, then driving a red car is which are related with brown hair, but driving a red car is not cause your hair to turn brown.)
Additional, science cannot find what it is not looking for. Most studies of weight and health do not take into account levels of fitness (specific “cardiorespiratory” fitness, ie the kind of fitness you get from challenging your heart and lungs when you exercise). Those who do? They tend to find that higher weight does not mean poor health. Even fewer studies affect the effects of weight stigma, despite the fact that the effects of stigma and discrimination on health are well known.
We cannot ignore that the evidence shows that dieting is a risk factor for both eating disorders and long-term weight gain. Additional, a little known fact (I’d call it a dirty secret) of “obesity” research. is that studies comparing the health outcomes of people who have always been heavy with people who have always been thin have NOT shown that the relatively few heavier people who manage to lose weight and keep it off are ultimately healthier than people who have a constant, albeit higher, weight.
This supports his idea supporting good self-care and letting the body figure things out for itself — a wellness, not weight, approach.
You’re looking for solutions to shame in all the wrong places
Even In cases where being thin can actually have a health benefit, does pushing your body to a lower weight have the same benefit? Nobody knows. There is a lot of money in promoting obesity as a disease, and many scientists have contributed to this promotion. We’re seeing it in a new way today with endless media reporting that GLP-1 drugs have a positive impact on this condition and this condition. The bottom line is that it’s due to weight loss, but let’s not forget that these drugs started out as effective tools for managing type 2 diabetes — they clearly have direct effects on metabolic health.
There are many well-known flaws in mainstream obesity research, including a focus on weight loss at any cost, ignoring the benefits of other lifestyle interventions (increasing exercise in an enjoyable, sustainable way and improving food quality) as well as personal, social and environmental factors that may contribute to poor health — including stigma and shame.
I’ve received emails defending a popular decades-old commercial weight loss program, talking about the shame and stigma people face with larger bodies. Yes, this is a reality — a terrible reality. However, It is not the responsibility of the person experiencing shame and stigma to physically alter their body to escape the shame and stigma. Body acceptance work, self-compassion, slow and steady dismantling of social norms that ignore genetic diversity, and pushing back against structural inequalities like tiny armchairs in public spaces are the best solutions.
Community building is another solution. One of the tragic details I have observed in scientific research on the impact of weight stigma is that people who experience stigma, prejudice and discrimination because of their weight they tend to impose the same stigma on themselvesand in other persons of higher body weight.
This is very different from the association that occurs with people who are oppressed based on other characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. While some weight loss companies and programs (whether they claim to sell weight loss or simply “wellness”) may appear to offer this community support, it is false support, based on the perception that your body is unacceptable.
A New Year’s diet by any other name… is still a diet
Many people get frustrated with diets (for good reason, because they don’t work long term). But calling a program that places arbitrary food restrictions (whether through counting calories, macros, points, or “red foods”) a lifestyle program is a lifestyle program. Adding mindfulness and meditation to what is still a diet (if the primary goal is weight loss, it’s a diet) is a tragic co-optation of two valuable practices. And that’s true whether we’re talking about a restrictive diet you’d have to follow for life or a weight loss drug you’d have to take for life.
When I’ve publicly criticized the aforementioned commercial weight loss program, I’ve usually had a handful of people email me to share how positive their experience was with that program and challenge me on whether I fully understood the “new” version of the program. While I would never invalidate someone’s personal experience because it is THEIR experience, I have also witnessed the personal experiences of many, many people who have had bad experiences with this program. Some of these experiences were from a few months ago, others were from a few decades ago. I regularly hear about similar experiences from nutritionists and therapists, so it’s not like I’m living in a vacuum.
It saddens me to hear people defend huge corporations that make money by convincing people that their bodies are wrong. However, I myself spent decades thinking that dieting and the pursuit of weight loss was not just normal, but necessary if I wanted to be happy and healthy. (This was before I went back to high school to become a dietitian and before I started reading the research on weight, diet, and health.) Well, I get it. I’ve been deeply embedded in diet culture before, and when I was there, no one could have convinced me that I might be going down the wrong path.
So if you find yourself in a reactive “OMG, I need to fix my body right now!” mental state, pause, take a breath and go back to what I said about things you want to add to your life and things you want to take away. And maybe take inventory of what aspects of your life and self-care you’re happy with as they are (there’s always at least one thing). Be responsive, not reactive. (Hint: this is something a mindfulness practice can help with!)
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Carrie Dennett, MPH, RDN, is a registered dietitian nutritionist based in the Pacific Northwest, journalistintuitive nutrition consultant, authorand speaker. Her superpowers include; debunking nutritional myths and empowerment of women and men feel better about their bodies and make food choices that support pleasure, nutrition and health. This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute personalized nutrition or medical advice.
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