A weekly blog about how to quit dieting for good using an intuitive eating and health at every size approach.
Somehow, some way, we've intertwined weight loss with health.
BUT....
Weight gain can be healthy. And it might even be healthy for you.
In order to convince you of this, I will start with the most obvious example I can think of: anorexia.
Tess Holliday is considering plastic surgery and I'm feeling all the feels about it.
Before I ruffle any feathers about my opinion on this, I want to say a couple things:
1) The patriarchy does not own all aesthetic decisions that women make.
This is the crux of the point that Tess Holliday is making. She is specifically saying that she does not view her body as "flawed." She just wants to make some changes to it.
I don't think that the patriarchy influences my aesthetic choices always. For example, when I choose to wear a sweater, it's usually because it's cold outside. It's not because "the man" is telling me to wear a sweater.
It's important to acknowledge that Tess Holliday sees herself having agency in this decision. There's no gun pointed at her head or an abusive husband demanding that she change her body. This is something that I've talked about before. It is possible to have agency in the patriarchy.
2) This post is helpfully vague in what she is planning on changing.
It's hard to know what her decision is based on when we don't know what's going on. Maybe she is getting scars or stretch marks removed. Maybe she is adding scars and stretch marks. She could be getting a mastectomy or another medical procedure and still wants to keep her modeling career.
We just don't know. And it probably is none of our damn business. It's her Instagram page not her medical record, even if she's a public figure.
3) Tess Holliday's body positivity is palatable. That is what makes her a successful activist.
When I first starting trying to look at larger bodies and see them as beautiful, I went on Pinterest. I looked up plus size models in bikinis.
Tess Holliday, Kate Upton, and Ashley Graham look like the runway models we usually see. Their frames are hourglass. Their skin is clear. Their makeup is on point. They are predominantly white and upper class. They generally are trying look like Cindy Crawford.
Seeing women who are bigger who look beautiful really really really helps.
In a big way (pun intended), Tess Holliday is helping women. She's showing people bigger women can be attractive in a way that allows them to see it. She uses these markers of traditional attractiveness to make people comfortable.
Having scars or stretch marks or parts of her body that prevent her from making this appeal are "off brand." They might be taking away from her work as an activist in a pivotal way.
4) And, yes, absolutely, Tess, "what you do with your body is your business."
That is at the heart of the pro-choice movement. Whatever you decide, you still own your body. Nobody else does.
But... I'm still a little disappointed.
Her choices affect other women because she is a public figure.
I've talked about Anita Sarkeesian's talk about choice feminism. The choices we make have an impact on other women.
Not all choices, just for being choices, are feminist choices. My choice to wear a sweater is not a feminist choice if I'm making it based on the weather.
I think what she's saying is CONFUSING.
How can she explain to women looking up to her how she decided what she didn't like isn't a "flaw?"
It's just confusing. She's saying, "Yeah yeah yeah. I'm perfect. I don't need to change but I'm going to and I want to."
The exercise and diet obsessed, who were on the path to recovery, now have this Instagram post to point to. They can say, "But I don't like my body. It's my body. I get to decide. I can decide to keep doing (insert unhealthy behavior)."
The "man" could appropriate this to convince women that body hate is "empowerment."
I did a lot of work in therapy on being able to hold two things at once. I can love my body and I can want to change it. You can certainly love your body. You can certainly change your body as an act of love.
My concern is how companies appropriate the language of body positivity to sell products. I fear we won't allow women to feel like they can just be in their bodies as they are. We will use the language of body positivity and feminism to "empower" women to hate their bodies.
This has already happened around dieting and health. These days we mask disdain for fat people with "concern for their health."
It makes me sad that even my heroes can feel like they want to change.
I'm disappointed because women like her are the women I look to on my bad body image days. When I dislike how my body looks, I want to see women who are unabashedly proud of how their body looks every damn day.
I want Instagram posts about jiggly thighs and stretch marks and scars and saggy boobs. I want to see belly rolls and wrinkles and birth marks. Instead, I'm seeing a "body positive" advertisement for cosmetic surgery.
But, here's my deus ex machina.
I appreciate that Tess Holliday is being honest. I appreciate that she's being vulnerable. I appreciate that she is tackling this complex concept of how she chooses to live in her body.
After all, the rest of us make choices everyday about what we're going to change and what we won't.
For example, I shave my legs but I don't shave other parts. I sometimes wear makeup and braid my hair and care about what clothes I'm wearing. It would be too exhausting to be perfectly feminist or perfectly body positive.
I don't think you have to walk around in a paper bag and demand that society accept you as you are.
BUT.... society should accept us unchanged, naked, make-up free, belly rolls, stretch marks, saggy boobs and all.
We're all human beings, right?
This is your excuse to eat the chocolate covered whatever.
What if it were healthy to eat chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels?
When I worked for an eating disorder treatment center, this was a no-brainer. The sickest patients needed to eat.
The staff encouraged clients to eat caloric snacks and presented them with "fear foods." These "fear foods" included cookie butter, oreos, and chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels.
These women NEEDED these snacks.
They needed them because they needed something with lots of protein and fat. They needed them because they needed the calories. They needed them because they needed to have a neutral relationship with food.
At the eating disorder treatment center, the dietitians often used nutrition to support this. For example, we might explain to a patient that ice cream has calcium. Butter, too, has some nutritional benefits.
Food serves several roles in our lives.
We need nutrients to survive. Protein and fat are two critical macro nutrients. Macro is Greek for large. In other words, it means they are a large part of nutrients we need. (cite sources).
Calories give our bodies the fuel it needs to do its thing. Calories are just a measure of energy. (cite source).
We need to feel normal around food. Feeling crazy around food is asking for trouble. We eat food three times a day at least. Would you think it's healthy to feel crazy three times every day?
We need to eat to re-connect. This is where I get all weird and religious. Going to church as a kid and eating transubstantiated Jesus was about "communion." It's about getting together with your neighbors, hanging out and eating. This can be a spiritual practice if that word doesn't freak you out or it can be social or emotional.
Dieting and eating disorders isolate people. They make it harder to cook a meal for everyone. They make it harder for everyone to eat together.
Try to remember that food is something you're supposed to eat.
I remember when I was a kid, I used to just think all foods were healthy and good for me. I never worried that food was poisoning me.
My goal as a coach is to make you feel that way again. I want to make you feel like you are safe and able to eat without fear.
Before you jump in with your rebuttal, I know we live in a post Michael Pollan world. We can't run around and believe that we will get our daily value of magnesium from 24 oz Coke products. But, I think we can find something valuable from anything we might choose to consume.
Is there any food that you're afraid of? Write it down in the comments. I've got my college nutrition book out and my thinking cap on. I will respond to everything with a reason why it might be healthy to eat it. Extra credit if you have your own reason.
At least 100 times since I've started my vigilante effort to help women quit dieting, I've encountered people who oppose the idea.
They look at me skeptically and say things like, "fat people are lazy." They believe that if someone is not trying to diet, the heavens punish them with extra weight. They believe fat people only exist because they failed to abide by [insert diet of choice].
Last week we talked about shame. I talked about all the reasons that shame doesn't work to make you thinner. Just like shame doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for other people.
The short answer to this question is no.
It feels like shame will make you thinner. It feels like hating our bodies will somehow magically make it look better.
But, here are 5 reasons that being ashamed of your body doesn't actually work to make you thinner even if that's what you think you should be.
1. Shame doesn't work to discipline the body.
To quote Brene Brown, "Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change."
When we grab at pieces of our body and tell our reflection in the mirror that we are ugly and lazy, we zap the part of ourselves that makes us want to change.
Shame takes us from thinking we are capable to thinking we are stuck. Worse than that, it makes us believe we are somehow inherently incapable. We ARE bad. It's not just our actions that are bad but our whole being is bad.
So, if you're so bad, how are you supposed to change?
2. Shame can't change biology, baby.
You can call yourself mean names all day but shame can't change your set point.
If you've read my blog, you know that I've mentioned set point theory a gazillion times. And for the gazillionth time, set point theory means that your body has a range mostly determined by genetics and stays within that range regardless of what you want your weight to be. It explains why our weight loss plateaus and slowly creeps back up even if we're doing everything the same.
So, even if you feel super BAD about how you ate, slept, or exercised today, it's not going to change your set point.
It turns out you can't hate your way to weight loss.
3. Shame can affect digestion.
There are neurotransmitters in your gut which means that how you feel can affect how you digest. Your guilt or shame around food can actually activate your "fight or flight" response. According to this article by Marc David of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating:
"If you're feeling guilty about eating the ice cream or judging yourself for eating it, the hypothalamus will take this negative input and send signals down the sympathetic fibers of the autonomic nervous system. This initiates inhibitory responses in the digestive organs which means you'll be eating your ice cream but not fully metabolizing it."
If you've ever had a lot of guilt after a meal, you might feel like you have an upset stomach. You might feel bloated. You might hold on to that ice cream longer and you might store it. That doesn't sound like an effective strategy for weight loss.
Notice how your guilt and shame affect the way you feel after eating.
4. If you feel guilt and shame, it might lead you to eat emotionally.
To quote the infamous Austin Powers character, Fat Bastard, "I eat because I'm unhappy and I'm unhappy because I eat."
One wouldn't think such wisdom would come from a Mike Myers film but a lot of times, feeling guilty around foods just leads to more eating of the food that makes us feel guilty.
Listen, I don't even think emotional eating is that bad. Hating yourself, however, will NOT help you stop eating the ice cream that you eat as a coping mechanism.
5. Shame prevents us from listening to our body.
Shame's worst crime is taking us away from our body's needs. If you are constantly pissed at your body for eating or eating too much or eating carbs when you're supposed to be Paleo, you start to develop a really terrible relationship with your body. You don't trust it.
And not trusting your body means you don't listen to what it needs. You don't eat when you're hungry. You don't stop when you're full. You don't go for walks when you need them. You don't stop running when you have bad knees. You don't take care of your body because you're mad at her.
That sucks.
Your body is this super awesome machine that's completing like I dunno a billion chemical reactions a day. It's what takes you through life. It's what creates life. It's the body that's helped you build your career and your life. If you're able-bodied, it allows you to talk, walk, run, cook, clean, play music, explore, travel, or have sex.
Since you're stuck hanging out in this body, why not love it? Why not appreciate it? Why not take care of it instead of yelling at it like a mean nun at a Catholic school in the 50s?
Being mean to your body is not actually making you thinner. So, please just stop.
There a lot of little compromises we feel like we need to make.
And I just don't think we should.