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January is typically when the dieting industrial complex revs its engines and polishes off its most seductive marketing pitches. This year is no different, except we now have the addition of constant advertising from online "wellness" companies selling GLP-1 weight loss drugs. But if you're not feeling great about your nutrition or exercise habits, your energy levels or your overall well-being, the answer is not to try to "fix" your body by changing its size or shape.
If your food and movement habits could benefit from some changes — maybe you're realizing you haven't been giving your body what it needs to feel good, panic is not a helpful reaction. A more measured response would be to calmly assess what you want to add to your life and what you want to subtract.
- Maybe you want to eat more vegetables, so you get a new veggie-forward cookbook or look for vegetable recipes from a food blogger you already like and trust.
- Maybe you decide this is the year you want to get strong, so you seek out a personal trainer who understands your goals, or you get some resistance bands and do you own workouts at home.
- Maybe you want to put limits on social media scrolling so you have more time to move your body, cook a tasty vegetable side, set and meet a reading goal, or engage in more meaningful hobbies.
You could call all of this a return to wellness -- both physical and mental -- but the word "wellness" has unfortunately been so coopted by the diet industry that it rarely means what you think it means anymore. Many commercial diet plans — including those sold by big corporations, "wellness influencers" and doctors with a new book to peddle — are quick to say "This isn't a diet...this is about wellness." We're seeing the same rhetoric around weight loss drugs.
It's curious how these entities almost universally market wellness towards people whose bodies are deemed "too large." What they call "wellness" unfortunately tends to take the form of restrictive food plans and exercise prescriptions that feel far more like work than play, while ignoring other aspects of health. This is discriminatory on two fronts.
- One, that if you don't fit in a culturally accepted weight range, that you better fix yourself.
- Two, that if you do fit in 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 cancer diagnosis missed for far too long because they were tall and thin and "healthy." Despite trips to their primary care physician, and even to urgent care, their symptoms get getting ignored. It took 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 every weight. Weight is not synonymous with health, and despite "popular wisdom" or "common knowledge" that it is, the science does not back it up.
Study after study has examined "associations" between weight and health, and yes, some of those studies do show an association between higher weight and poorer health outcomes, but an association doesn't prove cause and effect.
(Example: If people who drive red cars are more likely to have brown hair and less likely to have blond hair, then driving a red car is associated with having brown hair, but driving a red car doesn't cause your hair to turn brown.)
Additionally, science can't find what it's not looking for. Most weight-and-health studies don't factor in fitness levels (specific "cardiorespiratory" fitness, i.e. the kind of fitness you get from challenging your heart and lungs when you exercise). Those that do? They tend to find that higher weight doesn't mean poorer health. Even fewer studies factor in the effects of weight stigma, despite the fact that the health effects of stigma and discrimination are well known.
We can't ignore that evidence shows that dieting is a risk factor for both eating disorders and long-term weight gain. Additionally, one little known fact (I would call it a dirty secret) of "obesity" research is that the 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 higher weight people who manage to lose weight and keep it off are healthier in the end than people who have a stable, albeit higher, weight.
This supports the idea of advocating for good self-care and letting the body figure things out for itself — a wellness, not weight, approach.
Looking for solutions to shame in all the wrong places
Even in cases where being thin might actually have a health benefit, do you get that same benefit if you force your body down to a lower weight? No one knows. There's a lot of money in promoting obesity as a disease, and many scientists have bought into that promotion. We're seeing it in a new way today with endless media reporting about GLP-1 drugs having a positive impact on this condition and that condition. The implication is that it's due to the weight loss, but let's not forget that these drugs started as effective tools for managing type 2 diabetes — they clearly have direct effects on metabolic health.
There are several known flaws in mainstream obesity research, including focusing on weight loss at any cost, ignoring the benefits of other lifestyle interventions (increasing movement in an enjoyable, sustainable way and improving food quality) as well as personal, social and environmental factors that may be contributing to poorer health — including stigma and shame.
I've received emails defending a popular decades-old commercial weight loss program by talking about the shame and stigma people in larger bodies face. Yes, this is a reality — a terrible reality. However, it is not the responsibility of the person being subjected to shame and stigma to physically alter their bodies to escape the shame and stigma. Body acceptance work, self-compassion, slow-and-steady dismantling of societal norms that ignore genetic diversity, and push-back against structural inequities such as tiny chairs with arms in public spaces are the better solutions.
Community building is another solution. One of the tragic details I've noticed in the scientific research on the impact of weight stigma is that people who experiences stigma, bias and discrimination because of their weight tend to inflict that same stigma on themselves, and on other people of higher body weights.
This is very different from the banding together that happens with individuals 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 be selling weight loss, or simply "wellness") may appear to offer that community support, it's false support, based on the notion that your body is unacceptable.
A diet by any other name...is still a diet
Many people are becoming disenchanted with diets (for good reason, because they don't work for the long term). But calling a program that sets arbitrary restriction on food (whether through counting calories, macros, points or "red foods") a lifestyle program is whitewashing. Adding mindfulness and meditation to what is still a diet (if the primary goal is weight loss, it is a diet) is a tragic co-opting of two deeply valuable practices. And that's true whether we're talking about a restrictive diet that you would need to follow for life, or a weight loss medication you would need to take for life.
When I've been publicly critical of the aforementioned commercial weight loss program, I usually received a handful of people emailing me to share how positive their experience with that program has been 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 also have been witness to the personal experiences of many, many people who have had bad experiences with this program. Some of those experiences were from a few months prior, others were from a few decades ago. I regularly hear of similar experiences from dietitians and therapists, so it's not like I'm living in a vacuum.
It makes me sad to hear people defending huge corporations that make money by persuading 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 grad school to become a dietitian, and before I started actually reading the research on weight, dieting and health.) So, I get it. I've been deeply embedded in diet culture before, and when I was there, no one could have persuaded me that I was maybe headed down the wrong path.
So if you find yourself in a reactionary "OMG I have to fix my body right now!" state of mind, 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 subtract. And maybe take inventory of what aspects of your life and your self-care you're satisfied with as they are (there's always at least one thing). Be responsive, not reactive. (Hint: that's something that a mindfulness practice can help with!)
Disclaimer: All information provided here is of a general nature and is furnished only for educational purposes. This information is not to be taken as medical or other health advice pertaining to an individual’s specific health or medical condition. You agree that the use of this information is at your own risk.
Happy New Year!
