Health at Every Size

What if I told you that you can drastically improve your physical and mental health, related to your body, without going on a diet? And in fact you shouldn't go on a diet.

Fat Shammers - for Shame:

In our overly PC world, there is still one group who is is openly discriminated against, and this is the overweight and obese group, subject to “fat shaming” tactics in the name of well-meaning advice, or just general bullying behavior. This is a group of people who are fat, but it’s usually not by choice and may be a lot less preventable than you think. Every nasty insult or well-meaning piece of advice, is like poison; or another piece of cake.

The Diet Industry:

The diet industry and the thin-ideal media makes you think being that fat must be unnatural; these people lack self-control and they are lazy. It's a choice and they're choosing it. And what I find most galling is the juxtaposition and inundation, the sheer abundance of fast food and processed foods everywhere you look, and then to add insult to injury in the most hypocritical and dishonest fashion, the models/actors advertising them are very thin, usually beautiful women eating 2,000 + calories meals.

Fast Food Commercials - if they were Honest:

And despite the seemingly obvious farce these ads work; you want the burger, and the girl. And meanwhile the diet industry keeps making more and more money, as it’s a $58 billion dollar industry. Wouldn't it be a lot more honest if every fast food commercial looked like this?

The Allusive Reality of Weight Loss:

But the reality of what weight loss entails is very different from what the media would have you think: Diets don’t work in the long term for the majority of people, so the common recommendation for someone to lose weight often leads to preoccupation with food and body, cycling weight loss and weight gain, lower self-esteem, disordered eating, eating disorders, and distraction from other health goals (Bacon & Aphramor, 2011).

And the craziest part of it is that most epidemiological studies find that compared to normal weight people, people who are overweight and obese live as long and often longer. It has not even been proven that weight loss will improve health over the long-term for obese people. This is very hard to test because no study has been able to find a reliable way to help people lose weight and keep the weight off in the long term.

While this health ambiguity may be a balm to the overweight and obese, something is missing. Yes, it is not your fault. But what if despite knowing all this, you still want to lose weight? Does that mean that there is no hope? Just give up and give in to the cravings? Well, no actually and yes, perhaps. There is a new movement that is ANTI-Diet but definitely PRO-HEALTH, and maybe just maybe even pro weight loss. But isn’t that a contradiction, and can I still eat a cookie? No and yes. This movement is called, Health at Every Size (HAES). It is also known as Intuitive Eating.

The Solution: Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating:

HAES is a movement that shifts the focus from weight management to health promotion. The idea is to stop thinking about weight but still focus on being healthy, and most importantly, the focus is on acceptance of size. It’s been associated with improvements in physiological measures (e.g. blood pressure, blood lipids), health behaviors (e.g. physical activity, eating disorder pathology) and psycho-social out-comes (e.g, mood, self-esteem, body image). By accepting your size, and your body, which is very hard to do, you also can often allow yourself to re-enter life and the things you were avoiding. Fat people feel ashamed to exercise. They often postpone or avoid medical care because they are often immediately stigmatized or told to go on a diet before being seriously evaluated for the presenting medical issue.

Interestingly, other medical conditions that are often laid at the feet of obesity, may actually be turned on their heads. Studies are suggesting that obesity may be an early symptom of diabetes as opposed to its primary underlying cause. In the same vein, other studies have found that obese women who had dieted, had high blood pressure, while those who had never been on a diet had normal blood pressure (Bacon, L., 2010)[i]. So maybe it’s the weight fluctuation or the stress of dieting that causes the high blood pressure, and not the extra weight. If this is true, it’s imperative that the health industry finds an alternative solution to dieting, as a prescription to their overweight patients. And perhaps this is the solution.

Additionally, it is well documented that obese people with hypertension live

significantly longer than thinner people with hypertension and have a lower risk of heart attack, stroke, or early death. Rather than identifying health risk, as it does in thinner people, hypertension in heavier people may simply be a requirement for pumping blood through their larger bodies (Bacon, L, 2010).

So what does all this mean for the average person feeling bad about their weight, hoping to make a change but feeling like diets have never worked before, why will they start working now?

My answer to you is this. Try to love your body as it is. Try not to want an unrealistic change. Acknowledge your body type and your genetic tendencies and accept them. Don’t try to make your body into something it shouldn’t be. Then, start listening to your body and try to figure out your eating patterns. Why are you craving this particular food at this particular time? Are you hungry? Or are you eating for another reason; boredom, mindlessness, or emotional need? Try to get in touch with your hunger. You may need to work with a professional eating coach, therapist or a dietician to work out the reasons behind your hunger. Once you become aware of them then you can be more mindful of how you approach eating. You can anticipate when you may be hungry and therefore prepare a meal, and eat before you are starving. You can use other mindfulness techniques to slow down your meal and become more aware of your hunger and what you are eating. But you should also listen to your hunger and don’t deny yourself something delicious you are craving. You deserve to enjoy that cookie, but don’t eat the whole box. It’s not about denying yourself, but it’s about thoughtful ways to care for yourself and love yourself.

I write this as if it’s easy, but we all know it is not. The best thing to do is find the right support and encouragement. That can be a friend who wants to make the same changes you do, or a professional who understands intuitive eating and mindfulness, and of course nutrition. Just remember that when you make changes, goals should be reasonable and gradual. These changes are meant to be for your whole life, so make changes you can live with. And finds ways for it to be a joyful experience for you. When we over eat, we lose the joy in eating. But when we eat intuitively, we eat what feels good, and amounts that feel good. We enjoy eating, and there is no guilt or discomfort. The extra effort is worth it; so that we live a life we enjoy and enjoy the life we live.

[i] Bacon, L. (2010) Health at Every Size, the surprising truth about your weight