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Why diets and weight loss can fuck people up.
Obviously the idea of weight loss is often super problematic. It’s seen as a route to happiness, health, desirability. It’s something people pursue at all costs. It’s praised beyond so many other ‘achievements’. Whole plot lines revolve around the importance of it.
Outfits apparently aren’t worthy of being worn unless you are thinner, certain ‘desirable’ people are not yours to partner up with, jokes are allowed to be made, fatness and weight gain is a free for all fun poking topic
Everyone loves a before and after photo. Everyone loves the story of someone who stopped possessing ‘bad traits’ (laziness, gluttony, greed, lack of willpower, overindulgence) and became more socially acceptable.
And because of that the pressure to lose weight, to transform, to be thin - it’s huge. If we fail we are worthless. We must try again. We must always strive to change our bodies. We must be never get complacent.
People always want the quickest route. ‘What’s your secret?!’ - they want to drop the kilos in any possible. Some new magic pill. Shake. Injection. Lollipop. Anything that will change their body, no matter the damage it might do.
I think the first thing that people do when they try to lose weight is demonise certain food groups. They tell themselves that carbs aren’t necessary, that chocolate consumption is for the weak, that they will never touch cheese again.
Food is no longer fun or nourishing, it is a chore, a drag, every second is spent analysing whether they could have eaten less or whether they are in fact hungry.
For the first few days or even weeks they are able to stick to this unnatural way consuming nourishment. And then something happens and they end up eating the thing that they have told themselves is incredibly evil and the reason for their larger body.
They eat it, they eat loads of it, and then they despise themselves and chastise themselves for being weak. They turn to exercise to burn it off, to be better, to stop failing.
And then at some point they probably do drop weight and they get all of that praise, that validation, they get to the point that they promised would mean happiness and different experiences and outfits. But they’ve probably done that by eating in a way that is unsustainable.
Their relationship with food is probably torn to shreds. The fear of having a meal out with friends or having a weigh in day or missing a day at the gym is huge. They’ve developed weird habits in order to suppress cravings and hunger.
They now only see fitness and weight loss as a way to be happy, but in order to get there there they must constantly go through this cycle of deprivation and frustration
They probably compare themselves to other people who may have lost weight a little more easily or kept the weight off. People with different metabolisms, different access to foods, different attitudes, different motivations, different headspaces
Because that’s what weight loss is. It’s someone with completely different circumstances to you doing a thing. There is no comparison between two people who have lost weight. Nothing that they will be doing will be the same.
And having a bad headspace around food will not serve you well in the future. Constantly over analysing what you are eating and what’s on your plate is no one‘s friend. Constantly over analysing the different stereotypes that come with fitness and fatness is also a shitter.
So if weight loss is something you genuinely wish to pursue for all of the right reasons then please do it in a way that respects you and your body. You cannot treat something kindly that you do not like.
Please make sure you have made peace with every single food group and type, and remind yourself that it’s okay to eat every single one of them at any point of the day.
Please don’t think that you need to eat certain amounts at certain times of day in order to change your body. Be intuitive about whether or not you feel hungry and what it is that you want to eat.
Exercise is not a weight loss tool. The amount of exercise that you would have to do in order to not feel hungry and eat it back and see a dent in your body mass is pretty big. It’s also not a form of punishment or restriction.
Also please take a look at the Internet and you will see fat people living happily. Their health is their concern and also not something you can visibly diagnose.
So stop getting fucked by the diet industry and the pursuit of weight loss and fitness. It honestly doesn’t end well. That’s why people go to fat clubs for years and years – if it worked they wouldn’t need to.
And please stop talking about your body and your weight gain and your desperate need to lose weight like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. It’s honestly tiresome and boring. We don’t need to constantly put ourselves down for having fatter bodies or bodies that change.
We don’t always need to be telling people what’s wrong with our bodies. We don’t always need to be some kind of transformation project. We don’t always need to point out things that others might find undesirable.
Stop putting people on pedestals when they lose weight. Stop associating Christmas and New Year with needing to go on some drastic diet. And for the love of God stop thinking that lockdown is some kind of Blue Peter project on your body and soul.
Hey guys, obviously if you’ve lost weight and you’re happy and it’s all good and you have a good headspace then this thread probably isn’t aimed at you. Cheers.
