I suspect the clicks to this post will be high.
Why?
We fear fat. Fat — we learn — is not only unhealthy and leads to disease, but it is also unattractive and undesirable.
As kids, we first learned this message when our moms complained about their bellies and thighs. As teenagers, it came from TV and probably our first Weight Watchers experience. As adults, the message is pervasive in our conversations, social media, magazines, and the doctor’s office.
Although it contradicts everything we’ve learned, our obsessive focus on weight hasn’t lead us to live healthier lives.
Quite the opposite.
Extensive research shows that solely focusing on weight to achieve health has negative repercussions for our physical and psychological well-being. This happens mainly because our desire for health (a neutral desire) is easily confused with our desire for thinness (a social desire).
Our focus on weight-loss is the reason nearly half of 3- to 6-year old girls worry about being fat, and up to 50% of Americans have a problematic relationship with food, body, and exercise.
Skipping meals, over-exercising, and restricting food groups have unintended consequences on our physiology and metabolism. Also, when our eating decisions are guided by our fear of gaining weight or desire to control it, the act of eating becomes stressful, and guilt and shame become normal in our relationship with food.
As weird as this sounds, it is possible to live a healthy life and not diet. You don’t need to control your weight to live a healthy life.
Our biased focus on weight-loss prevents us from looking at important contributors to well-being, all of which are possible regardless of our weight.
We can promote physical activity, a nourishing diet (which includes pleasure!), sleep and stress management, without a single mention of weight. We don’t need rules and scales to want to do these things. If we approach these actions through the lens of self-care and how they feel in the body and the mind, they won’t feel like things we should do.
Think, how does your fear of fat and desire to achieve a certain weight affect your relationship with food and your body? How does it affect your social life and relationships? Do you want health or do you want thinness?
Identifying the times when the fear of fat comes up and questioning its validity has helped me and my clients focus on well-being, ultimately leading to finding joy and freedom around food.
Generally, the question that guides my actions is no longer, will this make me fat? But rather, will this make me feel good and live well?
Here’s my challenge of the week: leave weight on the back burner and focus on your well-being; focus on creating the conditions for your body to be energized and nourished. This should be felt in the body and the mind, not on a number on the scale.
Here’s my challenge of the week: leave weight on the back burner and focus on your well-being; focus on creating the conditions for your body to be energized and nourished. This should be felt in the body and the mind, not on a number on the scale.
As Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, M.D., says, live “the healthiest life you can actually enjoy, rather than the healthiest life you can simply tolerate.”
Written by Lina Salazar.
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