Weight Neutrality & Trauma Therapy
“Weight is not an effective measure of attractiveness, moral character, or health. The real enemy is weight stigma, for it is the stigmatization and fear of fat that causes the damage and deflects attention from true threats to our health and well-being.”
- Linda Bacon
What is a weight inclusive approach in therapy and what does it mean for you?
A weight-neutral approach to wellness includes the evidence based beliefs that:
1) a person's health and quality of life can’t be assessed based solely on their body size or weight.
2) Body size and weight aren’t as directly and linearly related to wellness as is commonly thought.
3) Body weight and shape are determined by a complex set of genetic, metabolic, physiological, cultural, social, and behavioral conditions.
4) Throughout history bodies have come in a variety of shapes and sizes, we shouldn’t expect the majority of people to live in a small range of body sizes.
5) People of all sizes can benefit from emotional, mental and physical support in health decision making that can lead to improved well being.
What that means is that in all of my offerings, I strive to care for you and your body at any size. We’ll always find opportunities to adjust a restorative posture so that it fits your needs, you’ll always have a comfortable place to sit in my office for trauma therapy.
When we talk about food or wellness behaviors, I won’t assume that I know anything about your life based on the body that you’re in.
I work to listen and acknowledge the realities of living in a larger body in a weight obsessed world and no way will I expect you to loose weight as the result of our work.
My goal will be to make sure that you feel unconditionally respected and heard.
The Research & Ethics of Centering Weight in Wellness
A comprehensive review of research called "The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health" found that not a single weight loss program in history has generated the results they promised for the majority of participants.
Researchers are as sure that people who pursue intention weight loss regain weight in the majority of cases as we are that smoking causes cancer. Any other medical or wellness based intervention with this kind of data would be thrown out and considered unethical for providers to recommend to clients.
It's clear that the majority of health and wellness professionals are not educated on the literature surrounding the weight-based approaches to health, and many don’t know any alternatives to their current model.
Some negative impacts of weight focused approaches to health can include:
Weight Bias and Stigma: A cultural focus on weight and weight loss is connected to a deep seeded belief that people can be determined to be more valuable, intelligent, attractive self aware, or more lazy, stupid or untrustworthy based on body size. Centering thinness and associating it with health supports negative attitudes and beliefs about people who live in larger bodies. Weight stigma is associated with diminished health and well-being, and also workplace and social discrimination. Weight bias can be a major reason that people who live in larger bodies avoid doctors and receive worse care in the doctors office.
Weight Cycling: The most common result of attempted intentional weight-loss is weight cycling, not long term weight loss. The repeated loss and regain of weight is linked with negative physical health outcomes including: muscle loss, hypertension, inflammation, less physical activity, forms of cancer and higher mortality. Weight cycling is also connect to harms to emotional and mental well-being, like lower self-esteem and increased stress.
Disordered Eating: Pursuing weight loss often leads to disordered eating behaviors. One out of four eating disorders starts with a diet and the evidence is growing everyday that trying to maintain a lower body weight can put people at risk for binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa.
Benefits of Weight Neutral Health Care
Repeatedly, when weight neutral approaches to supporting wellness behaviors have been tested against intentional weight loss, the weight-neutral approaches result in better emotional, physical and mental wellbeing.
From blood pressure to increasing physical activity, weight inclusivity benefits peoples physical health.
If you want to improve wellbeing for your organization or optimize employee health, the ethical way to do it is with a Health at Every Size approach.
Compared to dieting, weight inclusive approaches also support self-esteem and help people avoid the pitfalls of disordered eating.
Weight neutral health care avoids almost all of the harmful impacts of dieting interventions when done right and people don’t drop out of programs that actually help them to feel better!
If you’re wanting an approach to health that’s truly about wellbeing and that welcomes and cares for your body as it is, weight inclusivity is really the only way to go.
