When I first became a health coach, I wasn’t trained from a health at every size perspective. The vast majority of people around me were marketing by promising weight loss. But I started to notice something weird… my friends who marketed weight loss… had never actually lost any weight. They tended to have freakishly fast metabolisms and stay thin almost no matter what they did. You could say this is rare, but only if we’re operating under the delusion of calories in and out (which seriously oversimplifies the way that the human body works). Even if we all eat the same and moved the same way, we would still have very different bodies.
Most Doctors and health coaches want to help clients get healthier, but the research shows that long term weight loss is almost impossible. The overwhelming critique I hear of Health at Every Size is that being “overweight” isn’t healthy or that fat activists don’t care about health. The reality could not be further from the truth. The paradigms we’ve been taught to associate with health are generally… unhealthy. Here’s why a HAES approach is actually way more likely to help you and your workplace get healthier:
1) The vast majority of people who intentionally persue loosing weight (over 95%) end up gaining an average of 2.5 lbs from their starting weight 10 years out. We are as sure that smoking causes cancer as we are that dieting leads to long term weight GAIN. Imagine being offered a surgery with a 95% chance that it would cause the opposite of it’s intended affect…. and possibly seriously harm you in other ways? With numbers like this, any other type of intervention would be considered unethical. Check out the evidence for yourself.
2) Weight cycling and disordered eating are also common in dieters. And they can evolve into some of the most deadly mental health conditions, 1/4 diets will go on to become an eating disorder. Health At Every Size (HAES) and Intuitive Eating (IE) are evidence based paradigms that produce beneficial health outcomes. They do this by focusing on… actual health outcomes and behaviors that we know lead to health. Intuitive Eating and exercise have been shown: decrease cholesterol levels, decrease blood pressure, increase physical activity, improve eating behaviors, increase self-esteem, lead to stable weights and decrease body dissatisfaction. What they don’t do? Lead to long term weight loss.
3) Intuitive Eating was created by dietician and has been researched by people who care about health and food! If you want to manage a chronic illness or chronic pain, it’s really unlikely that focusing on the size of your body is the easiest way to produce beneficial outcomes related to inflammation or anxiety. It’s unethical for professionals to prescribe weight loss without knowing how to offer people an an effective, sustainable way to loose weight.
4) The long term weight loss that’s often applauded in our society is most commonly associated with disordered eating (found in almost all of the 5ish percent of people with “sustained” weight loss) which has serious impacts on our minds and bodies. When our bodies get use to living in a negative energy balance they do their best to keep us from starving. That means long term negative impacts on metabolism. We also start to experience in increase in the hormone that drives hunger (gherkin) and the perceived reward response to foods that have been off limits. Check out the real before and after health metrics for contestants on “The Biggest Loser".” Almost no one recovers from the experience without their health taking a major hit. You can’t overcome your bodies wisdom with willpower.
If your self esteem is low after a diet or if you’re noticing yourself extra obsessed with food or feeling anxiety around it, know that you’re not crazy. Those are NORMAL responses to dieting. There are ways to get healthier without focusing on body size… in fact, weight neutral approaches to health are arguably the only real health focused interventions.
If you’re ready to start making peace with your body and focusing on healthy behaviors, a HAES health coach or dietician can help you learn to respect your body’s hunger and fullness. Coaching can refocus you on the way you’re treating and talking to your body and help you move towards foods (and spiritual practices, relationships and self care activities) that are nourishing for you emotionally, physically and mentally. Stop moving your body to change your body and start moving your body to enjoy it.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with weight loss or even with wanting to loose weight. Thin people earn more money and are less likely to be shamed or discriminated against by doctors. We’d have to be crazy to not recognize that it’s easier to live in society in a smaller body. When weight loss (or gain) is a neutral result of engaging in behaviors that nourish you. Often (usually) it’s not.
Pursuing weight loss at the expense of your mental, emotional, physical health or spiritual health is not going to make you healthier. But you can still make practical changes in your life that will.
For more support working on body image, food and wellbeing check out my contemplative therapy and health coaching pages. If you want to learn about my philosophy and health at every size workplace wellness, this page has more info.
<3 Syd
PS - From the moment I started building this business 10 years ago, my plan was to offer a pricing structure that would never turn someone away because of money. In the last few years, due to the expense of running a business in New York, that's become harder and harder.
If you've benefitted from a free offering like this blog or even working with me on an ongoing basis, one way to help make sure integrative health and emotional wellbeing stay available on a sliding scale is to donate to my PayPal: paypal.me/sydneyfaithrose
All donations made are used ONLY to fund sliding scale services (usually trauma therapy) for people who would other wise be unable to find support. If every person on this mailing list sent $10 per month that would fund weekly sliding scale spaces for 10 clients for a whole year. Small amounts can make a HUGE difference in peoples lives.
