But What's Wrong With Wanting to Lose Weight?
“Why don’t you endorse intentional weight loss?”
This is a question I get SO often – from random people, from clients, and in messages from you guys (by the way, keep the questions coming in my DMs and by replying to the newsletter! I’d love to do podcast episodes answering your questions!).
The entire world has seemed to endorse weight loss, and especially as a means toward health. It’s become so normal and, sadly, is the root of a lot of people’s disordered eating.
To put it plainly, intentional weight loss is counterintuitive to healing your relationship with food. Trying to do both at the same time can’t work.
Sure, you can heal your relationship with food a little bit. You can increase your consistency with food and tap into a little bit more of your hunger and fullness cues.
But really, when we’re looking at healing the last bit of your relationship – like the obsessions, food rules, and food anxiety – that is NEVER going to go away if we are intentionally trying to lose weight.
Listen to the Episode Now
Try Not Losing Weight
I want to preface this whole entire thing by saying this: Hear me out. Even if you strongly disagree with me, entertain me. You can try it my way (put losing weight on the back burner) and if it fails, you can always go back to your diets and restriction.
See what happens, work with a dietitian who specializes in intuitive eating or eating disorders, and then, if it doesn’t work, you can always go back to whatever you’re doing now.
Why Weight Loss
Let’s first look at WHY someone might want to lose weight.
Body Image: Not being happy with your body and wanting to shrink it/sculpt it/change how it looks.
Health: losing weight for overall health based on what a doctor or something else says.
One is an aesthetic reason, and another is a “health” reason. Let’s look at the body image reason first.
Weight Loss for Aesthetic
First off, I don’t mean to make this sound vain. We live in a society that admires and promotes a specific body type. If you don’t meet that ideal, it’s possible you’ve suffered real consequences in your life. I don’t want to minimize that truth.
BUT If your overall goal is to manipulate your body in order to shrink it, then the goal of your food, intake, and movement will ultimately be just that – manipulating how your body looks. Relationship with food and satisfaction and everything else doesn’t matter as much or at all.
With intuitive eating, the whole point is that it allows your body to settle where it’s supposed to be when it’s eating enough. Everyone has a set range of where their weight should be – and it’s not what WE want it to be, but what our BODY decides it to be.
That’s largely determined by genetics. And that range is out of our control for the most part.
So, intentional weight loss and trying to manipulate your food and movement to lose weight will fight against trying to heal your relationship with food. They CANNOT coexist. They will battle each other constantly.
Note: I’m saying intuitive eating a lot here because every person I know who has healed their relationship with food HAS used some form of intuitive eating to do so. Find out more information here.
Weight Loss for “Health”
First of all, we have to always question the premise of what we hear. Hearing you need to lose weight to be healthy? Hmmm…is that actually true?
And what IS “health” anyway? Health isn’t only about what we eat. It’s about sleep, stress, relationships, etc.
While there are definitely problems people face with their health that can be connected to their eating, they’re probably also connected to a lot of other things that are not contingent on weight loss or food at all.
AND even if someone truly believes that food is the direct cause of their health problems, going on a diet is rarely the answer. We can’t deny that the diet failure rate is high. We KNOW that pursuing intentional weight loss will not work for most people.
Okay, you say, now what? I think food is highly connected with my poor health. You’re saying a diet won’t work. So what do you do?
The truth is that changing the way you eat doesn’t have to be in the form of a diet. (I am NOT saying that you need to change your food here, by the way. Just saying that to the person who’s arguing above. 🙃)
Example 1): You don’t eat any vegetables in your diet. Instead of taking other foods away, try to add more vegetables in your meals. (No, I’m not talking to you, person who eats salads already.)
Example 2): You have a sedentary lifestyle where you drive to work and sit at a desk all day. Try parking your car a block away from work or taking the stairs. (And no, I’m not talking to you either, person wearing your cute Lululemon gear and working out.)
Maybe you could incorporate healthy behaviors in other ways, like increasing your sleep or lowering your stress by going to therapy.
Bottom line? When we’re looking at our health, we really have to take a bird’s eye view on the big picture. We need to think about how we can incorporate new things that can help as opposed to taking things away.
Because when we focus so much on diet and weight loss, we completely miss the point of health.
*Another barometer for how you can take this information in is if you feel anxious about your current behaviors based on what I just said and feel like you’re not doing enough for your health. It’s a sign that I’m NOT talking to you. Your food and movement is fine. You’re just anxious and obsessive.
It’s a Journey
I want to emphasize that this is NOT an easy thing. When we live in a world that focuses on weight loss and says that “health” via weight loss means beauty and success, it’s really hard to give this up.
You’d basically be swimming upstream. You’re part of the minority. People might be telling you to lose weight, especially if you naturally live in a larger body.
But if you’re living in enough distress with your relationship with food… if you’re experiencing obsessions and anxiety… then you owe it to yourself to at least try it. We can worry about the rest of it later.
This isn’t going to be an easy journey. There are going to be some days that feel absolutely nuts. Working with providers who specialize in this will be really important.
But one day, when you DO heal your relationship with food, I hope you’ll come back and tell me it was worth it. ❤️
Tweetable Quotes
“Every single person has a set point, or a range, of weight their body settles out when they’re eating enough food. It’s not what we want it to be… but it’s what our body wants it to be.” – Rachelle Heinemann
“We know the diet failure rate is so high that we know pursuing intentional weight loss will not work.” – Rachelle Heinemann
“When we’re looking at our health, we really have to take a bird’s eye view… and think about how I can incorporate new things that can help me as opposed to taking things away.” – Rachelle Heinemann
“When we focus on diet and weight loss, we completely miss the point of health.” – Rachelle Heinemann
Resources:
Understanding Disordered Eating episodes:
More From Rachelle
Hey there! I’m Rachelle, the host of the Understanding Disordered Eating Podcast. As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, I work with clients to make sense of life’s messy emotional experiences.
I believe in the power of deep work and its positive impact on your life in the long term. Learn more about how we can work together here.
Sign up for my weekly newsletter for even more!
You can connect with me on Instagram, through my website or email me directly clicking the links below.
Subscribe & Leave A Review!
If you enjoyed this episode, you can show your support by leaving a review, subscribing, or sharing with someone who may need help. Click here to open this show in iTunes and leave a five star rating and review.