By Angie Raza BSW, MSW, RSW, RCC
In a culture and society that values thinness, low calorie, fat-free, gluten-free, macro counting, fad diets, and limited clothing sizes, the definition of ‘healthy’ has become synonymous with the appearance of a small body size. Somehow we have accepted that height, foot size, hair type, and eye colour are a result of our genes, but we have discounted the idea that those very same genes could actually influence our body size and weight.
Unfortunately when it comes to weight and body size, we have been taught to think that diet and exercise are the only two factors that influence our weight. No wonder we think everyone should be able to achieve the same socially constructed ideal of beauty (as temporarily defined at the moment) through pure willpower. We think that if you have not yet achieved the current body trend – currently in 2022 it is big lips, big butt, and busty with a thin waist and flat stomach (actually achieved by face fillers, boob jobs, and Brazilian Butt Lifts) – then you must not be working hard enough. Exercise more, eat less – as if that’s all there is to it.
We have ignored that fact that our body size and weight are often influenced by numerous factors including genes, hormones, medications, stress, socio-economic status, metabolism, emotions/emotional regulation, trauma, coping skills, sleep, age, gender, yoyo dieting, hydration, medical conditions, mental health issues, substance use, media, eating disorders, cultural background, family values, work/schedule, activity, diet and time pressures – just to name a few.
Not only have we inflated value for a smaller body based entirely on appearance, we have also deemed it to be healthier, fitter, smarter, kinder, prettier and more deserving. In turn, we have created these self-fulfilling prophesies by allowing people in smaller bodies to be treated better, promoted more often, paid more, sentenced shorter in the court system, and all around preferential treatment in general (ie. better service, free/discounted entrance, etc.). Unfortunately by creating an in-group who receives better treatment and favourable assumptions, there has to be an out-group, which naturally is the opposite of these smaller bodies – larger bodies. Entirely based on negative judgments, society associates large bodies to be lazy, mean, careless, irresponsible, undeserving, unhealthy, unfit, inactive, uncontrolled, and messy. Again, these are inaccurate generalizations that unfortunately play out in real life due to learned social constructs associated with body size.
Fatness, itself, is not an illness. It can be a symptom of disease but fat cells do not cause disease. Ironically, it is the stigmatizing and body shaming that causes people to yo-yo diet, lose weight in harmful and drastic ways, and develop low self-esteem that can cause mental illness and physical illness. Vilifying fat bodies is harmful to people in larger bodies as well as people in smaller bodies – teaching size prejudice and planting the fear of becoming fat.
Society has created the word “Obesity” to pathologize body size. It is simply categorized based on scoring a number over 30 on the Body Mass Index (BMI). In the 1800s, a Belgian mathematician created the BMI to try to determine a statistical analysis to apply to a large group population to calculate the ‘average man’ based on height and weight created BMI. This equation calculates physical appearance, not health. Not to mention, this index was solely based on white European men – not taking different body types, genders, cultures, or other influencing factors into consideration. BMI is extremely harmful when we apply this to the world population. In fact, to accentuate the irrelevance of BMI and health, it is important to be aware that in 1998 The National Institutes of Health changed BMI guidelines, dropping ]the overweight category from 27.8 to 25. That means, in 1998 the very same people who originally went to bed 'normal weight', woke up the next morning as 'overweight'... not even gaining or losing a pound. Just like that, an obesity epidemic was created.
However, there are a couple domains where society does give some leeway to valuing different body sizes equally – in animals. For example, we can accept that dogs come in all different sizes, some tall like the Great Dane, slender like the Greyhound, medium size like the Golden Retrievers or some short and stocky like the Pug or Bulldog. We can see the beauty and cuteness in all these breeds and never expect a Great Dane to be forced to lose weight to look like a Greyhound ‘to be healthy’ yet for some reason we are expecting our entire community to have bodies like all these tall, lean, low-body fat supermodel-esque Greyhounds regardless of genetics, socio- and environmental factors.
We even accept that babies develop at different times and are born at different weights, lengths and percentiles, yet at some point we expect these very same babies to grow up and meet these socially constructed, rigid ‘model measurements’ if they want to be deemed healthy, attractive and valued.
To make matters worse, not only do we believe this to be true, we believe that if we work hard enough we will eventually get there. Though this goal may momentarily be reached (Keep in mind: 97% of diets fail within three years; the chance of keeping lost weight off for five years is the same as surviving stage 4 metastatic breast cancer; and more than half of bariatric surgery patients regaining the weight within five years) or perhaps for a little longer if we choose to isolate, fixate and forgo any tempting occasion or experience that could possibly veer us off track, we need to remember that all we are doing is engraining unhealthy perfectionistic habits to ‘earn’ our worth, believing we cannot be beautiful or worthy at any other size.
We disregard the toll it takes on our mental health, physical health, social life, academics and other priorities since these goals of not eating/restricting/over-exercising become all-consuming. This is where we start to obsess over food, body shape, weight and exercise by micromanaging, controlling, over-exercising and checking our body, weight, macros, nutrition information labels, calories burnt and steps walked every moment of every day. Each day is considered a ‘win or lose’ depending on our so-called ‘progress’ aka perfectionism/supporting our disordered eating. It’s a hard concept to wrap our head around this concept because many goals in life can be ‘won’ and achieved though hard work, dedication, and willpower. However in the world of food and body image, this will earn you a degree in achieving disordered eating, or possibly a double major degree in several eating disorders and destructive coping skills.
So what do we do when it is self-destructive to work harder? We need to work differently. We need to spend more time undoing the harms of diet-culture and embracing self-acceptance of who we actually are and what we need as individuals.
This is where the philosophies of Health At Every Size and Intuitive Eating come in. Health at Every Size (HAES) recognizes that there is no ‘perfect’ size that defines health since health is holistic and exists on a continuum. What is healthy for one person may be (and look) different for another. You cannot deem health based on physical appearance or body size. It is also important to note that health should not be a moral status, deeming only healthy and able-bodies acceptable and deserving of respect. Health, regardless of its status, should never be used to judge, oppress, or determine the value of an individual.
Intuitive Eating is a non-diet approach to changing your eating habits to become more attuned to your body cues of hunger and satiety while removing morality assigned to food and self-judgement influenced by diet culture. The more we let go of our diet-culturally derived food ‘rules’ and ‘glorifying/demonizing’ foods, the stronger we can connect our brain and body which has been proven to improve body-image. There is no one more educated in food nutrition than someone with disordered eating or an eating disorder. So again, this is not about looking at nutrition labels more closely or measuring portion sizes, it is about perceiving food and our relationship to it differently.
Comments