We have been told for our whole lives that our weight equals health which equals our worth. Have you ever stopped to ponder how this diet culture mentality has been engrained into our relationship with our bodies and our health? Just because diet culture tells us that thinner equals healthier, it does not mean it is the truth.

Key Takeaways

If You Want To Start Asking Yourself The Important Questions, You Should:

1. Acknowledge what your relationship with the scale is like and how it is serving you
2. Shift your focus away from weight loss and towards the many other benefits of gaining health
3. Ask yourself what expectation you are comparing yourself too and when it is going to be enough
4. Focus on how you want to feel and the additions health gains will bring to your life

Fuck the Scale

I used to let the number I saw on the scale completely dictate if I had a bad day or a good day. Like so many women out there, I had a toxic relationship with the scale, and I thought that if I could achieve my ‘goal’, I would be happy. This obsession extended into how I viewed other people, and I was buying into the story that intentional weight loss via restriction was the only path.

Weight loss can be a beneficial byproduct of improving your health, but it is not the only measure that matters. Gaining health is about feeling better in your body at whatever size, instead of the number on the scale.

How To Find Sustainable Health

When people prioritize their health, they often assume that it is the weight loss that makes them feel better. In reality, it is the habits, behaviors, and changes you are making in your life that make you feel better, and weight loss can sometimes be a byproduct of those healthy habits.

It is not inherently wrong to want to change your body; you have the autonomy to do what feels right for you. But to make health changes work for you, think about how you can stay focused, how you want to feel, your deeper why, and the habits you can commit to consistently. Instead of forcing yourself to stay motivated based on the number on your scale, focus on how you want to feel in your body, and you can gain truly sustainable health.

What did you think when you read the title of today’s podcast? Share your gut reaction with me in the comments on the episode page.

In This Episode

• Why the way our society views body weight leads to us judging other people (8:33)
• All of the ways that improving your health can make you feel better without weight loss (11:20)
• How to ask yourself what you are truly seeking and when it is going to be enough (15:45)
• What to do if you want to make body changes in a way that feels right for you (23:30)
• Questions to ask yourself to start unraveling the nuances of wanting to lose weight (28:30)

Quotes

“When I criticize the diet industry and diet culture, I am not criticizing the individual dieter, the person who goes on the diet. Because they are simply trying to exist in a system that is constantly reinforcing that weight loss is ‘the path’.” (10:41)

“It's not even normal in our world to think about 'well, what else is there besides weight loss?’ because that is the only thing that is ever presented to us from the diet industry.” (15:22)

“There are often times lots of changes that people were making, but they go back to it being the weight loss that helped them feel better. When in fact, a lot of the time it was the behaviors and habits they had changed that were actually making them feel better and improving their quality of life.” (23:01)

“We need to connect to how we want to feel because feelings drive actions.” (25:26)

“We need to consider that when we gain health, weight loss is sometimes, but not always, an outcome. And losing weight doesn't always automatically confer better health.” (35:57)

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