‘Your Weight is not the Problem’
A similar theme that is coming up far too often in my practice recently is women presenting with their weight as a ‘problem’.
This is what I want to say (/scream)…
“Your Weight is not the Problem”. (The title from nutritionist and dietitian, Lyndi Cohens latest book)
The real problem is our weight centric society that is filled with diet culture and the thin ideal, putting unrealistic and unattainable standards onto people about the physical size of their bodies. This makes people in healthy but diverse sized bodies be made to feel that this is a problem.
Our weight is often a tricky and complex equation, made up of many moving parts such as age, gender, hormones, ethnicity, access to nutritious food, health literacy, trauma, medications, physical health problems, stress, sleep disturbances, etc…
We often have little to no control over the physical size of our bodies, as much as diet culture likes to sell us weight-loss. We have been told by society that our weight is a ‘problem’ that WE need to fix through restrictive and miserable diets and/or dissatisfaction within our bodies.
Our weight doesn’t measure our health status. Health at Every Size (HAES) is a recent approach to health that encompasses these principles. I’ll share more about concept in an upcoming blog post.
I’m asking you to shift your mindset, and question why you have been made to feel your weight is a problem, through diet culture and societal norms.
Here’s an alternative. Strive for behaviours that improve your health, that you can achieve and maintain in a flexible and realistic way.
Be kind to yourself when you notice the discomfort that comes up when you feel like your physical body weight is a problem, gently remind yourself ‘my weight is not the problem’.
It is super important for me to check my ‘straight body’ privilege here. (I have a body type that allows me to by clothing from mainstream stores). I respect this concept may feel difficult to grasp for some of us, as we all live in variety of diverse body types and have different experiences within diet culture.
Be kind to yourself,
M x
