Depressed About Your Weight? Why Not Exercise And Eat Less? More Horrific Advice!
Hi Musers, this is a question I’ve seen everywhere. Social media, Quora, forums, diet sites, news sites and even medical sites. People who’ve never had a larger body love to throw this one out in a glib manner. As if it was one of the easiest things in the world. As anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows, it isn’t! A multitude of factors controls our weight, including genetic, health-related, racial, geographical, economic, emotional, medication-related and ability related. It is an immensely complicated topic, and we need more visibility of that fact. Trotting out the tired cliche that feeling depressed about your weight is something that you can easily fix drives me out of my mind! Here’s my response to that question:
Diets Don’t Work
This is something that it’s vital you understand. Diets do not work. Period. There have been numerous studies looking a the efficacy of diets over the years. Many of them were directly paid for by the diet industry, which automatically makes their results suspect. However, the very best results any of them produced is that 5% of participants lost weight and kept it off for five years. That last part is key. Many of them saw significant amounts of initial weight loss, but almost all participants regained all the weight they had lost, and often more.
Dr Traci Mann, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA, led a research team who analysed 31 long-term dieting studies. What they discovered was not only that diets don’t work, but they can actually be harmful:
“We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all. Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back.”
Traci Mann, UCLA, 2007
Pretty damning, isn’t it?
Weight Cycling
We also need to pay particular attention to the last sentence about the effect repeatedly losing and gaining weight has on the body. This is known as weight cycling, and it’s been suggested that it can have as bad an impact on your health as carrying extra weight. Studies have been conducted that back this up. In 2007 UCLA reported the reason diets fail and the negative effects weight cycling can have:
“overshoot of blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose, lipids, and insulin while depressing levels of HDL cholesterol in women. Weight cycling also contributes to chronic inflammation, and weight cycling that results in weight gain above baseline may pose a strong risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with non-cycling”
Is Weight Cycling Worse Than Obesity?
Remember all the material you’ve read that swears excess weight causes type 2 diabetes? This study definitely casts doubt on that. What if it’s a lifetime of yo-yo dieting that’s to blame? Dr Lindo Bacon, author of the life-changing Health At Every Size, conducted an extensive study into the effects of weight cycling and found:
Weight cycling results in increased inflammation, which in turn is known to increase risk for many obesity-associated diseases. Other potential mechanisms by which weight cycling contributes to morbidity include hypertension, insulin resistance and dyslipidemia. Research also indicates that weight fluctuation is associated with poorer cardiovascular outcomes and increased mortality risk.
Lindo Bacon, Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift
Even though it’s a scientific study, it’s fascinating reading. You can read the whole thing here.
The second our focus changes from moving for the joy of it or seeing what we can achieve into a mechanism to burn calories we’ve lost. We resign ourselves to mind-numbing workouts we hate, purely because they’re the type fitness “experts” insist will win us coveted goals like thigh gaps or toned arms or defined abs. Honestly, I just rolled my eyes so hard I almost dislocated them!
Exercise Should Not Be Associated With Weight Loss
There is so much BS in the fitness sphere, such as the idea that a particular exercise will spot reduce fat. It won’t because you can’t; short of liposuction, it’s impossible to achieve fat loss in a specific area. Another fave of mine is that if you overeat one day, don’t worry. Just do a good workout to burn it off. Sigh.
First of all, overeating by which measurement? If your body wanted food and you ate, that’s fantastic! You are trusting your body to tell you what it needs, not some diet manual that exists solely to make money for the author. Even if you ate more than you needed because it was a celebration or simply because the food tasted amazing, that’s ok!! You do not need to feel guilty or work it off. The beauty of your body is it’s self-regulating. If you ate more than it needed at one meal, it’ll probably be a longer time before you need to eat again. When you do eat, you may not want as much as usual. Your body knows what it needs; listen to it. You do not need to worry about food and you don’t need to feel depressed about your weight.
Move Because You Love Your Body Not Because You Hate It
Please remember our bodies are designed to move, and we’ll feel better when we do. We don’t need to pound the streets on another punishing jog or half kill ourselves in an aerobics class if we don’t enjoy it. Find a way of moving that you love. It could be horse-riding, swimming, hiking, strength training or learning a martial art. I personally love dancing, even if I’m utterly crap at it. It’s all part of the fun, though, and it’s good to laugh at yourself every once in a while. Here are some alternative exercise goals that have nothing to do with weight loss:
- Learn to do a perfect push up
- Run for 10 minutes without resting
- Compete in a 5k/10k/Marathon
- Climb a mountain
- Learn a new dance from start to finish
- Get your first belt in your martial art of choice
- Go for a walk every day for a month
The point of all of these things is you feel proud of your achievement. Try it; exercise will never be the same again.
Our Weight Is Not The Problem
This perspective is the key part of this post. DO people in larger feel bodies feel depressed about it? Yes. Why do they feel depressed? Because society has conditioned all of us that being fat is the worst thing ever! Not being cruel, or bigoted, or selfish, or vindictive. Nope. Fat is the worst. It has taught us that whatever we achieve in our lives, no matter how impressive, counts for nothing if we’re fat. That’s pretty sick, right? I know from my experience it’s true. I had a stable job, a husband who is the love of my life, a very close relationship with my sister, enough money to pay my bills with a bit left over, cats who are my babies and a beautiful home. Life was good, right? Despite all of that, I was fat, and it felt like the end of the world.
I’m different now. I’ve embraced body acceptance, and I love my body and all it does for me. I am still met by fatphobia daily, though, and it’s a struggle. So here’s a radical idea, the next time someone you know is feeling upset about their weight, instead of making “helpful” suggestions about diet and exercise, how about you tell them they don’t need to lose weight? That they are perfect and beautiful and enough exactly as they are. Explain that fatphobia is learned, so they can unlearn it, and maybe you can learn about it together. If you both agree, check out my body acceptance guide right here. I hope it’ll be eye-opening for you. Remember you do not need to feel depressed about your weight. No one does. You are fucking gorgeous!
That’s all for now, Musers. If you have any comments, please pop them below 👇 If you liked this post and found it helpful, I’d love you to subscribe as well as share using the social media buttons. See you soon 😃
