New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Lose Weight
By: Rachael Babiracki
Tags: Health, Wellness, Diet Culture, New Years Resolutions, Fitness

I am fitness professional of over 17 years and I am begging you not to set a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight.

The short reason: You will make yourself miserable. You will make yourself less healthy. You will gain the weight back.

The long reason: The tradition of setting weight loss goals is rooted in diet culture. Diet culture is a system of beliefs that prioritize weight over well-being; it is the glorification of losing weight and pursuing thinness at all costs. It is also rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy, and has deep ties to capitalism.

Weight loss is difficult to maintain without habits that are ultimately damaging to your body and health. 95% of all diets fail, and 2/3s of people who lose weight on diets will end up regaining more than they lost. More than 1/3 of those who admit to normal dieting become pathological dieters, and this causes weight cycling (go on a diet, lose some weight, go off the diet, gain it back, lather rinse repeat forever). Pathological dieting is linked to heart disease, insulin resistance, higher blood pressure, inflammation, and, ironically, long-term weight gain. The Framingham Heart Study has shown that regardless of initial weight, people who weight cycle have twice the risk of dying from heart disease. The dieting itself causes stress on our bodies and leads to ill health.

If that isn’t unsettling enough, 35% of normal dieters progress into disordered eating and 25% develop an eating disorder. If those numbers feel unbelievable, note that 30 million people in the USA have an eating disorder. The culture of shame around our bodies keeps many people who suffer with these disorders quiet, as only 10% seek professional help. So if you read these stats and think, “this can’t be, I don’t know anyone who struggles with this!” think again. It is widespread and it is urgent that we reckon with the culture that drives us to hate our bodies and go to great lengths to change them. It is literally life and death - every 62 minutes someone dies from an eating disorder. And if it doesn’t kill you, eating disorders lead to real health consequences, like cardiac weakening and failure, gastrointestinal breakdown, neurological weakening, endocrine deregulation, decreased white blood cell count, kidney failure, and infertility. And if you think the risk is worth it because the culture tells us that being fat is worse than having an eating disorder, reconsider. The narrative that being overweight will lead to worse health issues than doing whatever we can to be thin is a farce. In the United States, a child is 242 more times likely to have an eating disorder than type 2 diabetes.

I can throw as many stats at you as exist but we humans are emotional creatures, so I invite you to reflect on your history with dieting. Reflect on your relationship to health and fitness. Reflect on your relationship with your body. If you are someone who has a history of dieting, how has that gone for you? Has it made you healthier? Has it made you happier?

I can speak for myself — my first diet started around age 10. I dieted all through my teens, trying every ridiculous idea I could get my hands on. I eventually developed bulimia in my late teens and battled it through my 20s. No one really knew that I had a violent eating disorder, as many of my behaviors were considered normal in our diet culture infested society. While I moved from diet to diet, I thought surely the next one would be the answer, and that if I could just lose weight, I would finally be accepted and respected. I tied so much of my self worth to the number on the scale, that every accomplishment I made as a young adult was overshadowed by my body. And that didn’t come from nowhere — our culture drills into our heads as early as age 3 that smaller bodies are better bodies. Diet culture tells us all sorts of lies, and holds up a very specific type of body that we should all aim to be. Thin. White. Able bodied. Straight. You can fill in the rest.

When I finally found the strength to process and heal, I realized that I had to let go of dieting and the pursuit of thinness at all costs. As a fitness professional, this was a challenge as my entire industry is built on the premise of thinness. Every workout, every bit of nutritional advice seemed to have some sort of tie to thinness. Ab blaster! Trim and tuck! Lean and tone! Flatten your belly! Shrink your love handles! Get that thigh gap!

I had to question everything I knew, everything I had taken for granted, everything I had been taught. I had to embrace different perspectives and get really curious. I eventually had to reject much of what I had considered to be true. I completely reframed how I view bodies, wellness, fitness, and what really consitutes a healthy life.

Here is what I have learned: Dieting doesn’t work. Anyone who claims differently is trying to sell you something. Eating disorders are hell and I wouldn’t wish one on anyone. We should be doing all we can as a society to minimize them, and instead we do everything we can to ensure more people suffer with them. Weight cycling is much more dangerous than carrying extra weight, and the societal stigma and discrimination around fatness is significantly worse for our health than being fat. In fact, weight stigma and discrimination may actually explain the impact on health instead of the body size itself. Health is not directly related to weight, and physical health is just one aspect of a healthy life — our mental, emotional, and social health are just as important and it is crucial to recognize how our behaviors in pursuit of the lie of thinness can negatively impact each of those areas.

So what can we do instead? If we want to focus on bettering our relationship to health, what sort of goals can we set?

First ask what is driving the desire to lose weight — what are you trying to feel or accomplish? This takes time to be introspective and honest with ourselves, so I suggest setting aside some time to reflect and journal. Ask what prompted the weight loss goal, and then ask what is driving that need, and then ask what is driving that feeling, and keep asking until you get to the root. We can find a lot of clarity when we slow down and dig in.

Then, challenge the narrative that we need to be thin to be worthy (or enter any word here: loved, valued, etc.). This is a central lie to diet culture — if you lose weight, suddenly all of your needs will be met and your dreams will come true. Spoiler alert: this is bullshit. Whatever is driving that desire will still be there if you lose weight. Focus directly on the driving need and let your body exist as it is.

Next, set goals that align with your purpose and the underlying drivers. Maybe you want to lose weight because you think it will build your confidence, so instead of weight loss you can focus on self love. Saying affirmations each morning, starting a gratitude journal, identifying your strengths and investing time into them, and practicing self acceptance are all ways to increase confidence without punishing yourself with dieting. Connecting to health professionals like therapists, coaches, etc. can help you set a specific plan to really address the underlying need. If working with a professional isn’t accessible to you, there are lots of great resources online for free from qualified professionals as well.

Finally, we can look at our relationship with health, wellness, and fitness. If we can separate ourselves from diet culture, even for a moment, we can start to see ways to integrate behaviors that support all aspects of our health. Maybe we can make a goal to move our bodies for a few mintues each day in a way that brings us joy. Or maybe we can make a goal to let go of dieting and reestablish our relationship with food — Intuitive Eating is a great philosophy to heal. Maybe we add a goal to challenge diet culture in a real way every day, whether by unfollowing anyone on social media that causes us to hate our bodies, finding voices to follow that build us up, throwing away diet books and diet food, deleting calorie tracking apps, tossing out our scales, committing to stop reading nutritional content on food labels, letting go of measuring everything we eat…the possibilities are endless because diet culture has its tentacles in so many parts of our lives!

My advice: pick one thing that is doable. Give yourself grace and recognize that healing and growth are not linear. Some days will be easy, others will not. Once that thing becomes a natural part of your existence, pick another. Let go of the seduction of hopping on another diet. They likely haven’t worked for you (see above stats) so why not try a different approach? Give yourself permission to reject the messaging that is so prevalent this time of year. You don’t need to lose weight. You don’t need to change your body. Self development and growth are beautiful things, and a diet will not give you either. Reject diets. Diet culture is the air we breath and we are brought up in it. Years of conditioning will not be undone with the magic of a new year. But we can chip away at it, day by day, until one day you wake up and realize you are free.