Body positivity and weight loss seem like opposing forces, but should be brought together again
People are wonderfully supportive and terribly opinionated when it comes to a weight loss journey. Everyone has some sort of thought when it comes to your body, because being fat or skinny offers someone a visual where they can decide what’s too much or what’s not enough.
There are countless diet trends, management devices, apps, and varying success stories of what will work or what could fail. There’s the opinion that if you can’t love your body as it is, you’re not in the right mental space for weight changes. There’s an idea that losing weight can even be an act of internalized discrimination. Online, these conflicting views separate entire communities of people calling for body positivity and self-love, and people trying to lose weight and make healthier choices. Ultimately, though, the journey of weight loss and loving your body should go hand-in-hand.
When it comes to the body positivity movement, I’ve always been on the fence. No movement is immune from influencers who have dangerous opinions and a platform to preach them. Most of these social waves tend to reach extremist sides — on one hand you have people vehemently denying any health risks or concerns when it comes to obesity, and on the other you have people who believe all fat people deserve to die or be condemned because they look unappealing. Somewhere in the middle you find people who just want to exist within their body and learn to appreciate it without enduring any harassment or shame. As a fat woman, I try to exist in this pool, where it’s quiet and less preachy.
A huge issue in the weight loss and body positivity communities is that there are always people waiting to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. Once you cross that threshold of privacy by posting your journey publicly, your body and self become public domain, ripe for roasting or praise. Someone posing in a bikini, whether with fat rolls or a flat tummy or loose skin tucked away, is far more dignified than someone who posts a photo of their loose skin lopping out of their yoga pants or hanging over their underwear and claiming “This is it, this is the real me.”
The shame that comes with exposing your imperfections lest you be labelled someone who’s fake or trying to “deceive” everyone — as if no one can possibly figure out by now that when you lose a large amount of weight, your skin will loosen — is terribly harmful to one’s self-esteem. Not everyone can afford surgery to remove loose skin, and it’s an incredibly dangerous procedure to go through. But within the weight loss communities, there’s a huge amount of pressure to expose your imperfections, embrace them with a smile, and then fish for a doctor to remove them. It wouldn’t be so upsetting if it weren’t for the fact that so many of these people admit that it’s very difficult or painful for them to post something like that for the world to see. It’s painful for them to embrace this new change in their body. And all I think every time I see it is “Why? Why are you causing yourself harm for people who ultimately should not matter to you?”
This uncomfortable exposure shouldn’t be a mandatory stop on a public weight loss journey. Your journey shouldn’t be influenced by the approval of others. There is no way to gain love and acceptance for yourself if you’re relying on others to come to a consensus and tell you when you’re enough.
Quarantine has put a spotlight on these fears, declarations of self-love, and desperation to return to a consistent weight loss regime. What worries me most is what happens when we start to settle back into our normal routines. Extreme weight loss solutions will likely never be properly monitored or cease to exist — not when the industry is worth over $4.2 trillion worldwide — and I’m not looking forward to the next pyramid scheme diet or laxative tea that will take homestayers by storm as they race to get back to their pre-quarantine bods.
