You’re Weight Loss Excuses Are Making Me Sick, But Not For The Reason You Think
Somewhere along the way, I became the skinny friend. I didn’t gain a full understanding of what that meant until well into my journey. I was just content to see the progress I’d made.
One year after I began losing weight, my husband’s boss had mentioned a clothing line in passing and he suggested that she tell me about it. Then came an awkward pause before she elaborated that it was for “curvy women.” Which used to be the category I fit into.
It occurred to me that I was an outsider in a group I’d been a passionate advocate for and that my weight loss made my former group uncomfortable.
After that, I began to notice something odd. Friends I’d known for years, sometimes decades, began providing me with their excuses for their own weight loss struggles. Most of these were unprompted and unrelated to the conversations we were engaged in prior to that point.
I love to talk about weight loss, gaining muscle, and exploring the benefits of Mindfulness. However, I also love to talk about inclusivity, representation, and having epic food adventures.
I don’t blame my friends for their reaction and I’d like to think it’s not because I’ve made them feel like they need to disclose their reasons for not having lost weight or foregoing visiting the gym recently.
However, I do blame the mechanisms of our society that make it so difficult to accept our bodies as they are, and the vastness of misinformation perpetuated by social media and the diet industry that profits off of continuous cycles of shame and failure.
It enrages me to think about how corporations can choose from a list of seemingly healthy keywords to market products that aren’t healthy at all. They prey on your lack of awareness of nutrition labels, a multitude of scientific names for the same terrible ingredients, and the addiction to sugar that they gave you, and then place all the responsibility upon you as if it’s solely down to individual accountability.
That anyone should feel that they need to have a list of excuses ready to go because they’ve internalized shame and expect judgment is a testament to our broken system.
I don’t need your excuses. It’s okay. I get it.
A few months ago I spoke with a beautiful woman who struggled to lose weight. She showed me the protein shake she’d been drinking every single day that was marketed to her as low-fat and full of vitamins and minerals. But the look on her face broke my heart when I showed her that it had nearly 50% of her daily sugar intake in just 150 calories and less than 10 fluid ounces. It made so much sense that she was sugar-crashing and then super hungry later.
It’s okay to be tired. You work so hard for minimum wage. It’s okay to feel like all the diet advice out there is garbage and exhausting to comb through. It’s okay to rest when you’re sick. Let’s normalize that those things are okay.
But let’s stop the sickening corporate excuses instead. Stop putting things like “natural,” “good source of,” or “made with” as if those words mean anything. Hold the diet industry accountable for profiting off of harmful fads or charging a premium for products with buzzwords and no substantive value. Let’s no longer allow big corporations to sponsor studies or directly make decisions about what is recommended as a nutritious diet.
Talking to a skinny friend doesn’t need to be awkward. If I tell you I had fun at the gym today, it’s okay to tell me that you had an eventful morning trying to find your kid’s shoes and you think your cat has allergies. Tell me about your favorite curvy clothing brands and the super tasty cheesecake you made for the potluck.
Want to talk about fitness? I’ve got you. Just want to vent about how dieting sucks? I’m here for that without judgment. Only want to talk about Ms. Fuzzykin’s recent bout of sniffles? I’m down for that too. That’s what friends are for.
