If You’re Torn Between “Don’t Judge” and “WTF” Read This
Reminders for the days when your values and your visceral reactions aren’t matching because this sh*t is a lot right now.
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If you feel like you’re constantly ping ponging between anger at the rapid journey back to thin obsession and knowing it’s not your job to judge other people’s bodies, GIRL, I feel you.
My Instagram and Substack feed is full of people feeling both ways—and also folks in the anti-diet/social justice/mental health space trying to help us make sense of both.
And it’s a lot.
I feel that visceral rage and frustration as I see more and more celebrities shrinking and people around me talking about taking GLP-1s for weight loss. And yet, I do truly know and believe that it’s their right to make that choice.
If you feel me on this, I want to share a few reminders that have been helping me make sense of it all.
We’re Angry at the System—Not the People
This is the one I come back to most often: I’m not angry at that person, I’m angry at a culture and system that tells them to shrink.
I’m angry that they believe they have to do that.
I’m angry that weight stigma and weight bias is very much well and alive in our world today—and worse, it’s welcomed.
I’m angry that diet culture is so effective.
And perhaps you’re angry about all those things too—and more. Because there are so many systematic factors driving the obsession.
This reminder helps me take the blame off the person and put it where it should be. It empowers me to keep doing what I’m doing here on Substack, with the podcast, and on social media.
Not Everyone Wants to Ditch Diet Culture
Here’s the hard truth: not everyone sees diet culture as the villain. Or, they see diet culture as the villain but wellness culture as good (even though you and I know they’re the same).
They like controlling their food. They like managing their body. They like forcing themselves to wake up at 4am, drink their green juice, and do a hard workout.
Not everyone wants to look honestly at those choices and ask themselves:
Is this actually supporting me and my life, or is this a coping mechanism or survival strategy?
Am I doing this for me or someone/something else?
Do I want this?
More importantly, not everyone knows they should ask those questions. Which is why so many of us talk about ditching diet culture, weight stigma, and healing, right? Awareness is the first step.
I personally love this healing work because it’s given me so much, but not everyone wants to go there. Much less do the work required to unlearn all the BS they’ve been taught their whole lives.
It’s About Belonging
Weight loss is about belonging and we as humans, at the end of the day, just want to belong. Check out this great article/interview about how belonging is a fundamental human need. And yet, we live in a culture that says you can’t belong if you don’t look a certain way; that if you’re not small, then you’re:
Lazy
Unworthy
Unloveable
Unattractive
Not successful
What’s worse, people are told these things, sometimes through bullying words, but often through damaging actions as well:
Not getting a promotion
How a doctor treats you
How you’re treated in a public place
Being stared at
Being threatened
And so, what do some people choose to do? Listen to the awful words, internalize the horrible actions, and get smaller. This is where we get to choose to have compassion for those people instead of leaning into the anger or frustration.
For Some People, Weight Loss is Medical
For some, weight loss comes as a result of sickness. One influencer and author, Elyse Myers, recently shared about how she’s lost a lot of weight due to extreme sickness and a hysterectomy. She’s not happy about the weight loss and is certainly not doing it intentionally. Her body is struggling, and she’s trying to get healthy.
Conversely,
just shared a great article interviewing a few women on how going on a GLP-1 had nothing to do with weight loss, but personal health needs. This drug was the best option for them, and in fact, most were actually struggling with the weight loss because they’d worked for a long time to accept and love their body.
For Some, Weight Loss is Safety
Everyone’s relationship with their body is unique and deeply complicated. Each nuanced layer comes from their own pain, trauma, upbringing, and experiences. And within all that, we find tools to create safety, both physically and mentally. For some, controlling body size is a survival strategy.
For celebrities who have been critiqued, shamed, and humiliated over and over about their body—safety IS being smaller.
For someone who grew up with no control, in a dysfunctional family—safety IS controlling food and body.
For someone in a marginalized body—safety IS fitting the Eurocentric, thin ideal.
All of this means: we can’t begin to understand what they’re going through or judge why they choose to get smaller.
Bottom Line: Policing Other Bodies or People Isn’t Our Job
It’s not our job to decide how people should treat their bodies. It’s not our job to monitor someone’s choices, comment on their weight changes, or assign moral meaning to what they eat.
And it’s definitely not our job to decode their motives or assume we know what’s “really going on.”
Other people’s bodies are not ours to manage, fix, critique, or diagnose. Our work is staying rooted in our own values, healing, and anti-diet work.
When someone else’s choices about their body bring up feelings in us, we get to ask why, continue doing our healing, and recenter on what we know to be true.
I’m a non-diet coach and don’t focus on weight loss. Now comes everyone wanting to be on GLP’s-is there still room at the table for us non-diet providers?
I really appreciated this piece and the part about how not everyone wants to ditch diet culture. I think I'm guilty of thinking if everyone fully understood the harms, they would do their part to change it. But there are a lot of people who have already endured enough and just want the bad feelings and treatment to go away, and the easiest solution is not to fight to dismantle diet culture.