Being Anti-Diet Culture Doesn’t Mean I’m naïve about weight loss.

I am on a mission to destroy diet culture.
I am body neutral to positive.
I don’t believe that weight loss necessarily or automatically means you have improved your health.

This leads some people to believe that I am anti-weight loss.
I’m not.

I understand that there are additional burdens on some bodies because they are larger. Larger bodies create higher burdens on our organs and joints, for example. Type II diabetes symptoms and impacts can be reduced with weight loss. And if we lose weight, the world is built for us—we get the privilege of better treatment from society at large, access to better healthcare, and the ability to use all kinds of equipment and services that aren’t accessible to fat people.

But this doesn’t mean we should pursue or encourage weight loss at all costs – that’s what I’m against. Because health is multifaceted—if we lose weight in a way that compromises our nourishment, mental health, or other aspects of physical health because we have tunnel vision on one weight-related outcome, then that’s not really healthy. If I lose weight and it improves one condition but creates or worsens six more… am I actually ahead in the health stakes?

Bodies Are Allowed to Change

Bodies change. That’s normal. People gain weight, lose weight, and shift in shape and composition over time for countless reasons—health, stress, aging, pregnancy, illness, and just… life. Your body is yours to change, or not, as you see fit. You don’t need permission to lose weight, just like you don’t need permission to gain weight. But that doesn’t mean bodies are infinitely malleable or that they exist solely to be controlled and reshaped. There are limits to how much and how permanently we can change our size, and pushing beyond those limits often comes at the expense of our physical and mental well-being.

What I’m Actually Against

I am against the way diet culture convinces people that shrinking their body is the most important thing they can do with their time, energy, and money. I am against the way it sells the idea that thinner always equals healthier (spoiler: it doesn’t). I am against the way it makes people feel like failures when their bodies resist drastic weight loss, even though that resistance is a well-documented biological response to calorie restriction.

And most importantly, I am against the way this obsession with weight loss distracts us from what actually makes people healthier—things like eating enough nutritious foods, moving in ways that feel good, getting enough sleep, managing stress, and having access to supportive healthcare. Weight loss often happens alongside healthier behaviours, but not all weight loss leads to healthier outcomes. Because making weight loss the goal often leads to harmful behaviours, weight cycling, and worse health outcomes in the long run.

I also see that the pursuit of weight loss often distracts us from other changes we could make and creates perverse outcomes. While we are focused on movement and eating for weight loss, we are distracted from movement for joy and eating for nourishment.

Because we are worried about weight, we do things like quit dairy or bread based on the diet culture perception that they are fattening, depriving ourselves of the calcium we need for our bones and cardiovascular health, the dietary fibre we need to support our gut health and microbiome. We do things like say no to salad dressing and sauces, making our veggies less tasty and less pleasant to eat, with a knock-on effect on our nutrient and bioactive intake because we hate them now…

Making the World a Better Place for Fat People

Because we are telling people that weight loss is THE solution, we fail to create a society that supports all people to seek health. We keep building spaces and equipment that only support slim people. We design medicines and treatment protocols based on the needs of those deemed to have a "healthy" weight and say that those with larger weights need to shrink to get the same access.

Another reason I don’t hyperfocus on weight? Because the world is already doing that, and it’s not making things better. We’ve got doctors who prescribe weight loss for everything from sore throats to broken bones. We’ve got workplaces, airlines, and clothing stores that act like people above a size 16 don’t (or shouldn’t) exist. We’ve got a society that would rather tell fat people to shrink than demand better access to healthcare, fair treatment, and systemic changes that would benefit everyone.

If we actually cared about people’s health, we’d be working on making nutritious food affordable, making safe movement accessible to all bodies, training doctors to treat fat patients with respect, and eliminating the discrimination that contributes to chronic stress and worse health outcomes. But instead, we tell people to go keto, or fast or restrict whatever else to just lose the weight and call that healthier. That’s what I’m against.

Weight alone isn’t health

People love to conflate weight and health, but the relationship is not as straightforward as we’ve been led to believe. Yes, in some cases, excess weight can contribute to certain health conditions. Those cases get a whole lot of air time already. But skinnier people having better health outcomes doesn’t mean that simply becoming skinny guarantees those better outcomes, because genetics, wealth and behaviours are better predictors of health than body size.

And weight stigma—being treated badly because of your size—can be more harmful to health than weight itself. There are plenty of studies that show that weight cycling (aka yo-yo dieting) increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and early death, regardless of BMI.

Weight and health are individual journeys. If I say I have been slimmer and I was actually less healthy then, I’m not saying all people who lose weight have the same experience.

But! Obesity has consequences (you shout!)

A medical Dr recently expressed concern at my stance, saying they “saw the consequences of obesity every day”. But, I ask - is it really the consequences of obesity they are seeing, or are the obesity and the health problems actually the consequences of poverty, genetics, education, failures of public health promotion, diet culture, marketing, confusion, the world not being designed for them, not having their health taken seriously because of their weight, and other things we could actually work to change instead of just putting people on diets?  

Bottom Line

Wanting an end to fatphobia and weight stigma and wanting systems that support health at every size isn’t wishing for all people to be fat or resenting people who lose weight. It’s asking for support and respect for all bodies, not just the ones that look the way you deem healthy to look.

If you think opposing diet culture means I hate weight loss or those who lose weight, you’ve missed the point. I’m not here to tell anyone what their body should look like. I’m here to call out the systems devalue bodies and cause them harm. And I’d much rather spend my energy making the world better for fat people than making fat people disappear.

Accepting bodies as they are means supporting and nourishing them. Not judging them.