I'm Not Ashamed of the Bounce Back
The concept of “diet culture” can be traced to as early as the 1800s. But, I don’t want to start that far back, so we’ll zoom to the 1900s when America became obsessed with women being thin. Enter: Grapefruit diet, cabbage soup diet, bananas and milk, weight watchers, slim fast, south beach etc. etc. Within the past decade or so, a new movement has arisen: Healthy At Every Size (HAES). A group of women decided they were done being told they had to do anything and everything to be as thin as possible. They decided to choose feeling beautiful and healthy at any size. These women determined that in fact, skinny doesn’t automatically equal healthy. They are right, metabolic health is NOT dependent on weight. Being overweight or obese can be a symptom of poor metabolic health, but the relationship between metabolic health and weight is not causal. This shift in mindset around health and weight has brought relief and freedom to many women (and men). Women were given permission to stop killing themselves with extravagant diets to lose weight for health. Health and weight were no longer defined as a 1:1 ratio.
Unfortunately however, in the quest for body acceptance and letting go of the skinny god, we’ve lost sight of a keyword: HEALTHY. The HAES movement essentially turned into a movement where the moral high ground lies in demonization of weight loss. The “feminists” in recent years have evolved into shaming women who want to lose weight. Any woman who wants to lose weight is simply “under the influence of diet culture,” because weight loss is now shunned for those who are “true feminists.” No longer is the focus of HAES (in culture at large) on creating a lifestyle that promotes a healthy body. Rather, its messaging has been adopted and distorted by a subset of people who no longer include HEALTH in their vocabulary at all. These “true feminists” use HAES as an excuse to not make lifestyle changes that promote health and to continue accepting the unhealthy (likely overweight or obese) body they exist in.
If one were to challenge them their retorts would be:
“DO YOU JUST THINK WOMEN HAVE TO BE THIN TO BE BEAUTIFUL?!”
“YOU ARE NOT A FEMINIST. YOU JUST WANT WOMEN TO SHRINK AND TAKE UP LESS SPACE”
“WHY ARE YOU DISCRIMINATING AGAINST ME.”
“YOU’RE FAT PHOBIC”
For one brief moment in the evolution of my life (my mid 20s), I entered into their world with curiosity. I wanted to see if the ideals of the movement could make my life better. I was an avid exerciser and I had an intense rigidity surrounding healthy lifestyle behaviors that lead to anxiety. I wanted to improve my life, so I tried something new. As wacko as it might sound, I stopped engaging in lifestyle behaviors that promote health: exercise, eating whole foods, drinking enough water, and getting enough sleep. Instead, I started to “do what I want” or what I thought I wanted: staying up at night to watch netflix, eating >50% of my calories from processed foods, and not exercising. Because to me, this was a core part of the movement, “all those people who care about healthy lifestyle behaviors are just obsessed with health and are orthorexic, it’s making them anxious and unhappy!!” You know what happened? I gained 15 pounds and felt MISERABLE. I had no energy, I became even more anxious, I felt incredibly uncomfortable in my body and I lived a life of lethargy.
I will admit, my relationship with food, body, and exercise was tenuous. I felt out of place as someone who chose to eat whole foods instead of fast food. Someone who chose to stick with a consistent sleep wake cycle complete with light exposure via exercise shortly after waking, before it was mainstream. My self experiment with HAES made me realize I’d rather be “obsessed with health” because at least I felt better in my body. I learned that it wasn’t the routine of healthy lifestyle behaviors that made me anxious, it was the feeling of being “different” or “weird” compared to my peers that I couldn’t deal with. Eventually, I let go of needing to fit in and made peace with solitude instead of pathologizing it.
In my late 20s, I got pregnant. Unfortunately, the pregnancy didn’t turn out as we’d hoped it would, (i.e. we had to terminate it at 19 weeks). I gained about 10 pounds throughout the duration of the pregnancy. I didn’t know when I’d want to get pregnant again, but I knew the day would come and I wanted to be ready, if I could. To me, part of the preparation meant losing the weight I’d gained while I was pregnant. In some circles this is shamed and seen as a lack of body acceptance. In those circles, my desire to lose the “baby weight” was hurting my body by losing weight rather than accepting that I’d gained weight from the pregnancy and just dealing with it. I saw it differently.
I determined that I truly feel best at my pre-pregnancy weight i.e. better energy levels, better bowel movements, higher comfort level, higher sense of beauty and more freedom to engage in activities I enjoy. To me, this weight is 115 - 120 pounds. It would have been really easy to say, “I’ll deal with the weight gain, technically I’m still in a healthy weight range. I still love me, my husband still loves me, and no one really cares that I gained weight.” I knew, though, that the next time I got pregnant I’d gain weight again. Eventually, I’d be in a place where there would be much, MUCH more than 10 pounds to lose.
Not only did I want to help out the future Allison, I wanted to feel good in my body again. Pregnancy for me was filled with nausea, vomiting, lethargy and an overwhelming feeling of stagnant energy. To be frank I felt miserable in my body and I severely missed my pre-pregnant body. When I decided to get my pre-pregnancy body back I carried zero shame, judgement, or self criticism. I shut out the naysayers, the ones that shame weight loss and refuse to acknowledge its benefits.
I wondered why I had misplaced guilt when I decided to lose weight. I’d felt like I was betraying the body acceptance movement. After I processed the guilt and let it go, I was able to see my choice clearly as a healthy choice for me. Culture will do what it does and people will always have opinions. At the end of the day, I’m the only one who lives in my body and my opinion about myself and my body is the one that matters.
Historically, there’s been pressure on women to “bounce back” after pregnancy. Again, expectations placed on women’s bodies. If I'd wanted to stay at a higher weight, I’m thankful culture has started to find acceptance in that. But, I didn’t, I wanted to lose weight. All I’m saying is neither of the women deserve shame, whether they choose to lose weight or not. I’m not ashamed of the bounce back.
