My friend looks up from her coffee.
‘Body positivity? Oh my gosh, our kids won’t have anything to worry about.’
But I'm not so sure.
I’m watching the Kardashians at the moment, and nowhere do I see these ultra-rich women practising body acceptance. Kim exercises twice a day and restricts what she eats for magazine shoots. As far as I can see, all Kendall eats is cucumbers and is showing signs of orthorexia. After dramatic weight loss, Khloe admits her thoughts revolve around food (a sign she may be restricting or is post-diet). Only Kylie seems to be allowing herself her body, and she’s post-partum.
The idea that thinner bodies and dieting are out of fashion is a nice one. But not a real one.
Around me, most of the women I know, even those with smaller bodies, are engaging in some type of restriction. Three years into my health at every size journey, I'm not immune. Over the holidays, hyper-aware of the fat around my upper arms, I lost moments just staring listlessly at my arms in the mirror. It was on the tip of my tongue to pitch a diet disguised as a "health kick" to my partner.
Google search stats reveal that for every person searching for body positivity, there are eighteen more searching for terms like weight loss. And it’s not just people in larger bodies searching.
Studies reveal that even women who have lost weight or are in smaller bodies are still preoccupied with their size. Robin Bailey, a thin-bodied radio announcer on the KIIS Network, recently broke down on air, revealing she struggled to eat in the lead-up to a body positivity segment. She was worried she might have to take her clothes off and tearfully admitted she knows she’s thin!
We are a culture that cannot accept our fat.
It's affecting our young.
And we have to stop it.
Last year a research presentation developed by Facebook was leaked, revealing how teen girls felt about their bodies.
‘Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” one slide read.
Unprompted, the teens interviewed believed that their body dissatisfaction started on Instagram. Opening up my Insta-suggested content today, almost two years after the research deck was revealed, it’s distressing to see birls and women with no trace of fat on them in bikinis. Before and after shots. Socials make body image worse, and Facebook knows, and they're doing sweet f#@k all.
Body dissatisfaction is also a sneaker motherf#@ker.
Eating disorder scientists suggest it often sneaks into our homes with our family culture around weight loss and restriction.
Comments about so and so’s noticeable weight gain…
Hearing parents talk about restricting their food or losing weight...
Teasing about weight...
Unless checked, these offhand conversations create an environment ripe for body dissatisfaction to breed. They also lead to disordered eating.
Geraldine Taggart-Jeewa, founder and body-inclusive dietician at Sunny Nutrition and Dietetics, explains,
‘Disordered eating has become normalised in our society. Restricting foods, being inflexible with certain food groups, counting calories and macros, and consuming supplements instead of whole foods are examples of disordered eating."
These well-meaning efforts put our children and us at risk of severe eating disorders and can set us up for a lifetime, A LIFETIME, of body dissatisfaction and weight loss and regain.
Geraldine suggests that disordered eating and restricting foods in an effort to lose weight are doomed to fail because our biology and psychology are wired to survive famines.
‘Restricting our intake and overriding our body's natural cues just take us away from our body's innate wisdom.’
But if not dieting and dissatisfaction, then what?
For Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt, non-diet health practitioners, and other reformed dieters (like me), the answer is Health at Every Size. Health at Every Size, or HAES, is a long-term, sustainable approach to health that includes:
taking care of your body without worrying about what size it is
enjoying physical activities that you like
and practising a weight-neutral approach to eating and health called intuitive eating.
Unlike weight loss efforts, long-term studies show HAES can actually be very good for us:
improving physical markers like blood pressure and lipids
increasing healthy behaviours
and
(Yay!) improving self-esteem and body acceptance.
In her debut documentary, Embrace on Netflix, Taryn embodies the Health at Every Size movement. She’s just run a marathon and brims with vitality and purpose.
She’s not ashamed to show her fat. In contrast, it seems she’s learnt to like it.
Taryn Brumfitt, Australian of the Year 2023. Follow her on Insta here.
Awkwardly and slowly, learning from HAES practitioners like Geraldine, I am also learning to love my body too. With every bump or post-holiday period that I don’t return to restriction, my life expands to be just a little bit… bigger.
My friend is hopeful, and I’ve decided to be hopeful too.
Instead of dismissing Taryn or returning to the familiar status quo, I hope more women will consider a new alternative - that fat can be fit, healthy and sexy too.
And, when faced with those inevitable bumps where restriction feels so enticing, remember that we repeatedly tried it the old way, some of us our entire lives, while expecting a different result.
Maybe practising body positivity and accepting our fat is actually the sanest thing we’ve ever done.