Embracing Health At Every Size
How to have a mature relationship with our bodies
On Thursday, I woke up to an email newsletter from HerMoney with the headline, “Weight Discrimination In The Workplace Is Real — And It Can Affect Your Salary.” The article went on to share a study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that for every 10 percent increase in a woman’s body mass, her income dropped by six percent on average.
Around a year ago, I saw an article circulating social media from The Economist titled “The Economics of Thinness.” It’s opening sentence? “It is economically rational for ambitious women to try as hard as possible to be thin.” I’m loathe to even given oxygen to media advancing that the fastest way to tank your dreams is to gain, or keep, weight.
As a 5 foot two inch woman who is 10 to 20 pounds overweight according to the Body Mass Index and has struggled with bulimia, these media messages can send me in a tailspin.
In fact, my bulimia began in my first job as an “ambitious woman.” I was a 21-year-old freshly minted college graduate with a $90,000 year offer at McKinsey & Company. As a size 8, I was among the biggest women in the office. Well, I was one of the biggest female consultants; several administrative assistants were heavier.
At one of our women’s events, we were invited to try on dresses from a clothing line founded by an alumna with built-in shapewear. When we were traveling (four nights a week), someone on the team would order for the table, and we’d dine family style. I knew my body; I couldn’t eat four-course meals four nights a week and stay my size. So, I found a “pragmatic” out, purging after dinner, in the salve my private hotel room.
Over ten years removed from this experience, I now see the damage of internalizing that being successful means being thin, so I hate to see this problematic viewpoint repeated in media in 2024.
But good news! I’ve started ingesting media that introduces a new and much more empowering way to think about our bodies. Maintenance Phase, a podcast by Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, published episodes on BMI and the Obesity Epidemic that truly blew my mind. Here I am, beating myself up for being a 26 or 27 BMI instead of a “normal” 25, only to learn that the World Health Organization, after lobbying from pharmaceutical companies, shifted the scale of who was “normal” versus “overweight” downwards to ensure that newly developed weight loss drugs were covered by insurance, as they would now be deemed medically necessary to a larger group of people.
I was also extremely inspired by the book Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor, the academic pioneers behind the health at every size movement. The movement advances that nourishing foods and moving your body are amazing! Aiming for a weight goal that disrespects your set point or getting sucked into yo-yo dieting — not so cute. In The Secret, a similar point is made: focusing on losing weight paradoxically leads to weight gain. Eating cake is not the problem. Obsessing about cake, being racked with guilt about cake — that’s the problem.
This idea of body acceptance and respect resonated a lot for me. I love nourishing food (is there anything better than a ripe mango or Sweetgreen salad?), but I also love my sweet treats (I was ready to give my first born for a Nutella bomboloni earlier this week). I love to move my body in fun ways and take hip hop and heels dance, yoga, and spin classes three to five times a week, but there’s no way in hell you’ll find me slinging tires in a cross-fit gym or running a marathon. I’m learning to honor the vessel that carries me through life, through delighting in food and expressing joy through movement.
One line that really shook me from Body Respect, “We don’t tell people being fat gives you a heart attack, just like we wouldn’t tell someone with yellow teeth that the color of their teeth is going to give them lung cancer.” Hot damn! Yes, there is a correlation between fatness and heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof of causation. Just like there is a correlation between yellow teeth and lung cancer, but not a causation. Mind blown. Some even argue that the correlation is driven by bias against fat people in the medical system, or the fact that fat people avoid going to the doctor’s because they don’t want to face judgement and scolding.
I’m excited to embrace my body respect era. Being concerned about dropping five to 10 pounds is starting to feel juvenile to me. I’m a married adult woman, not a teenage girl obsessing over whether my crush is going to text me back. Just as I’ve matured in my romantic relationships, it’s time to mature into a healthy relationship with my body.
I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s European portrait gallery, strolling among the canvases. I started to gravitate towards paintings of naked goddesses. Some were eating grapes, others stringing bows with arrows, others being crowned by angels. All looked at peace and in control. A couple of rolls gathered at their sides when they leaned. Thighs overlapped. Bellies curved forward. The exhibit was a powerful reminder that goddesses are not made of mere skin and bone; they are made of flesh.
