Now That You Can Lose Weight…
What If You Actually Want to Change Your Body?
Hi friend,
After last week’s podcast episode about GLP-1s sparked countless conversations with people about their own health goals, I keep thinking about what it means for people to have the option to change something now, that they previously didn’t have the option to change.
In my field, we’ve known for a long time that diets don’t work, and there was previously zero reliable intervention that would lead to long term sustainable weight loss for most people, which meant that “recommending weight loss” to people was nothing more than foolish body-shaming.
This lack of effective long-term weight loss strategy is a major reason why the body positivity and anti-diet gained traction in the first place. We educated people to set them free from the pressure that diet culture had made them feel, to spend their lives in pursuit of something that the research showed was actually impossible for most people.
Now, though, we have GLP-1s. And while there is still a lot to figure out in terms of long term effects and accessibility, it may very well turn out to be that these medications are the very intervention that people spent decades pretending dieting was.
And if they are, that raises an incredibly complex question for a lot of folks who previously found peace and self-acceptance around the fact that since diets don’t work, sustainable long term weight loss simply wasn’t an option for them.
A lot of progressive and self-aware people are feeling a lot of conflict around this new possibility right now, and are asking themselves questions like:
Now that I know I can change this thing about myself, am I obligated to?
Just because we can change something about ourselves, does that mean we should?
What does it mean to choose to stay fat, now that I have the “option” to become thin?
Are self-acceptance and a desire to change myself mutually exclusive?
I think these questions point toward an underlying tension between the person’s mind and their heart; their desires and their values.
After all, a lot of educated progressive folks are aware that wanting to change their bodies has always been rooted in shame and insecurity, and that it was conditioned into them by systems of oppression and bigotry.
Theoretically, they don’t want to participate in that system, or to be influenced by those kinds of motivations. But after a lifetime of that conditioning, they still also naturally want the things that this system taught them to want. That includes a more peaceful relationship with themselves, their body, and with food, as well the objective increase in social status, validation, and privilege that tends to accompany a thinner body.
So… is it actually possible to simultaneously accept your body, and want to change it?
Or rather—since I think this is the more relevant and specific question people are asking right now—is it actually possible to pursue weight loss without participating in fatphobia, weight stigma, and body shaming?
To the first question, I would say that yes: it is absolutely possible to simultaneously accept your body and want to change it.
Acceptance is inherently contradictory to having goals in general, because self-rejection isn’t the only motivator for change. After all, you don’t have to hate your body for getting sick in order to make an appointment with a doctor, right? And you don’t have to hate the life you have in order to decide to change it.
So, sure, you could decide to start eating better and exercising more from a place of deep shame, in which you believe deep down that you’re a piece of shit failure who doesn’t deserve good things in life unless you lose weight.
But you could also decide to improve your health from a place of deep self-love and self-respect, in which case “self-acceptance” might actually be about having stripped away toxic shame and self-judgment so that you now believe you are fundamentally good, and worthy of feeling good and thriving.
So no, I don’t think self-acceptance (or body neutrality, or self-love, or liberation-based values) has to be mutually exclusive with the pursuit of health or body goals. You can have both simultaneously, and the difference just comes down to a person’s subjective intentions, emotional attachments, associations, and moral judgments.
Of course, given that this is all subjective, there’s no way to know from the outside if a person is actually doing something for the “right reasons” or not, which I think leads to a lot of weird projection and suspicion.
For example, if a body positive influencer announced that she’s decided to lose weight to get healthy from a place of self-love, that could be entirely true. But it could also be true that she’s just saying that to avoid backlash from her community, since she knows that saying “I really just wanted to be thinner” would feel like a betrayal.
Of course, nobody can ever really know another person’s true intentions. But when it comes to a topic as emotionally loaded as weight loss—and in a culture as obsessed with thinness as ours is–-it really does seem kind of impossible that a person could pursue a smaller body without that decision being at least partially informed by oppressive social conditioning and weight stigma.
Also, if we’re being honest, it’s actually often just as difficult to parse out our own deeper intentions and motivations!
I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve worked with who have said they really wanted to do something (like get Botox/filler or a tummy tuck), but they couldn’t figure out if they wanted to do it for the “right reasons” or not. I’ve seen people spend a ton of mental energy trying to get clear on their deeper motivations—is this decision authentic and empowering, or is it just internalized patriarchy and ageism?!
The truth is, it’s probably both.
I don’t really believe in the existence of “pure and authentic intentions” when it comes to this kind of thing, because our cultural conditioning tends to be so old, and so complete, that it’s not necessarily possible to ever fully disentangle them. So there may be exceptions of course, but for most people, the answer is almost always going to be “both.”
Which sort of begs the question… well, so what?
I mean, does caving to social pressure, or pursuing goals in the hopes of gaining social status or privilege, make you a bad or inferior person?
Of course not. As I say in my book Body Neutral (and I’ll keep saying forever): body neutrality means stripping away the false or inflated moral judgements about our bodies, but it also means stripping away false or inflated moral judgments about the choices an individual makes about their body.
In other words, I do not believe any choice an individual makes about how to have a body has moral value.
A person is absolutely no more worthy or deserving just because they got a facelift or a boob job… but they’re also no more worthy or deserving just because they didn’t.
Everyone has absolute bodily autonomy, and I believe people should be allowed to do whatever they like with their own body without moral judgment from others. Want to dye your hair? Get a tattoo or face piercings? Get a nose job or boob job? Great, you do you!
As long as it doesn’t harm anyone else, you are absolutely entitled to do whatever you want, and your choices should be considered morally neutral!
Except… whoops! I just said “as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else,” didn’t I? And this is where things start to feel murky.
Most people agree about some versions of what would be considered “harmful to others” in this regard, but other versions are less clear.
For example, most people would agree that violating someone else’s bodily autonomy is wrong (for example: it’s a clear boundary violation and immoral choice to cut someone else’s hair while they’re sleeping), as well as pressuring or coercing someone else into making a choice for their body that you want.
But what about making a change to your own body that might cause harm to others indirectly?
For example, if you have always been fat and wanted to lose weight, but you have a teenage daughter with anorexia, would it be immoral for you to go on GLP-1s? It’s your body and your choice, but we can’t discount the very real potential impact your weight loss might have on her mental health, right?
Now let’s broaden the scope–is it immoral to pursue weight loss in a world where your weight loss will land as just one more data point for every single person you ever interact with, pointing them toward body shame, self-rejection, or weight stigma?
No, right? But… well, it gets kind of complicated when you think about it this way, doesn’t it?
All of this is to say that while it is possible to simultaneously love yourself and want to change, it’s not really possible to pursue weight loss in our culture, without reinforcing or upholding weight stigma to some degree.
So do I think that makes it an immoral choice? No. But I do think it makes the question of whether or not to start taking GLP-1s to lose weight a far more complex one for a lot of people in my corner of the world, who are both highly self-aware and extremely grounded in the value of body liberation.
And it’s not really just about GLP-1s, either.
You might have been reading this with something else in mind entirely. Something you really want to change about yourself or your appearance, for example, but can’t tell whether your motivations are coming from the “right place” or not. Or a specific choice you’ve been on the fence about, because you’re really tempted to do it, but worry it goes against your own morals or values.
If you resonate with this kind of inner conflict in any way, please know that this is exactly the kind of question I love working through with coaching clients.
Because “what do I want?” sounds like it should be a simple question, until you start noticing all the deeper stuff that it’s all tangled with up:
Will it make me more worthy or deserving?
Will it make people want me or accept me?
What does it mean about me that I want this?
What kind of person would that choice make me, and am I ok with that?
It can be incredibly difficult to locate your own authentic desire underneath all that noise (if not impossible), so how do you make decisions that feel ethical and empowering for you?
If you’re looking for support around this kind of thing, hit reply or apply for coaching with me here.
As always, thank you for being here and grappling with these kinds of big questions together.
Big hug,
Jessi
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