There are few hills I’m willing to die on; body neutrality is one of those hills.
I’m a therapist who has specialized in working with people with eating disorders for 27 years. Along the way, I’ve developed expertise in body image and weight science.
If you think it’s meaningful to be thin (or are trying not to want to be thin so badly), please read this!
Hundreds of years ago, when white assholes were enslaving and oppressing people of color, one way they “othered” people of color was to point to their bigger body sizes as a problem. They made up the myth that having a bigger body size was “bad”, which made the “other” people inferior, which gave them a “reason” to oppress and enslave them.
The thin ideal was born. The thin ideal says it is better to be thin than to be not-thin. We hear this from mothers, from men, from doctors, and from all manner of influencers.
To be clear, the thin ideal is the same thing as saying it is better to be white than black, or it is better to be a man than a woman. People do tend to get treated better, but it is based on bias, not fact.
For those of you shaking your head at me because I don’t realize that being thin is healthier than being not-thin, I’m going to shake my head right back at you. That understanding is based on old, bad science and straight-up prejudice. I already explained the prejudice part.
Science and common sense also show us that not-thin people can be healthy. Being fat does not automatically make you unhealthy, just like being thin does not automatically make you healthy.
And losing weight does not automatically make you healthier. Studies show that when people lose weight and get healthier, it is not the weight loss that makes them healthier. It’s the behaviors that lead to the weight loss: moving more, eating more veggies, getting more sleep, reducing stress. Behaviors, not weight, contribute to health. People who do those behaviors and don’t lose weight get the same health benefits, as it turns out. Those questions were just never asked before.
One more thing to add to the new-information pile – and this one is also realllllllllly important – diets don’t work. But we know this, right? If diets worked, everyone would be thin and only have needed to go on one diet to get there. That’s not what happens, given that the diet industry is raking in billions every year.
Science is very, very clear that over 90% of attempts at losing weight – regardless of how you lose it, even with GLP-1s – are going to result in regaining the lost weight (and likely more) within 2-5 years. Over 90%. Do those sound like good odds to you? The weight regain is not because all those people are doing something wrong; it’s because their bodies were working correctly. Bodies are biologically programmed to fight against weight loss; they see it as starvation.
So we don’t have the control over our bodies we thought we did. Bodies are not objects we can shape into whatever size we want (for more than a couple of years). They are organic beings with unique DNA and history and a very important job to do, and they are programmed to stay alive during times of low food. We can’t hack genetics or biology.
The last bit of info is that science shows that people who lose and gain and lose and gain (i.e., yo-yo dieters) are more likely to have chronic disease, inflammation, and poorer heart health as a result. Dieting not only doesn’t help, but it causes harm.
If you want the science on any of this, go to Ragen Chastain’s Substack Weight and Healthcare, or message me and I’ll send you specific citations. The science is not actually new, but so many people stop making money if word gets out, so.
Okay, I’ve laid the groundwork for body neutrality:
Given that the thin ideal comes from oppression and racism and is fueled by incorrect, old science, we are no longer listening to it.
Given that our bodies were meant to be all different sizes, there is no wrong size to be.
Given that we can be healthy at all different sizes, there is no wrong size to be.
There is no wrong size to be. Thinner is not better. We are not basing our worth on our body size.
Enter body neutrality!
Body neutrality reminds us that being thin is not the purpose of bodies. Because our body’s size is not related to its purpose, it doesn’t make sense to make it meaningful. (And again, if you think you need to be thin to be healthy, read up on the science).
The meaningful part of your body is that it allows you to have any and every experience you’ve ever had. Your body is the reason you’re alive and you get to do the things you do. It allows you to have a future. That’s the purpose of your body. That’s what’s meaningful about your body.
Body neutrality encourages us to approach our bodies with, well, neutrality. Not judgment. Bodies are not good or bad, by nature, just like trees are not good or bad. Judgment has no place here; it doesn’t even really make sense.
The purpose of your body is not to be decorative. Your worth has nothing to do with the size of your body or how pretty you think it is. The only reason you think it does is that somebody (a lot of somebodies) told you it does. The thin ideal has very deep roots, and the diet industry has very deep pockets.
Body neutrality has been described as having appreciation (instead of judgment) for the fact that your body functions. That is technically accurate, but that angle also leans toward ableism. It’s less about the fact that your body (or parts of your body) “functions” and more about the fact that your body as a whole allows you to have your experiences and live. Think wholistic instead of mechanistic (mechanistic thinking, in part, got us into the whole mess of thinking all bodies should look and act the same).
According to body neutrality, you don’t have to love how your body looks (or how it functions) to approach its size from a judgment-neutral stance, because you’re now smarter than that. Bodies are not here to be judged for how they look. That is the least meaningful and least interesting thing about them.
To be clear, body neutrality has nothing against you enjoying how your body looks, if that’s how you happen to feel. Play with hairstyles; have fun with make-up! But when your day or your ability to accept yourself are ruined because of how your hair or your face or your body looks, we have a problem. When the aesthetics of your hair, face, or body size become that meaningful, we have a problem.
When your worth hinges on the size of your body, we have a problem (and it’s not your body size!).
Body neutrality is not easy, but it shows us how to respect our bodies instead of judging them. It gets us away from body hatred. It also gets us away from believing that loving our bodies is the only valid option. We don’t have to love how our body looks to respect it. We don’t have to love how our body looks to have worth.
It sucks that this is new information to a lot of us. We’ve been taught to hate ourselves. Let’s not do that anymore.
I’ll talk about how I do body neutrality (imperfectly) in my next article!
For anyone who wants to get a little deeper into weight stigma as it shows up in the BMI:
The Body Mass Index (kg/m2) is used by insurance companies and doctors as a reflection of our health. The BMI divides us into four categories, based on how big the number is: underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obese. It’s right there in the category name – there is one range that is healthy for everyone to be, taking into account only their weight and height. If we’re not in the “healthy” weight, our height doesn’t get blamed, but our weight sure does.
Interestingly, in 1998, NIH revised BMI guidelines so over 25 million people suddenly – literally overnight – fell into the “overweight” category without gaining any weight. People were suddenly judged as problematic (by doctors and the insurance company) based solely on their body size. When people fall in the “overweight” and “obese” categories of BMI, there are more insurance denials (meaning insurance companies make more money), less time spent with doctors, and less accurate diagnoses. Quick tangent on the BMI: It is a measure of the average European white man’s body in the 1800s. It was never meant to be a measure of health, and it does not actually reflect anything about health, especially if you are not a white European man in the 1800s.
So even though BMI does not accurately reflect anyone’s health, it significantly impacts how we are all treated by insurance and our doctors. BMI is a well-worn vehicle for prejudice and stigma.
“It should be understood that in Western population-based studies, generally the mean or median BMI is about 24 to 27. Thus, ~50% or more of the general adult population will always be in the overweight (now preobese) and obese categories. Indeed, the term “overweight” or particularly “preobesity” is prejudicial since people in this category are a major part of the expected normal distribution of BMI in the general population, and this has been the case for decades.” 1
1Nuttall FQ. Body Mass Index: Obesity, BMI, and Health: A Critical Review. Nutr Today. 2015 May;50(3):117-128. doi: 10.1097/NT.0000000000000092. Epub 2015 Apr 7. PMID: 27340299; PMCID: PMC4890841.