You have probably noticed that I don’t like to talk about weight loss, even though the company I work with (and whose products I LOVE and use all the time!), got its start as a weight loss company 20 years ago. Time moves on, and they are smart enough to pivot to wellbeing instead. So thankful for that.

But I do want to talk about weight loss, in memory of Jenny Craig, the weight loss company that just closed its doors after 40 years in business. I’ve heard that Weight Watchers is also struggling. 

I never did Jenny Craig, but I’m a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, even though I haven’t been to a meeting since the early 2000s. As someone who was assigned female at birth, I’ve spent my entire life being told, implicitly of course, that my worth depended on a number on the scale, and especially that I should not take up too much room in this world. I watched my mother struggle with that message, even as she neglected to take care of herself – to try and improve her disordered sleep patterns, to eat better, to move her body and reduce stress. All the things that I keep talking about here. When I was a teenager, she and I did fad diets together. Of course, they worked for a while, anything that reduces your calories will make that almighty number go down. Mind you, you might be losing muscle rather than fat, but that’s not something I learned about until much later. Looking back, and looking at pictures of myself in my twenties especially, once I was done with the toxic environment of my high school, I wonder what I was so concerned about. 

I don’t think I have ever met a female-presenting person, especially one in her fifties or better, who didn’t tell me that she needed to lose at least 20 pounds, unless she was already skin and bones. We are all bombarded with body images that are tall, thin, cis and white – and we are told that we will not be desirable (to whom?) unless we conform to this idea. This is one of the reasons that I am such a huge fan of Lizzo – she’s Black and unabashedly fat, and she sings, dances and plays the flute like few athletes are able to do. Take that, diet culture!

That having been said, my mother did develop Type 2 diabetes in her late fifties, and by her mid-sixties she was living on borrowed time. She died of congestive heart failure at the age of 69. While her body fat percentage may have played a role, I honestly believe that better self care could have staved her death off for another decade – moving, trying to reduce stress, trying to sleep better. 

This is the time of year when many women are looking at themselves in the mirror with disgust, and vowing to reduce their flab in time for bikini season. Weight loss products are flying out the door, and many people are using diabetes drugs as appetite suppressants – not a healthy way to lose weight, if indeed you need to lose weight at all. That is a question to be answered honestly, in terms of your health, and not because you are trying to look like a celebrity in a magazine. No more body shaming! Let’s make sure we are strong, healthy, vibrant and joyful. If some toxic fat happens to remove itself because of those things, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not about the number on the scale – it’s about how you feel. Let’s work on feeling great – you deserve it.

Wellbeing Wednesday is on hiatus for a few weeks, but I’d love to hear back from you! Let me know what you think.