Why HAES?
What is Healthy At Every Size? For a very long time, our culture has been obsessed with body size. We are convinced by both the medical community and the fitness community that fat equals BAD and thin equals healthy. We have definitely come a long way since I was growing up in the 80’s when it comes to body positivity and representation of diverse bodies, but the damage is so pervasive and the messages so continuous that we’ve barely begun to address the damage.
First of all — weight and health are not synonymous. Weight does not automatically indicate one’s health or fitness level. It tells us very little about things that really do matter — like how well our heart and lungs are working, how strong our muscles are, what diseases or injuries exist in the body, or how a person feels in their body.
What doctors call ‘overweight’ may or may not coexist with poor fitness, illness, or injury in the body. Same with ‘underweight’ and the same is true with the small portion of the population who happen to be in the “goldilocks” weight range. To the extent that weight is correlated with a person’s health and fitness, the whole subject matter is fraught with shame, guilt, diet culture, and solutions that are hyper-focused on the scale. For many (most?) of us, this is completely counter-productive and will not result in a healthier body.
Furthermore, there are many studies that show the danger of rapid, significant weight loss. Losing too much weight too fast can result in dying at higher rates than staying fat. Many studies also show the damage of on-and-off-again dieting that causes cycling weight shifts. The psychological toll of dieting is also merciless — shame when you ‘mess up’ and eat something ‘bad,’ and then temporary reward when you manage to deprive yourself.
Nearly all weight loss is inevitably followed by weight gain, once the temporary focus on losing weight is lifted, the weight creeps (or leaps) right back on, leaving people demoralized and back into a try-harder/ give up cycle that is more defeating than never losing in the first place.
I embrace HAES because I believe that moving toward a healthier life is more possible when we ditch shame and begin with self-acceptance. When we learn to love our bodies and accept ourselves as we are now, the resulting actions are an extension of that love and care. The scale moves far down the list of things that we care about.
I will never judge you for caring about your weight. I totally get it. But I won’t make it the focus of our training. I will ask instead, what measures of health matter most to you? How do you feel in your body? How do you want to feel in your body? Stronger? Less painful? More energetic? I will partner with you in learning to enjoy living in your body, listening to it, learning to give yourself what you need from a place of freedom instead of self-judgment and shame. If weight gets lost on this journey - fine. But it’s the great way you feel, along with the joy and freedom that emerges, that matters most of all!
Read more about the Healthy At Every Size Framework of Care, along with more detailed information about its history here.