It may seem strange, but losing weight is an effect – and not a goal – to health.
From the magazines and the advertising you will certainly bombarbed with images of “healthy” people who want to sell you their products or services to achieve this goal. And even when losing weight is not the explicit result, it’s often used as a marketing message.
Because skinny sells. And it sells because we are used to be afraid of “be fat”. We are afraid because we associate it with bad health (but fortunately it doesn’t). We see this association as a lack of our personal and moral responsibility. That’s why we talk about fatphobia.
Fatphobia, the fear of being fat
What we must understand is that healthy behaviours have not aesthetic results. We feed a system that is based on a fear. And as long as we will not be afraid to be in health gaining weight, we will try to not get fat believing that this has to do with being healthy.
Diets don’t work for everyone and losing weight is not possible or healthy for everyone. Of course, a conscientious diet invites you to introduce beneficial changes into your alimentation to boost the metabolic functions. But since these are not the visible changes, what is being promoted is to strive your size or the shape of your body.
Everytime we talk about how to stay good, we talk about changing our body and not our health!
Do not be ashamed of your body
They talk about the pride to have a “new” body. But we would really need to be proud for reaching a new body shape if you did not feel ashamed for the current one, whatever it is?
That’s why the main message must be to stay healthy no matter if you are fat or not. This is the motivation you need: you have to invest on your own health and not be ashamed of your body, whether healthy can have an effect (or not) on it.
[Read more here]