aka, "How to Lose Weight, According to Diet Culture Vultures"
We pretend that losing weight is easy, that it's mind over matter or 'willpower'. Ugh. That is bollocks. Losing weight is HARD. Metabolic change is HARD, and garbage like The Biggest Loser fosters dangerous thinking patterns that focus on reducing a number on a scale over adopting habits that can enhance, and lengthen, a life. (We know how Coach MK feels about focusing on a singular data point, right??!!)
It's okay to NOT be okay. It's okay to NOT want to lose weight. It's ok to want to lose weight. It's okay to pursue fitness without any desire to lose weight. It can be okay to pursue fitness with the aim of losing weight depending on the incentive structures in the system you are adopting, which is why our perceptions of cheating (which we discussed in last week's podcast) are so important.
Coach MK says, "The systems promoted in The Biggest Loser are terrible and the incentive structures are way worse. The type of thinking that The Biggest Loser espoused and celebrated in front of 8 million viewers each week is absolutely NOT okay, and we know this because the things the contestants were doing were NOT sustainable, any more than the 'healthy lifestyle' my beautiful husband espoused during his 4-month stint in San Francisco. It breaks my heart to hear the things this beautiful man thought he needed to do to his body. It angers and motivates me to estimate how many people like my husband have been impacted by that terrible show; I am disgusted that anyone would greenlight its return in any form. I hope to communicate that disgust while validating all of my clients who have been conditioned to hate and battle their bodies and showing them that they are indeed capable of incredible things, they always have been, and weight has NOTHING to do with the equation."
All bodies are good bodies. You are perfectly made. The forces that tell you otherwise are real, they are WRONG, and we want to burn them all to the ground. We are not on national tv (YET!!) but we do have a platform and with that platform we sincerely hope to inspire positive, long overdue, change.
The next Fitness Protection Podcast drops next week, subscribe now on iTunes or your favorite podcast player (ours is Castbox!)