Nancy, your assertion that you can just reduce the amount of food you eat, and move your body without a gym membership and lose weight is true, to some degree. The problem with that thought process is that I think you’re assuming that the weight is going to stay off. But once your body perceives that sufficient fuel is not available when it asks for it (and no, body fat, is not sufficient fuel) your endocrine system is going to change, metabolism, dropping by as much as nearly 20%, hunger hormones, increasing, satiety hormones decreasing, and with in 2 to 5 years you will have a 98% chance of having regained at least the amount of weight you lost in the diet and a more than 60% chance of gaining back more than you lost in the first place. So the important point is not that you can lose weight without paying WW or a gym, it’s that weight loss efforts don’t work in the first place.
The good news is that being in a large body has not been proven to be, in and of itself, unhealthy, and that if you have health problems that are correlated with your higher weight, that does not mean that the higher weight caused the health problem. Sometimes the thing that’s causing the higher weight is also causing the health problem. Being angry at gyms and weight loss programs is almost correct, if only you were angry with them for the right reason.
It’s hard. I’ve been body positive and health at every size for 6 years and I still get triggered, finding myself wishing my body was smaller. We live in a culture that says larger bodied people are irrelevant and so much worse. But I love my body, and I will not again starve it into (temporary) conformity to an ideal created by the avaricious weight cycling industry and a body-bigotry infested medical industry, willing to harm and even kill us for their profits. We are making progress and the adversary is fighting back, hard. Best to all of us in navigating this morass. Rebecca
What I don't understand is why any obese person would go on a WW or similar diet program? They cost a TON of money. If I wanted to lose weight (I don't really), I would simply just eat less and would end up saving a ton of money to boot. Even getting a gym membership is pointless as an obese person, because I'm carrying so much weight that I can just easily move myself around, push myself up against a wall etc. and I can easily get whatever weight load my muscles need just by myself. All dieting programs and gym memberships seem like a fraud, when you can save money and lose weight for free by simply eating less. Again, I have zero desire for this, but it's something medical professionals don't tell you enough. They just always say "lose weight" and then the person in question ends up googling and finding the link to WW or a local gym - it's not how it should be done and it makes me mad!
You're making a couple of really common errors here, this misinformation is ubiquitous and is often even perpetuated by healthcare professionals so I wanted to provide some information and resources to help:
First of all, plenty of healthcare practitioners give the "eat less" advice, the problem is that it doesn't create significant long-term weight loss. The vast majority of the time people lose weight short-term and gain it back long-term, due to the body's response to food restriction. More about that here:
In terms of the gym, while nobody is obligated to participate in fitness, when we focus on fitness for weight loss we miss the fact that movement is shown to create many health benefits for people of all sizes (which is especially frustrating since, again, it is not shown to create significant long-term weight loss.) More on this here:
I would also recommend using a term other than "obese" since that is a term that was created specifically to pathologize and medicalize larger bodies and is rooted in racism. I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor as used by the fat activist community, you can also use terms like "higher-weight" or "larger bodies." More about this here:
The fact is, there isn't any method of weight loss (whether we're talking about a commercial program, clinical program, or lifestyle change) that results in significant long-term weight loss for more than a tiny fraction of people.
There is a research bank here if you're interested in exploring this further:
I think that people go on WW (etc.) _because_ "just eat less" doesn't work. First you try to control your body size by eating less (or moving more, whatever), but for all the reasons Ragen describes elsewhere, you don't achieve the results you are seeking, particularly not long-term. But because our culture tells us that the fault isn't biology but willpower, we reach out for tools to try to solve the problems of our "lack of willpower", like WW and other accountability-based systems. Except the whole premise is wrong 😝 So, in a way, if dieting really worked, we wouldn't have diet programs because we wouldn't "need" them...
I totally agree, Cassie. If any diet actually worked, keeping the weight off long-term, there would be no need for diet programs and weight loss, gyms and weight loss, doctors and weight loss drugs…
Nancy, your assertion that you can just reduce the amount of food you eat, and move your body without a gym membership and lose weight is true, to some degree. The problem with that thought process is that I think you’re assuming that the weight is going to stay off. But once your body perceives that sufficient fuel is not available when it asks for it (and no, body fat, is not sufficient fuel) your endocrine system is going to change, metabolism, dropping by as much as nearly 20%, hunger hormones, increasing, satiety hormones decreasing, and with in 2 to 5 years you will have a 98% chance of having regained at least the amount of weight you lost in the diet and a more than 60% chance of gaining back more than you lost in the first place. So the important point is not that you can lose weight without paying WW or a gym, it’s that weight loss efforts don’t work in the first place.
The good news is that being in a large body has not been proven to be, in and of itself, unhealthy, and that if you have health problems that are correlated with your higher weight, that does not mean that the higher weight caused the health problem. Sometimes the thing that’s causing the higher weight is also causing the health problem. Being angry at gyms and weight loss programs is almost correct, if only you were angry with them for the right reason.
It’s hard. I’ve been body positive and health at every size for 6 years and I still get triggered, finding myself wishing my body was smaller. We live in a culture that says larger bodied people are irrelevant and so much worse. But I love my body, and I will not again starve it into (temporary) conformity to an ideal created by the avaricious weight cycling industry and a body-bigotry infested medical industry, willing to harm and even kill us for their profits. We are making progress and the adversary is fighting back, hard. Best to all of us in navigating this morass. Rebecca
What I don't understand is why any obese person would go on a WW or similar diet program? They cost a TON of money. If I wanted to lose weight (I don't really), I would simply just eat less and would end up saving a ton of money to boot. Even getting a gym membership is pointless as an obese person, because I'm carrying so much weight that I can just easily move myself around, push myself up against a wall etc. and I can easily get whatever weight load my muscles need just by myself. All dieting programs and gym memberships seem like a fraud, when you can save money and lose weight for free by simply eating less. Again, I have zero desire for this, but it's something medical professionals don't tell you enough. They just always say "lose weight" and then the person in question ends up googling and finding the link to WW or a local gym - it's not how it should be done and it makes me mad!
Hi Nancy,
You're making a couple of really common errors here, this misinformation is ubiquitous and is often even perpetuated by healthcare professionals so I wanted to provide some information and resources to help:
First of all, plenty of healthcare practitioners give the "eat less" advice, the problem is that it doesn't create significant long-term weight loss. The vast majority of the time people lose weight short-term and gain it back long-term, due to the body's response to food restriction. More about that here:
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/who-says-dieting-fails-the-majority
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/its-the-diet-that-fail-not-the-patients
In terms of the gym, while nobody is obligated to participate in fitness, when we focus on fitness for weight loss we miss the fact that movement is shown to create many health benefits for people of all sizes (which is especially frustrating since, again, it is not shown to create significant long-term weight loss.) More on this here:
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/gaesser-and-angadi-the-case-for-weight
I would also recommend using a term other than "obese" since that is a term that was created specifically to pathologize and medicalize larger bodies and is rooted in racism. I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor as used by the fat activist community, you can also use terms like "higher-weight" or "larger bodies." More about this here:
https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/inclusive-language-for-higher-weight
The fact is, there isn't any method of weight loss (whether we're talking about a commercial program, clinical program, or lifestyle change) that results in significant long-term weight loss for more than a tiny fraction of people.
There is a research bank here if you're interested in exploring this further:
https://haeshealthsheets.com/resources/
I think that people go on WW (etc.) _because_ "just eat less" doesn't work. First you try to control your body size by eating less (or moving more, whatever), but for all the reasons Ragen describes elsewhere, you don't achieve the results you are seeking, particularly not long-term. But because our culture tells us that the fault isn't biology but willpower, we reach out for tools to try to solve the problems of our "lack of willpower", like WW and other accountability-based systems. Except the whole premise is wrong 😝 So, in a way, if dieting really worked, we wouldn't have diet programs because we wouldn't "need" them...
I totally agree, Cassie. If any diet actually worked, keeping the weight off long-term, there would be no need for diet programs and weight loss, gyms and weight loss, doctors and weight loss drugs…