Question:
I am elderly and after struggling all my life to keep my weight at a reasonable level, I succeeded with the help of a diet company. So I know all about healthy eating, the importance of exercising regularly and my psychology. But successive Covid lockdowns sent my resolutions out the window: I’ve put on weight, none of my clothes fit, and I hate how I look. How do I lose weight safely?
Answer:
While many diets produce weight loss in the short term, almost all diets fail long-term, and typically, all lost weight is regained within three to five years. Despite this conspicuous failure rate, the dieter is still blamed for the failure rather than the dieting process itself. It is time we examined our beliefs about weight loss, diets and health.
The desire to lose weight is typically founded on the assumption that this will improve health. This ignores the lack of evidence that intentional weight loss improves health outcomes independently of behaviour changes, such as exercising regularly and eating a more nutritious diet, a 2022 article in Frontiers of Psychiatry noted. It is likely the acts of exercising regularly and eating healthier foods improve health outcomes rather than weight loss as such. “Weight loss is neither a prerequisite for improved health nor an appropriate target for treatment,” the article noted.
Moreover, being overweight is associated with improved mortality among community-dwelling older adults, a 2022 study published in Gerontology found.
So, why are overweight people encouraged to diet and become skinny? Diet culture is a widespread belief system in Western cultures that equates thinness with health, gives social status to weight loss and exercise behaviours, prioritises control and restriction of foods, moralises food choices, and contributes significantly to body dissatisfaction. Studies since 1985 have reported variously that 69-84% of American women were dissatisfied with their bodies; 93% of 168 female students surveyed at a Spanish university wanted to change at least three areas of their body; and 60% of Austrian women aged 60-70 were dissatisfied with their bodies. Women, no matter their age, are habitually unhappy with their bodies and want to be thinner.
Social scientists have long been aware of this cultural phenomenon. For example, the impact of Western diet culture was profoundly demonstrated in Fiji during the 1990s when broadcasters introduced Western television shows. Until then, bulimia nervosa had been unheard of in the Pacific Island nation.
However, three years after the introduction of Western soap operas and advertisements, Fijian teenage girls reported dissatisfaction with their bodies. Critical indicators of disordered eating were now present, with 11% of Fijian teenage girls inducing vomiting to control their body weight. While 74% reported feeling “too big or fat” sometimes, 83% stated that television had influenced their feelings or their friends’ feelings about their body shape or weight.
Diet culture is all around us but is not consciously seen. It shapes how women (and men) think and feel about our bodies and eating habits, whether through newspaper headlines, magazine advertisements for women’s shapewear, derogatory jokes about fat bodies, or metaphors like “you are what you eat”.
You mentioned that you hate how you look, and that is a very telling illustration of diet culture’s impact on women. It is unfortunate that even at retirement age, diet culture is still able to make women feel less than worthy because of their body weight.
The problem is not your body weight but instead that our culture has convinced you that losing weight is the only path to good health and looking good. You know about healthy eating, the importance of exercising regularly and understanding your psychology, so focus on those things, not your body weight, and your body will settle into its natural weight range. That weight may not be what diet culture tells you it should be or what you wish to be, but your body is the ultimate authority in this case, and no amount of dieting will permanently downsize your body to a weight it cannot sustain long-term.
