Dismantling the Skinny (and Not So Skinny) Myths

The Gift of Midlife "Body Composition Changes"

Hi Beautiful Friends,

For fear of sounding like a total grinch, I have to admit I’m not the biggest Santa fan. In this moment, I find myself a little jealous of his magnificent body acceptance, self-loving his hallmark waistline for which he is adored.

At the end of the last post in this series, I hinted at my least favourite or most despised meno-term created by those who put “meno” and “belly” together. If it were up to me, these two would never be paired. If I were to get my holiday wish, it would be that everyone who reads this feels free to throw out old, false narratives that interfere with honouring their tummies and enjoying delicious holiday foods.

Chipping Away at Old Narratives

The “science” of nutrition and “obesity”* is informed less by evidence and more by medical dogma and red flags in research.

*Please see end note. I apologize if certain language is triggering, but because this post delves into medical literature, I chose to use stigmatizing language for the sake of clarity. My hope is that by the end of reading this, the word “obesity” won’t land quite the same.

You may read things in this series that will contradict indoctrinated beliefs about weight and health. It’s easy to believe things that aren’t true when the world around us, and the industries that benefit, constantly reinforce these beliefs. It’s even more understandable that we don’t think to question beliefs held by most medical professionals, people we trust and respect. Because of their level of education and the time they’ve devoted to learning about our bodies, we expect their beliefs to be based on science, on evidence, and therefore, on the truth.

The problem is that truth in science changes over time. We’ve already seen how false beliefs about hormones became medical dogma that led to decades of women being denied safe treatment for debilitating symptoms. We know the history of how and why women are poorly understood and under-studied.

Still, I was surprised that a mere scratch of the surface reveals that widely accepted, strongly held beliefs about nutrition and “obesity” are ungrounded. Granted, the challenges of gaining accurate information about diet and nutrition are substantial. Documented in this NYTimes article, much of the data depends on people’s memories and their honesty. So yeah, challenging. Once data is collected, we’re still reliant on people for interpretation. Jon Robinson, PhD in health education and exercise physiology, has identified common red flags in weight-loss research such as not including participants who drop out when calculating results. One of the shocking things about doing my own research has been seeing some of the ways data has been misinterpreted or poorly presented because I expect scientists to know and do better. For instance, the common mistake of inferring causation from correlation seems like an error we hope most scientists would avoid. Not only does this mistake happen consistenly, it appears a major contributor to our largely embraced but flawed hypothesis on “obesity.”

Tangent on Truth

We should stop believing weight is a result of willpower not just because it’s not true but because it’s harmful.

I’m not a hard-line truther. I think it’s helpful to be occasionally delusional (important in theater) or believe in something for which there is no proof, or for which there may even be proof against (like Santa Claus, although the process of telling my first born I’d been lying to her for 10 years in all sorts of elaborate ways was pretty brutal). I’m all for uncovering the truth when the lies become harmful. Even when it’s in our best interest to let go of hurtful falsehoods, it’s still incredibly hard to believe evidence that disproves baked-in beliefs that are fundamental to the ethos of the society in which we live.

In order to reap the American promise of our rights to freedom and liberty, we must identify as individuals. After all, it is the individual who enjoys such rights. In order to be eligible to receive promised rights, we also sign up to take on the responsibilities of being an individual, in spite of living in a system that in many ways fails to care for the individual. In the US, the concerns of government and industry prioritize accumulation of wealth and power, often to the detriment of the individual, while simultaneously pointing the finger back at the individual when we fail to thrive in systems that create obstacles to our well-being.

While it might feel temporarily destabilizing to question ideas baked into the fabric of our society, if we can wade through the discomfort to get to the other side dismantling false beliefs may lead to better health and more freedom. Recovering from internalization of harmful narratives can take as long as we lived believing and reinforcing them. Speaking of internalization, in a recent survey asking participants to name the number one barrier to weight loss, the large majority responded “willpower,” completely ignoring genetic and environmental factors known to play significant roles immune to willpower.

Pathological Science

The history of two competing hypotheses reveals bad science that left us stuck with our failure to understand “obesity.”

The WHO states on its fact sheet on “obesity” that:

Overweight and obesity result from an imbalance of energy intake (diet) and energy expenditure (physical activity).

The WHO’s statement claims that being “overweight” or “obese” is a result of too much energy in and not enough energy out. Nutrition expert David Allison argues that this statement is merely the law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It fails to explain the cause of a physiobiological mechanism. This statement fails to explain why some people who eat fewer and expend more calories find themselves at a higher weight than others who eat more calories and expend fewer. In other cases where people are in fact consuming more, the energy imbalance hypothesis still doesn’t explain what stimulates their appetite for more calories. Allison who has been in the field for decades understands that a calorie is not a calorie and that not every body metabolizes calories into energy and stores them in the same way. These are facts that we mostly disregard when it comes to thinking about body weight.

In a fascinating interview, Oakland resident and nutrition writer Gary Taubes describes himself as obsessed with “pathological science”: the psychology and sociology of how bad science gets published and then impacts future research, which he claims happened in the field of nutrition. His relentless approach to scientific discovery, rather than looking for confirmation bias, looks at all the ways a theory might possibly be inaccurate. He calls the WHO statement above both “wrong and meaningless.” For his book Good Calories, Bad Calories, he details various false assumptions in nutrition research, which have been based largely on the faulty hypothesis that overeating, carrying with it the moral judgment of sinful gluttony, is the cause of “obesity.”

Interest in the science of hunger before WWII was minimal but had begun with just a handful of researchers mostly in Europe. Their initial work explored another more complicated hypothesis of obesity as a hormonal regulatory disorder and proposed that hunger is driven by fuel availability. The idea is that when the liver perceives fuel availability, hunger is not stimulated, but when the liver senses low fuel it releases inhibitions on eating.

By the 1930s, scientists began studying fat tissue, which up until that point had been considered just padding. Instead, they saw that the body is constantly mobilizing and storing fat based on physiological needs and drives and that insulin was the primary hormone responsible. As tools became more advanced, the study in this field developed so that scientists learned a lot about how the body metabolizes and stores calories. However, Taubes argues, because most people had accepted the imbalance hypothesis (“people eat too much”), the science of fat metabolism is largely ignored and missing from any discussion on “obesity” in textbooks from 1965 onward.

Medical politics factored into why the hormonal regulatory hypothesis fell through the cracks with certain prominent doctors prefering and promoting the energy imbalance model.

By the 1950s, psychologists concluded that the reason people kept “eating too much” in spite of being told this was causing their “obesity” was that it must be a mental disorder or an oral fixation that prevented them from using their willpower to diminish their size. Through the 1960s treatment of “obesity” was mostly handled by psychologists and psychiatrists, many of whom prescribed medications such as amphetamines, which although effective at weight loss, were addictive and dangerous. Since the 1960s “obesity” rates have tripled.

Interestingly, amphetamines used to treat “obesity” worked by stimulating the region of the brain called the hypothalamus, which plays an important role in the competing hypothesis of “obesity” as a hormonal dysregulation disorder.

Correlation is Not Causation

Once the energy imbalance hypothesis was accepted as fact, causation was inferred from correlation.

In rat studies, researchers saw a link between hunger and obesity. They lesioned an area of the brain (ventromedial hypothalamus) and the rats came out of anesthesia starving and literally gulping for food. Given enough food, those rats became obese. Researchers who accepted the energy imbalance hypothesis saw this result as explaining their hypothesis (hunger causes overeating causes obesity).

However, the competing hypothesis is that the lesion and subsequent impact on the hypothalamus, causes hormonal dysregulation, an increase in insulin production, that starts a cascade of dysregulation in fat metabolism. The body senses a lack of fuel availability, which stimulates a biological hunger drive leading to overeating and obesity. An important difference is that, unlike the energy imbalance hypothesis, the hormonal dysregulation hypothesis largely removes weight gain from the fault of the individual.

Proof We’re Using the Wrong Hypothesis

For over half a century, the wrong hypothesis keeps us using shame and dieting, resulting in growing rates of “obesity” and poorer health outcomes from weight fluctuations and stigma.

The energy imbalance hypothesis doesn’t hold up for several reasons. “Obesity” is at its highest rate today while over half of Americans are dieting. 14% of women and 7% of men were dieting in the 1950s. By 2008 that number jumped to 56% and 40% respectively, yet people continue to gain weight, contributing to what most in healthcare consider an epidemic. Both public policy efforts and weight management programs in the past half century, based on the energy imbalance hypothesis, have not slowed rising rates of “obesity.”

In a meta-analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies, substantial weight loss was seen across a range of treatment modalities, but more than 50% of the lost weight was regained within two years, and by five years more than 80% of lost weight was regained. Still other studies show that some dieters eventually surpass their original pre-diet weight. Some gain weight during the intervention implicating stress as a metabolic factor. New studies are showing that even bariatric surgery (i.e., “stomach stapling”) patients tend to regain weight in the long run, and when they do, they suffer terrible feelings of personal failure, depression, and fear of returning to a stigmatized status.

A hypothesis that insinuates the problem is willpower doesn’t make sense given the severe stigma and trauma experienced by those in bigger bodies. The research exposes the poor handling of “obesity” has been guided by a moral judgment responsible for dehumanization and cruetly. Although many believe that shame motivates people to lose weight, evidence shows the opposite to be true. Rather than weight loss, shame succeeds at making people feel bad about themselves.

Glenn Gaesser, an exercise physiologist and author of Big, Fat Lies recently presented on the harms of current beliefs about “obesity” at a conference on weight-inclusivity. In the first hour of the presentation, he shares data on the many detrimental impacts (blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular, all-cause mortality and others) associated with weight fluctuations, all the same risk factors associated with “obesity.” After initial weight loss, a patient might see temporary improvement in metabolic and cardiovascular health but the statistically probable weight regain and consequent overshoot reaction of the body results again in increased risk factors. Gaesser insists we need to question whether people are better off not attempting to lose weight in the first place.

He quotes famous “obesity” researcher Albert “Mickey” Stunkard who back in 1958 made the statement:

Most obese people will not stay in treatment for obesity. Of those who stay in treatment most will not lose weight; and of those who do lose weight, most will regain it.

The way we’ve continued to approach weight loss over the past five decades calls to mind the colloquial definition of insanity as attributed to Albert Einstein: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Focus on Fitness, Not Fat

Fitness is a better predictor of health and mortality than BMI.

In the opening acknowledgments section of Gaesser’s book, he cites a handful of books written in the 1980s (the decade that birthed the supermodel), one written as early as 1957, that try to dismantle the energy imbalance narrative on “obesity.” In the conference on weight-inclusivity mentioned above, Gaesser presents much of the research from his book demonstrating that cardiorespiratory fitness is a much stronger predictor of health than BMI. Long term data demonstrates that “fit and obese” study participants have much lower rates of death than those who are “unfit and thin.” These results spanning decades, were collected by leaders in the fitness industry who could not (or would not) believe their own data. A 2015 study supports these findings that cardiometabolic health is a much stronger indicator of lowering risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, and mortality regardless of BMI.

You can never be too rich or too thin.

Reminiscent of the Kate Moss quote from my previous post, the adage above was stitched by needlepoint on a pillow that rested on a satin couch in the residence of the Duchess of Windsor. Unfortunately, we live in a society that in many ways upholds that message, a society preoccupied with lower body weight as a sign of beauty and health.

Contrary to that belief, evidence reflects greater mortality at both ends of the weight spectrum, negating the idea that the best thing for our health is always to lose weight. Our medical system, beginning with indoctrination in medical school, narrowly focuses on weight loss despite evidence that doesn’t necessarily link fewer pounds to better health, especially when we factor in weight cycling given the fail rates of weight-loss attempts.

More Studies Supporting the Fitness over Fat Focus

• A 2013 systematic review and meta-analysis in JAMA found that those in the “obesity” grade 1 (25-30 BMI) category did not experience higher rates of mortality and that “overweight” individuals actually experienced a decrease in mortality rates relative to normal weight

• A 2014 systematic review saw the prevalence of metabolic health in those labeled “obese,” especially in the case of women

• A 2016 review in the International Journal on Obesity that looked at cardiometabolic health in the various BMI classifications found the following:

  Nearly half of overweight individuals, 29% of obese individuals and even 16% of obesity type 2/3 individuals were metabolically healthy. Moreover, over 30% of normal weight individuals were cardiometabolically unhealthy.

  Using BMI categories as the main indicator of health misclassified an estimated 74 936 678 US adults. The review concluded that:

  Policymakers should consider the unintended consequences of relying solely on BMI, and researchers should seek to improve diagnostic tools related to weight and cardiometabolic health.

Takeaways from the Research

• “Obesity” can cause type 2 diabetes and heart disease

• “Obesity” has become widespread with 43% of adults worldwide being classified as “overweight” and 16% living with “obesity”

• Many people who lose weight regain it, and the overshoot reaction leads to an increase in various risk factors, the same risk factors associated with “obesity”

• Those who lose and regain weight multiple times, known as weight cycling, also experience an increase in the same long list of risk factors associated with “obesity” such as high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes, and fractured bones

• Many who regain weight end up exceeding pre-diet weight

• Most studies find no increased risk of mortality among those classified as “overweight” (25-30 BMI)

• Many with above normal BMI are metabolically and cardiovascularly healthy

• Both dieting and obesity have been on a steep incline for the past half century, demonstrating the failure of current approaches to achieve weight loss

• Traditional methods of weight loss cause more harm long term

The Thinness Hierarchy

Looking at the problems in “obesity” research has helped me put the thinness hierarchy into perspective and normalize midlife “body composition changes” and transitional weight gain.

In my desire to dismantle societal perceptions of body weight as a false sign of health, beauty, and status, I was drawn into research that uncovered deeper rooted problems created by bad science in the field of “obesity.” Seeing through these cultural myths on fatness has helped me approach my own “body composition changes” and weight gain. I’m now better able to ignore the cultural milieu that tells me the changes are to be feared, and can and should be mitigated as much as possible. I’m also better equipped to make informed choices that are aligned with my health.

I hope not to belittle the impacts diet culture and fat phobia have on us. They are much more real than many of the claims about weight loss. Having spent most of my life in a very thin body, I have avoided fat stigma, but no one escapes all the harms of the thinness hierarchy to which we all have our own unique relationship. As is common with privilege, I’ve spent little time considering the hierarchy. Until Ms. Peri came knocking on my door.

Perimenopausal weight gain for me has been relatively minimal. Based on the averages, I expect to gain more over the course of the next decade. Even modest bodily changes were enough to provoke initial fear. I chalk that up to a normal response to changes I didn’t understand and for which I was unprepared, changes that moved me away from privilege as aging tends to do. After some education on those changes, my fear turned to anger. With more knowledge of the physiology, I started to resent how these changes were being framed by some doctors and menopause experts. My curiosity about my relationship to the thinness hierarchy deepened as well as my curiosity about others’ relationships to it.

Midlife Changes: What To Expect

While basal metabolic rate remains consistent until age 60, weight gain, and “body composition changes” are normal and not an indication for hormone therapy.

According to the British Menopause Society, about 50% of women will gain weight through the menopause transition. While the Mayo Clinic sites an average of 1.5 lbs. per year through her fifties, more evidence from two large scale studies (the SWAN study and the Healthy Women’s study) suggest that on average women may gain 3 lbs. per year through the peri/menopause transition.

While some may not ever see a difference on the scale (you could throw yours out), most will experience a shift in composition with more adipose tissue in the abdomen, known as visceral fat. Over the transition, even if we maintain the same diet and activity level, typical increase of visceral fat is from 5-8% to 10-15% of total body weight.

I’m assuming it’s this accumulation of adipose around the middle that has inspired the term “meno-belly,” a term that takes “belly,” a word I’ve worked hard to reclaim, and pairs it with the inevitable transition of unavoidable hormonal consequences: “menopause.” This term puts an important body part once again in the critical spotlight as something wrong or shameful to be fixed. Maybe you’ve seen posts of midlife influencers who have made it their top priority to lose this fat or all fat for that matter, which they triumphantly display in their after pics. This post is my “after after pic” of the “meno-belly,” which I refuse to see as the problem rather than the solution.

Despite the hype of so many fitness influencers and menopause experts, metabolism is not a reasonable target of modification in approaching midlife women’s health. Evidence doesn’t show a significant slow down in metabolism related to peri/menopause and typically there is little we can do to speed up our basal metabolic rate in any meaningful or noticeable way.

On the other hand, metabolism does typically slow down in the case of significant weight loss, and may contribute to significant weight gain in the future. A study in Finland showed that people of average weight who dieted had twice the risk of major weight gain than average weight individuals who never dieted. Evidence also shows that initially larger individuals who lose weight to arrive at a lower weight category must, in order to maintain their new weight level, continue to eat significantly fewer calories than others who are already in that lower weight category. Slowing of metabolism likely plays a role in why the majority of people who lose weight regain it in the long run. Over time, women may find themselves in midlife resorting to unsustainably restrictive diets that fail to achieve the same weight loss they had in the past because of sluggish metabolism from chronic dieting. I’ve often heard this described as “old tricks no longer working,” referring to weight loss, whether or not that was a health-focused choice.

For those who still want to reduce metabolism to “calories in/calories out,” you might want to take a look at this complex system of pathways first:

Or to avoid a headache, you might not. Just know that metabolism is complicated. Calories from different foods eaten at different times will have different impacts in different individuals. Here’s the beauty: as complex as this system is, you do not have to understand it, weigh your food, or perform any calculations. Our bodies take care of the whole thing! Our bodies are always working toward homeostasis and are very good at maintaining it.

Estrogen happens to be a key player in the regulation of glucose and metabolism. Research reveals that on the molecular level, estrogen is instrumental in many of the metabolic pathways. According to a mini-review in Oxford Academic:

Estrogens regulate key features of metabolism such as food intake, body weight, glucose homeostasis/insulin sensitivity, body fat distribution, lipolysis/lipogenesis, inflammation, locomotor activity, energy expenditure, reproduction, and cognition.

Given all of these roles estrogen plays, it is not surprising that we notice changes in our body composition when estrogen levels change.

Fat tissue is considered a major endocrine organ because of the long list of hormones it produces. Because of this, “both adipose tissue excess and deficiency” can result in dysregulation of our hormone pathways and adverse metabolic consequences. But in absence of data quantifying the amount of fat necessary to predict certain health outcomes positive or negative, and how to achieve those precise proportions, the question of where exactly we place the guardrails on fat tissue remains the question.

HT and Metabolism, Diabetes, & Weight Loss

Hormone therapy will not increase your metabolic rate or help with weight loss but it may reduce risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The significant role estrogen plays in metabolism creates some biological plausibility that hormone therapy might facilitate metabolism in a body producing less estrogen but there is no evidence to support this theory. According to the evidence, starting hormone therapy for fear of weight gain and “body composition changes” through the peri/menopause transition is not justified for two main reasons.

1. Studies do not show hormone therapy to be effective at mitigating weight gain or bodily changes in the long term.

2. More importantly, science supports that the average weight gain for most women is not a health risk.

That said, if applying low dose transdermal estrogen and taking oral micronized progesterone helps alleviate symptoms, especially improving sleep, hormone therapy may contribute to health goals including eating well, exercising and feeling good.

Some argue that hormone therapy may improve cholesterol profiles, but the data is not at all robust and may be stronger for older formulations such as CEEs (conjugated equine estrogens) and stronger for administration of estrogen alone without progesterone (only an option for those without a uterus). Furthermore, lowering cholesterol levels may not predict reduced rates of heart attack in women. Overall, despite some impassioned doctors’ feelings, hormone therapy is not yet indicated for improving cholesterol profiles or for preventing cardiovascular disease because of lack of evidence.

Conversely, there is evidence that hormone therapy may help insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism, thereby reducing chances of type 2 diabetes. The 2022 US Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement entitled Hormone Therapy for the Primary Prevention of Chronic Conditions in Postmenopausal Persons, supports hormone therapy in the reduction of type 2 diabetes, although the task force, along with the Menopause Society, maintain that there is not enough evidence to support recommending hormone therapy for this reason alone. Dr. Jen Gunter, always evidence-driven, chimes in stating:

The net for diabetes isn’t considered a strong enough reason to take for that benefit alone, but it is information to consider for someone at higher risk for diabetes who is deciding on MHT for hot flashes and night sweats.

Hitting a Moving Target

When we tie our worth to our weight, we set ourselves up to fail.

When our narrative is that gaining weight is the worst thing that could possibly happen to us, the numbers representing average menopausal weight gain cited above may sound discouraging and even frightening. But weight is just a number that represents our mass of bones, muscles, connective tissue, organs, and fat. It’s not something that we do and it’s not something that we are. How can we connect our identity to something that shifts from morning to night and day to day depending on many factors including hormonal cycles? Particularly during peri/menopause where the “bloat yo-yo” of water retention is the free ride of the day.

When we tie our weight to our worth, we are attaching our identities to moving pieces, not just the daily modulations, but the moving posts of our goal weight, which once reached may not bring the satisfaction we anticipated because of where the weight lands on our new middle aged bodies.

Roles of Fat (No Pun Intended)

Midlife changes may protect the heart, bones, and muscles and provide life-sustaining support in the face of illness.

For a while I’ve been wondering if perhaps some of the fat we gain through peri/menopause transition is our bodies’ way of mediating loss of ovarian estrogen by accumulating fat, which produces estrogen. I was excited to hear this theory from hormone expert, endocrinologist Gregory Dodell on the podcast Food Psych episode #327 with host Christy Harrison, licensed dietician and anti-diet author of The Wellness Trap. Dodell hypothesizes from his educated understanding of hormones that gaining some fat may help our bodies compensate for loss of ovarian estrogen. Health benefits from an increase in fat through the menopause transition for lean women have been linked to improved cardiovascular and bone health, not to mention added padding to protect brittle bones after a fall. Nutritionist, Val Schonberg writes in her blog “The Weight of Menopause”:

In a large cohort study of over 6,000 adults, researchers found a protective effect of weight gain among lean postmenopausal women, largely due to a threefold decrease in cardiovascular disease mortality risk.

Val also warns about the “Silent Thief of Bone Health”:

Eating disorders, dieting, low body weight, and major weight loss are all risk factors recognized for stealing and whittling away at bone.

It’s important to remember that when we lose weight we don’t just lose fat but bone and muscle as well. One way to ward off risks of osteoporosis, especially prevalent for middle aged and older women, is not to lose weight but to continue to hold onto lean muscle mass through weight lifting and resistance. Also, a protein-rich diet is necessary to maintain muscle and strengthen bones. Another protective aspect of midlife weight gain that Val has seen in her clincal practice of over twenty years is the lifesaving support to those who must endure chemo and radiation therapy to treat cancer.

Changing the Narrative

What if everything we’ve ever been told about weight is incorrect?

What if we look at the numbers indicating typical weight gain during peri/menopause and consider them goals? What if one of our (many) jobs through midlife is to gain weight that will protect our hearts, our bones, our mental health and see us through illnesses such as cancer? Did you know that those at greater risk of dying in the hospital after injury in later life are those on the thinner end of the spectrum? Perhaps a shift in thinking around midlife weight gain and “body composition changes” would reduce incidence of the next unfortunate “meno” term.

Menorexia

During midlife, many women suffer from fear of weight gain and loss of control, which contribute to a resurgence for some of poor body image and disordered eating.

“Menorexia” refers to a resurgence in disordered eating for women in midlife. According to a 2019 study in JAMA, while prevalence of most eating disorders diminishes with age (bulimia being the exception with prevalence sustaining until age forty-seven), certain symptoms such as calorie counting, cycles of binging and purging, and food restrictions rebound in midlife with a prevalence of close to 30%. Director of The Menopause Society, Stephanie Faubion commented:

This study shows that similar to studies in young adults, dissatisfaction with body image remains a core feature of eating disorder pathology in midlife women. Specifically, fear of gaining weight and fear of losing control over eating habits are central symptoms of eating disorders in perimenopause and early postmenopause.

Dr. Bettina Bentley, a primary care physician at Harvard University Health Services also speaks to some of the root causes:

The importance of body image seems to be a key feature that makes women either return to or start an eating disorder. With aging, many women are also disturbed by the lack of control over the ways their body is changing.

Desire for control has long been identified as a key component of eating disorders. Phases in a woman’s life where estrogen fluctuates, thereby bringing on many rapid changes in her body and mind (not separate), can feel chaotic. It’s not surprising that girls in adolescence and perimenopausal women might be extra vulnerable to disordered eating during these hormonally turbulent times when things feel out of control.

The unfortunate truth is that we live in a society that benefits from us believing that our weight is bad unless it’s low, that our weight is within our control, and that losing weight is imperative to our health. These false ideas make us feel wrong, bad, or scared in order to sell us things that promise to fix us, hiding the fact that the rate of success of these sometimes expenisve things we’re buying is dismally low to nonexistent.

The Good News!

When we see through the myths, we can reconnect to healthy eating and movement, practices best guided by unfettered intution.

Turns out regardless of what the scale or the mirror shows, behaviours such as not smoking, drinking moderately (Canadian guidelines are two drinks/week), eating healthy (plant-based diets rich in protein and fiber) and moving regularly (moderate exercise at least twelve times a month) are much better predictors of mortality than weight.

In turbulent hormonal times, it’s nice to have actionable things within our control that help us find an embodied experience guided by our intuition. When we quiet unhelpful chatter, we begin to listen to our own intuitive voices, the ones that actually care for us. We can hear, follow, and trust our hunger signals and our body’s call to move. It’s really that simple.

More on Nutrition Coming Up

The can of worms I opened once I began looking at nutrition includes research on the following:

• The Sugar or Fat Debate

• BMI

• GLP-1s and “Ozempic face”

• Origins and History of the Thin Ideal

• Visceral Versus Subcutaneous Fat

• Sleep and Appetite

• Co-opting of Body Positivity

Though it was my desire to bring you all of this before the holiday season, I hope this (heavy) hors d’oeuvres post is enough to set you on the path to enjoy food with family and friends this holiday. After all, the evidence links restriction, diets, and shame to zero positive outcomes.

Need a break from family chaos? I recommend a walk with Christy Harrison. A rigorous researcher who understands and uses evidence to support her unconventional yet balanced ideas on health and wellness, she is truly a breath of fresh air!

Thanks for reading and happy holidays! 🎄

*In this post I use the terms “obese,” “obesity,” “overweight” and “underweight” as classified by BMI used by our current medical system. In that system, “normal weight” is considered a BMI of 18.5-25, “overweight” is considered BMI 25-30 and “obesity” is defined as a BMI of >30. BMI is an archaic and ineffective biomarker of health that deserves its own post coming soon.