Can you really pursue weight loss without screwing up your mental health?
Navigating the sweet spot between health and obsession.
I write about the psychology of eating disorders. I have personally recovered from bulimia and have worked as a therapist for 20 years. I hope to inspire, educate and improve understanding about eating disorders through my writing. Names used are fictional and stories shared are a combined insight of many client experiences. I believe that full recovery is possible for everyone.
Listen to the audio here: -
Who doesn’t want to lose weight in 2025?
Go onto your local high street in the UK and ask the first twenty people meandering your way, this potent question and I can guarantee that 95% will say a resounding yes.
This will probably be true for people of all weights, shapes and body sizes.
Because losing weight and pursuing thinness hold incredible social value in society.
And there is a ton of stigma about being in a larger body.
If you’ve dieted before, you’ve probably been praised and validated by well-meaning friends and family at your lower weight. This has brought satisfying feelings of acceptance and approval.
This will be amplified further if you have a history of people regularly commenting on your appearance, with negative or positive comments.
If you were bullied or critiqued about your body, or consistently praised for being beautiful and attractive, you will likely feel greater levels of self-consciousness and pressure to conform to the expectations of others around appearance.
This will have understandably impacted your self-worth and self-esteem.
Conforming to societal pressures feels protective and safe, as a barrier in an unsafe world.
‘At least they can’t criticise my body’.
Being thinner is highly valued in society. You may be naturally slim and have ‘thin privilege’ eating the foods you enjoy without restriction. Even so, you may still not feel thin enough. You may deprive yourself and have a difficult relationship with food.
If you are in a larger body (taller, and/or with bigger bones and muscles, and genetically carrying greater fat proportions), you may have felt the pressures to work at weight loss (which may have led to disordered eating), or you may be taken drugs or committed to surgery to aid you on this journey, to achieve a socially acceptable body weight.
It’s an unfair world. Genetics play a huge part here.
It is toxic that certain body types are valued more.
You can’t blame anyone for wanting to fit in and be accepted. Humans are tribal and wish to avoid exclusion.
But when does the pursuit of weight loss become obsessive and unhealthy?
Social media tends to polarise viewpoints to extremes.
Thousands have navigated extreme weight loss diets and ended up with an eating disorder.
Many have also navigated a more harmonious and self-caring weight management journey, where it has significantly improved their life.
Weight loss per se is not the evil demon to avoid at all costs and not all weight loss leads to eating disorders.
Here are four thoughts on when the pursuit of weight loss is not so healthy anymore: -
1. When weight loss becomes your whole purpose and meaning
Once on a weight loss journey, you can easily become consumed with calorie numbers, food apps and meticulously planning out your next meal.
You may not see this as a problem.
In the collective consciousness, controlling food and your body is often deemed as a worthy goal and preoccupation.
Sometimes it can take over your life.
You might find yourself distracted with these goals from dawn till dusk.
Work, friendships and hobbies blur into the background of life, whilst food and body take centre stage.
This is when you may wish to question the intensity of your pursuit.
Why now is weight loss consuming you piece by piece?
Maybe there is more going on beneath the surface.
When life is overwhelming or chaotic and busy, it may have become the one thing that offers safety.
Perhaps you’re distracted from other life problems that bring up sadness, anxiety or anger.
Maybe a focus on food places you in a bubble of safety and disconnection. You get relief from life’s demands and expectations, and you just don’t care as much.
Your anxiety has fallen about general problems, although it may well be significantly amplified around food.
These ‘beneath the surface’ issues are often unconscious, with the descent into disordered eating territories being gradual and involuntary.
If you recognise yourself here, hold self-compassion. Consider that the food and body focus is partly coping in a turbulent and uncontrollable world. Dare to look deeper to make sense of why it has taken over right now.
2. When weight loss or clean eating is your one defining measure of self-worth
Societal values around perfecting appearance and eating will detrimentally skew your psyche towards negative wellbeing.
Look glossy, perfect, and aesthetically pleasing 24/7: i.e. thin and you will be happy and confident.
Even though valuing appearance, nutrition and aesthetics can be a wonderful form of self-care, this alone is not the route to nirvana and self-fulfilment.
Look at any centenarian and note that they are prioritising connection, purpose, laughter and meaning in daily life, alongside a moderate diet and moving their body.
Instead, many of us are anxiously obsessed with wellness and body goals to the point that our nervous systems are in high alert when we stray just 1% towards imperfection.
Self-worth is dependent on achieving these things.
Self-worth is no longer a deep inner knowing of acceptance, rather a conditional goal to strive for.
Diet and wellness culture exacerbate these issues.
The culture will validate your thinner body shape and clean eating, never mind the sabotage or destructive route to get there.
The underlying message: Get thin no matter what.
Behind closed doors, you may be starving, feeling dizzy, weak and exhausted.
Simultaneously, others ask you for your weight loss tips.
It’s profoundly confusing and it reinforces the belief that weight equals worth.
When weight has become your worth, external validation from others, the weighing scales, the mirror and comparisons rule your life.
Before you know it, your day is peppered with comparing, scrolling, weighing, mirror checking, self-berating, calorie counting and more.
If anyone could read the thought bubble above your head, your focus would be entirely down the rabbit hole of food and body preoccupation.
Your judgement and praise are all body and food related.
Worth around other life areas have diminished.
You realise that getting thinner is not the magic pill to self-worth and body acceptance.
3. When weight loss is destroying your health
Losing weight does not always equate with better health.
Extreme restrictive eating can lead to many costs to physical, emotional and social health.
Maybe feeling cold, dizzy and weak.
Pronounced food preoccupation and obsession.
Self-isolation and withdrawal from others.
Although, society very much favours the Body Mass Index (BMI) as the holy grail of health interpretation, BMI is factually not that reliable.
As the tool was created for groups of white, European men and was never meant to be utilised as a measure for individuals. It also doesn’t take body composition into consideration.
If you are taller, bigger boned and have a larger muscle mass, your BMI may be deemed unhealthy, whereas you may be perfectly fine for your body.
Research also shows that health can be improved significantly with shifting health-enhancing behaviours. These can include: - walking more, drinking water, prioritising sleep, and reducing alcohol and stress.
It’s helpful to question whether weight loss is necessary for your individual body.
Get curious about why you feel the need to lose weight.
If it’s going to propel your body into a state of starvation, where you are constantly fighting food, is it worth it?
Think genuinely about where your body is in a peaceful place with food, without disordered eating or constant food preoccupation.
4. When weight loss interferes with relationships
If food preoccupation means that you are tired and weary, and you’re going to bed to avoid hunger, rather than hanging out with your loved ones, then maybe it’s starting to rule your life.
Or if you can’t go out socially, because the fear of eating ‘off menu’ brings you out in hives.
Or if food preoccupation has robbed you of your sex drive and libido, and you’d rather watch What I Eat in a Day YouTube videos, than spend time with your partner, then maybe this weight loss pursuit has taken a grip too tightly.
It is possible to pursue weight loss without screwing over your mental health, but it needs careful thought and consideration, as it’s easy to slip into disordered eating.
It is helpful to consider why you actually wish to lose weight in the first place and to consider if this is a necessary and/or self-caring decision for your individual body.
What’s your experience of navigating weight loss? Do share in the comments. Thank you.
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