The F*ck It Diet. Caroline Dooner
of the best things we can do for our health—but in moderation.9 Exercise doesn’t need to be painful or miserable. In fact, it is way better for you as joyful movement and something that feels good to you—not punishment. Too much forced10 exercise isn’t good for your body or longevity either.11 Just like dieting, exercise won’t necessarily change weight long-term.
Social status and feelings of personal power have more impact on your health than even your health habits.12 Autonomy and control over your day, your job, your activities, your money, and your life leads to more contentment, which is great for your overall health. And the acute stress that comes from being marginalized or powerless, or feeling shame and prejudice, are all terrible for your health,13 regardless of weight or even the way you eat. The way you are treated, and treat yourself, affects your health.
Not feeling you have any power in your life can make you sicker than any of your health habits14 . . . that’s huge. Experiencing discrimination, or even just perceived discrimination,15 is terrible for your health. And traumatic experiences that are completely out of our control can have major impacts on our health long-term as well. For instance, survivors of the Holocaust concentration camps had significantly higher rates of fibromyalgia,16 even decades later. And survivors of childhood abuse are at higher risk for having autoimmune disorders.17
What this all really means is that we have been blaming ourselves for our health and our weight, when in reality there is so much that is out of our control. And what this also means is that social change, kindness, and empowering ourselves and others will end up being more helpful and important to our collective health than any “war on obesity.” There are unhealthy fat people and healthy fat people, unhealthy thin people and healthy thin people. Losing weight does not guarantee you good health, especially if the weight loss happens in a self-punishing way.
The Health at Every Size study is eye-opening and liberating—but it can also freak people out. Because what lots of people hear is, “You mean . . . even if I learn to eat normally, I’m stuck in this body forever!?” What’s important to realize is that we can’t control our weight long-term. We’ve tried. You’ve tried. And if you’re reading this book, chances are you’ve consistently failed to keep control—and now here you are.
The good news is, the calmer and more fed your body is, the better it will work, and the healthier and more stable your weight and appetite will be. Bodies end up right where they belong when you stop trying to control weight. The only thing we can control is how we treat ourselves, and learning to feed ourselves normally. And the sooner you can accept that your body will handle this whole weight thing for you, the sooner your health and life will improve.
GUESS WHICH INDUSTRY MAKES $60 BILLION A YEAR?
Think about how much money you have spent chasing weight loss. How many books have you bought? How many plans have you subscribed to? How many protein bars? How much money on Fitbits and other weird gadgets? How many pounds of almond flour? How much money have you hemorrhaged for the diet industrial complex? And what have you gotten out of it? Chronic low energy, and a deepening distrust in your seemingly insatiable appetite?
The diet industrial complex is made up of weight-loss programs (like Weight Watchers and SlimFast), pharmaceutical and medical companies that make weight-loss drugs, supplements, or procedures, and any other company selling beauty and “health.” These companies thrive on people believing that they are addicted to food, and that weight loss is the answer to all their problems. And they benefit from all of us feeling insecure, hating our bodies, and believing that we are just five pounds away from becoming the woman we are meant to beeeeeeee, and at the same time five pounds away in the other direction, from destroying our health.
No matter what they want you to believe, these are businesses, not philanthropic charities. They do not care about you. They make no promise to do no harm. And these businesses each make hundreds of millions because their products and solutions don’t work long-term. Because if they did, people would buy one book, or one membership, and become “cured.” Then the companies would lose that customer and revenue stream.
It may seem like weight-loss companies sprung up in response to an “obesity epidemic,” but when you actually look at the timeline, the opposite is arguably more true. The “obesity epidemic” only came around in the mid-1980s—after people had already been spending decades using cigarettes as appetite suppressants, using amphetamines, ephedra, and Dexatrim, the grapefruit diet of the 1930s, and the cabbage soup diet of the 1950s. Weight Watchers started in the 1960s, and SlimFast came around in the 1970s. But the number of “obese” Americans didn’t soar until the 1980s and 1990s, when it doubled among adults in the United States.18 We all assume it’s because of our portion sizes and sedentary lifestyles, but the 1980s and ’90s were when exercise became mainstream, and low-fat and diet foods and fake sugar were all the rage. Then low-carb became popular, but “obesity” has continued to rise despite all of our dieting. Do you see how this doesn’t entirely add up? Our collective dieting became more and more widespread first, and collective weights have only risen after, likely because of, and in response to, our dieting and fucked-up eating.
Beauty, health, and weight-loss companies have been telling women what is acceptable and attractive since marketing companies have existed. And we’ve always been suckers for it. We all want to be beautiful, and of course we do when we are taught how important it is for our future happiness, career, love life, personal Instagram lifestyle brand, whatever. But diets and body dissatisfaction are also more likely part of the cause of rising weight set points, not the cure. Dieting is directly related to people feeling more and more out of control with food.
But companies who sell weight loss have always been seen as the good guys. They want to help us become thin and healthy and happy! Weight Watchers is trying to rebrand because they just want us to live our best lives! Fuck no. They don’t care about you. Don’t blindly accept that they exist to save us from ourselves. They have always had a vested interest in perpetuating our deep cultural bias against weight, and creating products and programs that only work temporarily so you keep coming back again and again.
A scary truth is that companies that sell weight-loss programs and drugs also have a lot of power at the policy-making level and often fund the studies being used by the medical community. And many weight-loss drug companies sponsor doctors and public health initiatives. One example is our reliance on the bullshit BMI standard.
BMI takes no actual health factors into account. It can’t tell you anything about your blood pressure, your glucose levels, your hormones, your metabolism, your strength, your stamina, your bone density, your cholesterol, your immunity, your cellular respiration . . . nothing. It’s literally just a math equation: weight in relation to height, and it was first published by a life insurance company in 1959 as a way of explaining their rates. This was criticized by scientists because the equation it was based on was never meant to be used for individual diagnosis.
But doctors and insurance companies liked the simplicity of the equation, and so the BMI scale became widely used in 1985 by the National Institutes of Health. Then in 1998, the World Health Organization relied on the International Obesity Task Force to create updated BMI recommendations. And at the time, the two biggest funders of the International Obesity Task Force were the pharmaceutical companies that had the only weight-loss drugs on the market. The task force changed the BMI cutoffs on a whim, and overnight millions of Americans switched from being “normal weight” to “overweight.”19 Thanks a lot, lobbyists.
The whole thing is arbitrary, because many studies have found that higher BMIs actually have lower mortality rates.20 And many studies have shown that weight loss or too much exercise has been associated with poorer health, higher stress hormones, and increased mortality.21 And still, people are told they’re unhealthy based on their BMI, even if their health is otherwise perfectly fine. It’s just assumed. Oh, you’re in the overweight category? You must