How dieting is like foot binding

January is a popular time for women of all shapes and sizes to make goals and devote every waking hour as well as their finite and precious energy into forming – or sometimes just thinking about – habits with the sole purpose of shrinking their bodies. But these efforts – even if we’ve convinced ourselves that our motivations are noble and we just want to be happier and healthy – aren’t really about health or happiness. They are rooted in the erroneous belief that smaller is more beautiful and healthier. Because would you really be happy if you swore off carbs or wine or chocolate or all of them at once and started weightlifting and running and your body did not change one single bit?

New Year’s Resolutions generally hinge upon some form of self-improvement, and Western culture is obsessed with improving our bodies and our health. Many of us also live in fear of staying or becoming fat.

My views on our fat phobic culture have shifted over the years. When I was recovering from my eating disorder, I recognized that being too thin was unhealthy, but I was also afraid of gaining too much weight and I convinced myself that being overweight was always bad for people’s health (though in recent years the “health at every size movement” is showing that this just isn’t true). For a long time I feared processed food.  I’d see all the scary headlines about how obesity was on the rise and causing all sorts of diseases, and how even young children were at risk for developing type 2 diabetes because of their eating habits and sedentary lifestyles, and I unwittingly gave the food police more control and would habitually steer clear of certain food all under the guise of good health. While I fought against fat-shaming and always, always recognized that a person’s worth transcends their physical self, I struggled with reconciling my desire for pursuing health and encouraging others to do so with my equally strong desire to encourage women to embrace their natural design and practice body kindness.

I’m still working on framing my own thought system around body image, weight, and what it means to be healthy, but I’ve fired the food police, have embraced intuitive eating, and truly believe that health is possible at every size.  I am also convinced with 100 percent certainty that diets and scare tactics about obesity don’t work. As the weight-loss and fitness industries and childhood obesity campaigns have grown, so have Americans’ waistlines.

Diets are now often presented in shiny, new packages: It’s not about the weight or the scale. It’s about your health. But these lifestyle plans are diets in disguise. They won’t work either. At least not for most people or for the long-run. And even if they do work, at what cost? Something I once overlooked in the conversations about weight and being overweight is that health is holistic. It’s not just about how you look or feel physically. It’s also about how you feel emotionally. It’s also about how you perceive your body. And so many of us perceive our bodies to not be good enough, fit enough, thin enough, and healthy enough. Sometimes society and others encourage these perceptions. The stress caused by experiencing chronic feelings of inadequacy can lead to some of the same health problems blamed on being overweight. So is it really the extra pounds that’s shifted a person’s metabolic profile? Or is it the interminable stress that person bears having a larger body in a world that fears, shames, and even discriminates against fat.

Weight stigma is a social justice issue. People are constantly sized up based on their size. Society discriminates against fat people all the time. Studies have shown that if two job applicants are equally qualified, an individual who is overweight is more likely to be rated negatively and less likely to be hired. As of 2017, firing on the basis of weight – in other words weight DISCRIMINATION – is legal in 49 states. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, weight discrimination occurs more frequently than gender or age discrimination.

When I was overweight as a young child, my hand was once slapped for reaching for a Christmas cookie during a holiday get-together. I slipped away to the bathroom, face flushed with shame, and started to cry. I took a deep breath and wiped my tears away, pretended everything was fine, and then proceeded to watch my thin friends go back for seconds and thirds at the cookie table. I didn’t eat anything else that day but when I was alone, I would sometimes feed my shame. When I naturally thinned out (thank you, late puberty), I still didn’t feel thin enough. I was terrified of being the fat girl again. For years, I struggled with thinking I was bigger than I physically was. I’d see photographs of me and think I was huge. Now I can see the same photo and how my collarbone is jutting out, and I can’t imagine why I was so critical. And even if I was “huge,” aren’t there worse things to be?

People who happen to occupy smaller bodies – whether naturally or through dieting, etc. are “privileged” in many ways. I’m, in fact, privileged now. I occupy a smaller body. I have the “right” genetics, access to a wide variety of food, and I don’t have to work two jobs so there’s margin in my schedule to be active. So right away I’m somehow seen as a more disciplined person when so much of this is out of my control. Our culture is quick to view fat people or anyone who doesn’t fit the archetypal mold that currently defines beauty (and just watch: the standards of beauty are subjective and are constantly changing) as different, lazy, undisciplined, unhealthy, etc.

Despite being “privileged” living in a smaller body, I still sometimes struggle or feel like an impostor as a distance runner because I’m not as lithe as many of the runners I see on Instagram or at race starting lines. Imagine how hard it would be to naturally have a bigger body, to be constantly fighting against genetics and your natural design to be thinner and what everything from the media to the doctor’s office has told you is more acceptable.

I know firsthand being an overweight sixth grader was absolute hell and often led me to eat more, not less, and to subsequently feel pathetic and weak. So my heart goes out to any woman who doesn’t fit the mold of thin and/or fit perfection our culture lauds so much. Likewise, I don’t blame women for going on new diets, for fasting for hours, for counting macros, calories, steps, or points. But I won’t take any part of it. Instead, I will tell you that life is not a contest for which you are always a contestant who has to measure up to some arbitrary standard. A great figure, beautiful hair, smooth skin, cellulite-free thighs, an absence of a muffin top…none of these things are what makes you a good person.

Diet culture, fat phobia, and our screwed-up beliefs that being fit equates to being healthy continue to push women to believe that they have nothing more to offer the world than their skin and what’s worse, there’s the feeling that there’s frequently too much of that skin. I was very fit in high school, running six miles a day and achieving good times on the track, but I was not healthy. My menstrual cycle went away, and I eventually suffered a stress fracture.

And remember: Health is about so much more than how fast you can run a mile, your BMI, or your body fat percentage. Health also has a mental and emotional component. Perhaps a woman has positive health stats like low blood pressure and a “normal” body mass index; yet, she spends her life obsessing over calories, counting her macros, and counting her steps. If she’s invited to a social gathering where her approved and “healthy” list of food might not be available, she gets anxious. Her Fitbit sums up her life; yet, it can’t measure pleasure or show how her emotional health is in shambles despite the way she might look on the outside.

Our endless quest to diet, to make ourselves less, or just to maintain what we’ve decided is a “healthy” weight and shape reminds me of the ancient practice of food binding. Most of us would be aghast if it was suggested that, today in our culture, young girls should bind their feet in order to alter their shape and size because smaller feet are to be prized and the mark of beauty and social status. Guess what? I naturally have smaller feet with high arches (Barbie feet, they’ve been called); my oldest daughter does not. I cannot imagine her being pushed to the social margins on the account of her foot size or being forced to undergo the torturous act of foot binding, leaving her toes broken and her feet disfigured.

But what are so many of us women trying to do? We are trying to conform to a certain shape or size by following rigid rules and/or pushing ourselves through vigorous exercise boot camps.  We are trying to corset ourselves smaller with diet after diet and exercise we don’t even enjoy. When the diet eventually fails and almost all of them do, so many of us feel like a failure (instead of realizing that the dieting industry has failed us!), and we’re faced with more shame,  with more feelings of not being good enough, which can lead to more overeating and weight gain and discrimination. What a vicious, awful cycle that no one deserves to be sucked into ever. Ever.

Listen to me, my beautiful sisters, your feet, your breasts, your body…they have the right to take up more room. We are not all naturally designed to live our lives in small bodies. But we all deserve the right to live joyful lives that are not bound by cultural scripts that confine us and discriminate against a person just because she weighs more. You have the right to say to hell with ridiculous crop tops designed for pre-pubescent girls and yes to bigger sizes that allow you to move freely and enjoy life more fully. You have the right to say yes to running if it brings you joy like it does me, or no way to running because you prefer living room dance parties. You have the right to be beautiful you, and you have value, worth, and dignity at any size. Do not let the binding begin through another diet. You don’t have to be a prisoner to the belief that smaller is better and/or a sign of good health. You may not have crippled feet but if you still think there’s only one size fits all to health (and it’s a small size) or you can’t help but tie a woman’s worth to her size or beauty, then your thoughts are disfigured and bodies are nothing more than objects to be tweaked, fixed, and conformed.

We can’t change society and how it reveres and rewards smaller, fitter, thinner, and younger bodies overnight, but we can change the way we see ourselves and others. We can practice body kindness and respect. We can see people as human beings, not human bodies, and value the beautiful diversity humankind. We can recognize that within all of us – if we can just get beyond these bodies of ours  – is the making of an everyday miracle, a soul that needs to be out there engaging with a world hungry for compassion.