The War on Weight, Fight Obesity, Obesity Strategy. They are all terms used to make you think that weight loss is a war that you have to fight. That weight loss is a war you must win in order to be slim and healthy. Weight loss is not a war, you don’t need to battle against your body to be healthy. Toxic diet culture has made us believe that in order to lose weight and keep it off we need to fight every day. How exhausting does that sound? Very, and if you have a lot of weight to lose, it can put you off even trying.

Toxic Diet Culture

Many of the mainstream weight loss programs, including Protein Priority Diet, use supportive language to market to people who want to lose weight. I would never use negative language in my marketing because I know how devastating it can be to be stuck in the cycle of toxic dieting. Making people feel like they have to win a war against themselves is not the way to help them to lose weight and have a healthy approach at the same time. Instead of being a nurturing and supportive journey, it becomes a cycle of restriction and punishment. It’s no wonder so many people fail.

Any program that encourages severe calorie control or restriction, encourages severe weight loss or excessive exercise is part of toxic diet culture. Products that promise to “melt fat” or “make cellulite disappear” are selling snake oil. Nothing you put on your body will get rid of fat. Cellulite is a normal, healthy fat and we need it for hormone balance. To tell women that cellulite is ugly was a very clever marketing strategy because the vast majority of women have it. Women spend thousands of dollars trying to get rid of something that is actually healthy and quite normal. 

A Different Perspective?

What would happen if we thought of our weight loss journeys like growing an orchid. When you are growing a beautiful orchid, you take good care of it. You give it the right amount of light, you make sure it’s not too hot or not too cold. You give it food, gently clean the dust off the leaves. You change the potting bark regularly, give it extra food once a month, spray a fine mist of water over the roots and flowers. You treat it carefully, give it attention, give it what it needs and adapt and adjust how you take care of it. This is the nurture approach.

The War on Weight

The war on weight doesn’t make any sense. Especially when you think about your orchid. You don’t punish the orchid if it doesn’t grow. You don’t withhold the food and only water it sparingly if it doesn’t grow as quickly as you want. You don’t force it into a smaller pot until it gives you the blooms you want. You don’t put it in a dark room until it produces buds. You don’t overfeed it in the hopes of forcing it to grow bigger with more flowers. Instinctively you know, to make something bloom, you need to care for it. You nurture it and treat it with respect. Why can’t we do that for ourselves?

Flies and Vinegar

My Granny used to say that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. It’s an old, very well known saying. It basically means that you can win people to your side more easily by gentle persuasion or flattery than by hostile confrontation. What if you tried to use a honey approach rather than a vinegar approach with your weight loss? Imagine how different your journey would be if you did it with an attitude of love and positivity. If you can treat a plant with care and affection to help it bloom, why can’t you do that for yourself?

Body Image

If you hate your body it’s because of the non exhaustive list of things that are wrong with it. That list isn’t something you came up with on your own. It’s been kindly provided by social media and mainstream media for the sole purpose of parting you from your money. Think about how toxic that is? How cruel that is. Giving women a list of ways they are not good enough so that they spend money trying to “fix what is broken” is criminal. It’s all made up and most of it is not true.

So let’s collectively reject the idea that there is something wrong with our bodies. Let’s instead, start to treat our bodies like the precious commodities that they are. Let’s ignore “The List” and ignore the marketing that tells us we aren’t good enough as we are. Switch the narrative of weight loss to nurture, care and attention. Eating for health and longevity, not starving ourselves or restricting ourselves to get the number on the scale to drop. After all, the scale only tells you what the effect of gravity is on your mass. 

Tell me what you think. Email me christina@christinaoman.com and share your thoughts. I am waiting to hear from you.