Toxic Wellness #2 -- Weight loss, the responsibility of wellness pros, and Khloe Kardashian

A few years ago, when I was starting to accept that I was a full-time "wellness professional", I began to question my entire social media presence, and the messaging that I explicitly shared or implicitly supported. I realized, and still feel, that although probably well-intentioned, much of the wellness sphere dialogue is exclusionary and harmful. Specifically in my circle, I felt that much of the dominant narrative about two topics -- 1) manifesting/abundance, and 2) weight loss/health -- was especially insidious.

It's a hard pill to swallow since I do believe that most individuals (I'll exclude companies and corporations from this discussion) in the wellness world mean well and genuinely want to help people. But regardless of intent, the reality is that much of the advice around these (and other!) health and spiritual growth topics can be deeply harmful.

I realized that if I really wanted to work in this space, I needed to at least get clear on my own values. Now I would like to be a bit more open about sharing those values and hopefully contribute to harm reduction and more honest dialogue in fitness and wellness spaces.

I've already wrote about manifestation culture. Now I'd like to explore a bit more about weight loss, body optimization, and beauty standards. I'll be completely candid and say that this one is a little stickier for me as it's much more personal. Ok here we go.

Let's start with this: weight and health are not directly correlated. Even excluding cases of eating disorders and already "thin people," weight loss does not necessarily mean healthier. Some bodies are meant to be bigger. You can be "in shape," strong, and flexible, and be fat.

I am by no means an expert in this area, but I've had to do a lot of research and unlearning to disassociate my image of "health" occurring in a certain weight range. Our society is fat-phobic. We are all conditioned by these beliefs, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Even if a teacher doesn't explicitly mention weight loss in classes (which many do! "shape up for summer!" 🤮), often it's used a marketing technique to attract students. "Toning" "yoga body" "long lines" "reducing bloat" ... all of this is code for thinness in the wellness world. And the implicit message here is that thinness = discipline/goodness/desirability/attractiveness/happiness. And this is profoundly wrong.

Even teachers who preach a more balanced approach oftentimes have incredibly imbalanced personal fitness and eating habits to keep up the image of a fit, healthy yoga instructor. I'll never forget an article I read years ago by Kathryn Budig, which still hits today. She says: "The dirty secret about the wellness world circa 2019 is that it’s talking about “balance” while showing you bodies that, for the most part, take extreme, unbalanced discipline to achieve. We hear the phrase, 'Everything in moderation,' but many of the nutrition and fitness pros that we idealize often treat their aesthetic like a full-time job.”

Fortunately there are some great resources and trainers in the fitness and yoga worlds that promote movement and exercise for reasons that have nothing to do with weight loss. (Bethany Meyers/the be.come project, Helen Phelan, and Practice with Dana are three of my favorites.) I've seen a shift away from body positivity and towards body neutrality, which can feel more realistic maybe? Either way, it's a necessary step forward for the fitness/wellness world imho.

I won't even get into diet and nutrition since I'm not super well-versed in that arena, but it is clearly another industry where weight loss is often the real goal and ultimate marker of success, even if it's cloaked under the guise of health. From the spirituality side, I know many yogis with straight-up, obvious eating disorders disguised as devotion to their spiritual practices.

We all want to feel good in our bodies, care for our physical vessels, and perform at our best (or is this last one just capitalism messing with us?). There are so many ways to "optimize" and for the most part this is a healthy pursuit I think. But when does the optimizing become destructive and excessive? Can't we be just as happy and good and worthy even with imperfect bodies?

If someone wants to lose weight or wants to change something about their body that is fully their prerogative. But I believe that anyone who works or participates in the wellness world has a responsibility to acknowledge this conflation of weight loss and health and consciously choose where they want to reside in the conversation.

All of that said, I feel a lot of internal conflict about all this (hence this diatribe I suppose). I'm extremely active, but don't obsess about my food intake, and I think my approach to fitness and wellness if very measured and balanced. But...I like being thin. It feels good to fit into certain societal standards of beauty. I think most of us fundamentally want to feel attractive and desired.

But because I believe those standards are fucked up and unfair, and because it's important to me that my work not perpetuate them, it leaves me in an uncomfortable place. I would love it if those standards were dismantled, and I'm interested in helping to dismantle them. But at the same time I make somewhat of an effort to fit into certain weight and appearance standards and feel good when I "achieve" it.

The recent Khloe Kardashian photo drama really underscored this conflict that I think many people, especially women, feel. I can't say I'm a big Kardashian fan and haven't dug too deeply, but from what I understand, Khloe is justifying her mad mission to scrub unflattering photos of her from the interwebs by explaining that societal beauty standards (and the people who mean-spiritedly enforce them) have profoundly hurt her over the years, and now that she finally feels she fits those standards, she wants to control her own image.

The problem here is that she has a platform and a position to actually influence these beauty ideals and stop the cycle. Instead, she is attempting to palliate her own individual situation, which ultimately contributes to the continuation of these messed up ideals for everyone.

I don't at all want to criticize her because I can't imagine the image issues she has after years under such body scrutiny; I'm just using this to illuminate the hyper prevalent hypocrisy of complaining about societal beauty norms while also fitting into and perpetuating them (reminds me of this newsletter about Emily Ratajkowski by Haley Nahman). This is something that fitness professionals LOVE to do.

Also, Khloe literally had a show called "Revenge Body." Her entire career is based on pushing a certain aesthetic and lifestyle. I, on the other hand, along with others in the wellness space, have arguably more of a responsibility to address the harmfulness of these body and image ideals since our jobs are to help people feel and live better. And for me, pushing weight loss, albeit unconsciously, doesn't work with my understanding of true wellness.