Do you feel at war with your body?

Have you tried countless diets and exercise regimens in the pursuit of health?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you are not alone.

This post will explain what health is and isn’t and how to incorporate Health At Every Size® principles into your life.

Let’s get started!

Defining Health

Messages about health in the media typically revolve around diet, exercise and weight. There is an assumption that if you’re thin you’re automatically healthy and if you’re fat, you’re not. Furthermore, there is this assumption that if someone eats better and exercises more, they’ll be healthier.

The truth is, there is a lot more to health than weight, nutrition, and exercise. This overly simplified view fails to account the other factors that go into one’s overall wellbeing. Let me give you an example…

If you’re following a certain diet that emphasizes nutritious foods and are exercising regularly, it might appear that you’re healthy, but if you’re feeling stressed and isolated in this food and exercise plan and are deprived in other areas of your life, is it actually healthy?

The holistic definition of health includes nutrition and exercise but also takes into account one's mental health, sleep, social connectedness, genetic makeup, spirituality, access to food, access to and quality of health care, and social equality.

If we put all of our eggs in one or two of these “health baskets” (like diet and exercise), we might risk neglecting other factors of health that are equally as important. Being able to maintain overall health means balancing various factors. 

About Health At Every Size®

Health At Every Size® (HAES®) is a non-diet approach that values whole-person care. This framework supports people in adopting health habits for the sake of wellbeing rather than weight control. Size-inclusivity emphasizes that health is not a moral obligation and that all deserve to be treated with respect regardless of weight and health status. 

 Health At Every Size® Principles

1. Weight Inclusivity

If you and a friend ate the same foods and portion sizes everyday, your bodies would still look different. This is because everyone’s body is different. Some of us have long torsos, some have short legs, some gain muscle more easily, while others are naturally slim or fat. 

You cannot gauge whether or not someone is healthy simply by their size. There are people that eat a balanced and varied diet and exercise regularly and are in larger bodies. 

This first HAES® principle according to the association of size diversity and health (ASDAH) emphasizes the need to respect and accept various body shapes and sizes as opposed to pathologizing those at certain weights.

2. Health Enhancement

The social determinants of health (SDOH) have a major impact on people’s overall well-being and quality of life. Factors such as not having access to grocery stores with nutrient dense foods can contribute to health disparities and inequities. 

According to ASDAH, HAES® “supports health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve uman well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional and other needs”. 

3. Eating for Well Being

Health At Every Size® encourages eating in a flexible manner, including nutrient dense and non-nutrient dense foods in order to honor internal cues of hunger, satiety, and satisfaction. This varies from diets and other externally driven plans that emphasize weight control above health and well-being. 

4. Respectful Care

In order to accept and respect the natural diversity of body shapes and sizes, we must first be able to acknowledge our biases. As a society, we must understand that identities such as race, socio-economic status, gender, age, and sexual orientation impact weight stigma and discrimination in order to provide respectful care for all.

5. Life Enhancing Movement

The HAES® paradigm supports people of all sizes and abilities to engage in physical activities that they find enjoyable and to the degree that they choose.

While exercise has many health benefits, it’s not as enjoyable nor sustainable if the emphasis is on external measures such as step count or calories burned. 

To learn how to implement joyful movement into your day to day, check out this blog post which goes over practical steps in cultivating a healthy relationship with exercise. I’ve also compiled over 75 joyful movement ideas to get you started.

Why Weight-Focused Interventions Are Harmful

When the focus is on weight loss rather than building healthy habits, there is a tendency to go to extreme measures to lose weight. This can include cutting calories, eliminating certain macronutrients like carbohydrates or dietary fats, and exercising obsessively. While that may lead to weight loss quickly, it will also lead to gaining the weight back the minute you fall off the diet and exercise plan.

Weight cycling, that is, constantly losing then regaining weight has been shown to be more detrimental to one’s health than maintaining a higher weight. 

There is also an increased risk for osteoporosis, psychological stress, anxiety about weight and weight gain, developing an eating disorder, and stigmatization and discrimination against fat individuals.

How to Implement HAES®

1. Focus on healthy habits rather than the number on the scale.

   Remember, the number on the scale does not dictate whether or not you are healthy. Instead, work on habits such as consuming nourishing meals with whole grains, dietary fats that contain omega-3. fatty acids, a variety of fruits and vegetables, sleep hygiene, and getting some fresh air and sunlight, to name a few.

2. Eat flexibly and intuitively.

   Eating intuitively means not only honoring your fullness, but also your satisfaction cues. When you are a flexible eater, you allow yourself to have a pasta, salad, cupcakes, and various protein sources without the need to compensate through restriction or exercise.

3. Choose joyful movement over aggressive exercise.

   Pushing yourself to do an exercise you genuinely despise is not going to be sustainable in the long run. Movement is meant to be fun and challenging. Experiment with a variety of exercises to find one or two you feel in tune with.

4. Diversify your social media feed.

   What we consume on a daily basis impacts our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs around food and body image. I encourage you to follow a variety of accounts of people in various shapes, sizes, race, ethnicity and age. This can help challenge any assumptions around health.

Health At Every Size® Myths

Myth 1: HAES® message is that everyone is healthy regardless of weight.

Fact: Everyone has a natural set-point weight range their body feels best. Some people are naturally slim, some naturally build muscle more easily than others, and some fat. While not everyone may be at the weight that is right for them, purposely pursuing weight loss can be harmful. HAES® supports people in building healthy habits regardless of body size. 

Myth 2: HAES® is anti health

Fact: Nutrition and exercise are important components of health. Weight, on the other hand, is not. HAES® emphasizes tuning into internal cues in order to honor hunger, fullness, and pleasure. 

Myth 3: HAES® is saying weight loss is bad. 

Fact: HAES® is a weight-neutral approach. This does mean that any weight loss is bad nor good, but rather a side effect of creating a healthy relationship with food, movement, and your body image. 

Instead of equating beauty with thinness, the health at every size framework celebrates all shapes and sizes as beautiful and worthy of respect. 

Myth 4: Those who honor their cravings will eat junk food all the time.

Fact: Listening and honoring your cravings can be challenging in the beginning. Some experience what I call a “honeymoon phase” with foods once labeled as off limits, meaning the cravings for those foods might be strong initially. 

As you continue to honor your body’s cues, you begin to learn to eat without guilt or shame and eventually find that you do not crave those non-nutrient dense foods all the time. In other words, you’ll be able to eat said “junk” or walk away from it. 

In reality, the anticipation of dieting, restriction, and guilt around eating is what leads to feeling out of control around food. If we are intuitive, flexible eaters, we will naturally crave a variety.

Summary

Let’s support people to feel good about themselves regardless of body size or shape. If you dislike your body but are also curious about Health At Every Size® and how it might benefit you, fill out this form to set up a free 15-minute connection call and learn more about working with our non-diet registered dietitians.