Nearly every woman I have worked with believes she needs to lose weight. I’ve worked with women in their 20s through their 70s, all uniquely gorgeous, all suffering from insidious body dysmorphia masquerading as a desire for health.
So where did this moral panic around weight come from? And who benefits?
I make a point in my practice to not coach around weight loss. I believe it does violence against my clients to focus their energy on being small. It’s not to say that women I work with do not lose weight; many do. And it’s not to say that weight loss is never a valid goal; for women with PCOS, for example, weight loss can have a significant impact on their risk of developing diabetes and heart disease.
Nevertheless, I prefer to focus on the promise of weight loss, the desire behind the scale. My favorite question to ask is “what will losing weight bring you?” This is typically a much more helpful anchor, allowing women to focus on how they want to feel. Usually, the answer is at once simple and profound: to feel at home in their own skin.
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