WaPo Exposed It, I Lived It: Debunking Anti-Diet Myths
WaPo Exposed It, I Lived It: Debunking Anti-Diet Myths
I'm The Woman from that Big Food/Anti-Diet Washington Post Article
Disclaimer: I discuss food, weight, intentional weight loss, and my experience with anti-diet culture in this post. I fully believe in body autonomy—your body, your choice. I am a morbidly obese woman on an intentional weight loss journey. I’m not here to talk about body aesthetics; I’m here to talk about a controversial health topic. I maintain that people are people and should not be judged for their size; we don’t know anyone until we know their minds, hearts, dreams, and souls. If you’re happy with your body and relationship with food, that’s amazing—you do you! This is simply my story.
If you’d told me even a year ago that I would be sharing my sordid story about binge eating, anti-diet influencers, and rapid weight gain in The Washington Post the week of my fifty-second birthday, I likely would have believed you. After all, I’ve wanted to share my experience far and wide for over five years, but I couldn’t find the words.
I finally found my voice thanks to journalist Sasha Chavkin's invitation to interview me for this Washington Post/Examination collaboration. And now, I’ve got some words.
Health Ideology vs Science
It took getting on a scale and seeing that number in the 290s to snap me out of my HAES. Even after being encouraged to “free myself” by throwing my scale away, that “harmful” bathroom appliance got me back in touch with what little sense of self-preservation I had left.
Did weighing myself trigger me to return to a dark state in my mental health? No, but believing the rhetoric of fat acceptance and the pseudoscience of anti-diet culture sure did.
Once I’d face-planted firmly back into reality, I needed to work through a deconstruction process to figure out why I’d veered so far off the beaten path of what I know is a healthy weight for my 5’ 2” frame. Spoiler alert: it ain’t 300 pounds. But it isn’t necessarily what the BMI says, either. Don’t you love nuance?
It took years to understand that while Healthy at Every Size (HAES) is a lovely concept, it is still a philosophy—practically magical thinking. Philosophy is not science-backed medical advice. The idea has been around for less than twenty-five years; the small study groups and interventions employed to test the theory were mainly done with obese white women and not over a long period, certainly not with randomized control trials. According to this unbiased Pub Med article, HAES lacks much empirical evidence to be embraced as a widespread public health approach.
“It is also not yet clear if the HAES approach alone can reduce weight stigma and bias at a population level, without broader efforts to change societal norms and attitudes. Although conceptual debate is critical, it alone may not be sufficient to inform policy and practice without further empirical evidence to address current limitations. Rather than a debate that is polarized, we need to seek a common ground, working together to improve health and well-being for everyone. This requires stronger empirical evidence (i.e., larger, more representative populations), not only ideological discourse, on which to frame the debate.”
—The National Library of Medicine
While advocates of the anti-diet and HAES movements are enthusiastic about their approaches, it's important to remember that these concepts are still in the developmental stages and need to be fully supported by extensive scientific research. A cautious approach might be more beneficial for public health, especially for those struggling with obesity and its comorbidities.
Deconstructing Food Like Religion
Five years after that 290-pound wakeup call, I’ve come to recognize that I’d been in a similar sort of spiral-eyed state I’d known before, back when I was an evangelical fundamentalist Christian. Ideology is ideology, after all. These days, the debate over food, health, and our bodies feels more like religious zealotry than a strategy, conversation, or way of looking after oneself.
I knew how to spot a spiritual charlatan, a fake guru, a self-help grifter a mile away, but health and wellness “experts?” This was new territory. I was desperate to heal my body and my relationship with food. And that’s when they get you: when you’re desperate to do the right thing for your health.
Sure, most of these anti-diet influencers and professionals think they’re helping people, and most may also have good intentions. But while the anti-diet movement is helpful to those who’ve suffered from anorexia, bulimia, overexercise, and ultra-restrictive relationships with food, it is proving to be harmful to those of us on the opposite end of that spectrum.
When you prioritize ideology over science and surround yourself only with like-minded individuals, it's essential to reassess your beliefs periodically. This introspection is vital to ensure these ideologies do not lead to potentially harmful behaviors… like winding up in a cult that encourages overeating.
But Have You Ever Been Obese, Sis?
This may be a hot take, but it needs to be said: Many advocates within the anti-diet movement may not fully grasp the complexities of obesity; after all, they’ve never been obese a day in their lives, certainly not morbidly obese, like me.
Their advice is best served to those who’ve been underweight. Yet they’re giving the same advice to obese people, with promises that we’ll heal our metabolisms and our hormones if we gain back the weight. They say our bodies will recalibrate to a natural, healthy setpoint once we’ve gained “some” weight. Then, the weight will come back off “naturally,” as if this stuff is magic and calories in/out are the philosophy, not the science.
When recovering fitness influencer Stephanie Buttermore decided to document her “all-in” journey to gain weight after being incredibly thin and much too lean, she wound up being about a size 8-10 after the regain. In other words, her heaviest “natural” weight is… average. She easily ate 10K calories daily to wind up the average. This is a unicorn situation here. Yet people are inspired by it and think it can happen for them.
At a size 22-24, I’m no Stephanie Buttermore—I haven’t been a size 8-10 in thirty years. If she’d had my genetics, this all-in method would have caused Stephanie to go from dangerously thin to morbidly obese. Had she lived even one day in a body over twice the size of her natural, healthy weight, I have a feeling she wouldn’t have been “all in” anymore.
The concept of “eat whatever you want and you’ll be okay” is lovely—all too alluring for a food addict. It may be overly optimistic to suggest that individuals with a genetic predisposition to obesity can fully heal their bodies and relationships with food using this method alone. A more personalized approach, considering individual genetic factors, may be required. That’s why the internet can be such a tangled web: a one-size-fits-all approach does not work.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Tess Holliday, a vocal fat activist, plus-sized cover model, and creator of the hashtag #effyourbeautystandards, honestly thinks she’s anorexic. People make fun of this, but I understand why she’s in this mindset—I was there too. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if, like me, the dots connected her to some anti-diet influencer or dietician who’s convinced her of this. One who likely has never been obese in their lives. (Just a theory, not a fact)!
Most Anti-Diet Influencers Don’t Understand Obesity
Most anti-diet dieticians don’t understand bingeing without purging and what that does to a body. They don’t realize that hunger is not bad or restrictive for some people—that when you’re morbidly obese and getting healthy again, you have to be hungry sometimes to reassure your body that you’ll be perfectly fine without excessive amounts of calories.
They don’t understand the hell of carrying over one hundred extra pounds on a skeleton that wasn’t built to withstand that kind of daily strain. If they did understand—because they’ve lived it—they would not be encouraging us to “embrace our fear foods.” They would know that for some of us, certain foods actually should be a little bit demonized… or at least kept out of the house and reserved for a picnic, a birthday party, or a very special occasion.
TL;DR: Some of us don’t need to eat “anything we want,” just as some people cannot be trusted to drink Vodka “in moderation.” If anti-diet advocates truly understood this because they lived it, they would not be telling obese people everything we want to hear: “Eat the damn donuts; it’s fine. You’ll be fine. Slay that family-sized bag of fear food chips, queen. Your body knows best.”
This isn’t a war fought within the body. Addiction is a war inside the mind. There is growing evidence to support that ultra-processed industrially-created foods are indeed highly addicting. Our brains crave that stuff, not our bodies.
Maybe Some Foods… Are “Bad?”
After The Washington Post article hit, this facts-spitting expose threatened to upend the careers of many anti-diet influencers. It exposed how they’re taking money from the food industry to encourage eating ultra-processed, highly addictive products as a diet of “moderation.”
Weird Food Fact:
Did you know Kraft Singles need to be called Singles because they aren’t cheese? They’re a cheese product.
Yeah, that’s the world we’re living in.
But “Oh, the obesity epidemic!” they say, clutching their pearls while creating even more products that mess with our brain chemistry, giving big pharma more reason to recommend a lifetime prescription to Ozempic (another rant for another day).
The WaPo article also laid bare that these people are just giving straight-up terrible advice. I was the literal poster child of that bad advice. And now we’re onto them: #antidiet culture has been hijacked. It’s now become part of the obesity problem, not the solution.
And wow, those influencers had some words for me. One on TikTok concluded that I ate Nutella and cupcakes “at every meal.” Newsflash: no, not every meal. But regularly enough to add on the calories required to make me rapidly gain back fifty pounds.
Calories in, calories out is not a myth. Neither is the fact that ultra-processed foods, even in small quantities, can trigger binge eating cycles for some people.
But like I said, they don’t understand us. Most of them have never been obese a day in their lives. They may know how to put the chips down. Some of us don’t.
Finding Food Sanity
As a morbidly obese woman who struggles with binge eating, I don’t think food neutrality will be possible for me for a long while, and I am perfectly okay with that.
We live in an obesogenic society where profits are more important than people—my war is with what this has done to my body, not with my body herself. My body is a miracle; I love her with my entire soul.
The food industry can’t get enough of our money, plain and simple. They engineer foods to be “bliss point” palatable. The nastiest food is the most addictive—just as they’ve designed it. They also pour tons of money into advertising, including buying off influencers, and they’ve got the jingles to match their intentions: “Once you pop, you can’t stop.” “Bet you can’t eat just one.”
The obesity epidemic in America cannot be reduced to issues of laziness, willpower, or gluttony. It's essential to consider the economic forces at play. Following the money can provide insights into these systemic issues. Big food has corrupted our food supply. It’s cheaper and more accessible than ever to get our hands on highly addictive, inordinately caloric foods. They’re brainwashing us ever so deliciously. We are dying of Consumption 2.0.
Well, I want out.
It seems to me that the way to fix the systemic cause of the obesity epidemic is to “just say no” to these shitty foods more often than not. Drug pun intended. It’s not easy when your brain has been wired like mine, but it’s possible, and I plan to prove it.
It will take boundaries with myself and with others.
It will take questioning why I’m “craving” a food. It will take fearless, rigorous honesty. It will take seeking credible, scientific studies unrelated to industry and profit.
When I eat primarily whole, minimally processed foods, I feel the most sane. Maybe it’s just that simple?
It feels like an excellent start.
Question Those (Man-Made) Cravings
It’s not that I’ll never eat those foods again. But questioning why I want that stuff, awareness of what goes into it—marketing and all—and remembering why it’s best to treat these products with an abundance of caution will get me out of the vicious cycle the food industry so desperately wants to keep me in.
Sorry, not sorry, #antidiet culture. I’m not going to “eat whatever I want,” no matter how much you reassure me that it’s perfectly “healthy” to do so “in moderation.” Bliss point foods are created to obliterate moderation. Just because I can eat that food doesn’t mean I should.
If you’ve made it to the end of this article, thank you so much for reading! I’m documenting my recovery process at @JayeWeighsIn on YouTube and (occasionally) on other social media. Follow me if you’d like, or “weigh in” via the comments here! I’d love to keep this conversation going, no matter your beliefs or lifestyle.
💖
~Jaye
Hi Jaye. I don't have your problem, but I have a problem that's sort of analogous, and you might find my experience interesting, and possibly even helpful. In any case, I wish you the best of luck in changing your diet enough to get the weight off.
I am of Medicare age, although on the young side of that spectrum. I found out I have heart disease, despite having exercised all my life--bicycling from 6 until I was 40, then switching to running, and despite a diet that's healthier than that of most Americans. (I blame the heart disease on the leaf blowers in my neighborhood that for the last decade before they were banned, were on from March through the summer, until late Oct or early November. (A major article in the NYT magazine covered these issues
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/09/health/noise-exposure-health-impacts.html
I ultimately got rid of everything in my diet that was not positively healthy, including everything that had more than tiny amounts of added sugar or saturated fat. I also made sure to eat a variety of different foods within most of the classes of foods--vegetables, leafy greens, fruit, berries, nuts (unsalted, sometimes roasted, sometimes not), beans, whole grains... (an exception to the rule of multiple examples within a category is fish. I eat almost exclusively salmon, and only wild caught, and I have it 3-4 times a week.)
I eat a bunch of leafy greens and other vegetables at the same time, I eat all the different kinds of nuts (4-5 f them) every day, just a little of each, etc, because I figure I get all the nutrients I need every day. I also eat the beans, the whole grains, all steamed together, with olive oil.
I have very little fat on my body, but I lost a bit, going from the low 140s to the high 130s.
I don't miss the foods I'm not eating. And I find I have new favorite foods from among all the plant foods--oranges, cashews, olives mixed with cherry tomatoes and raw oats (I made that mixture up myself), and red peppers. And I'm probably leaving a few things out.
One thing that I have to admit has made this transition easier is that the thing I ingest that I like better than anything else is my espresso macchiatos (espresso with milk--I use barista brand oat milk which has considerably less sugar than cow's milk).
But I find myself enjoying eating as much as I ever did since around age 40. (I LOVED pasta as a kid and young adult. I don't eat it anymore.)
Anyway, I hope this is helpful for you in some way or other, but more than that, I hope you have
a good journey, where-ever it takes you, and that you succeed in reducing your weight to a normal level, and accomplishing anything else that you hope to do.