I foolishly had an expectation that in 2024 we would find ourselves in a different position.
I really thought that from all of our national and international awareness days and fundraising, that we would at least be at a place that is was common knowledge and understanding that weight does not equal recovery. I really believed that using BMI and weight to measure how “well” someone was doing in their recovery would be abolished by now. Another reminder for us to check in with our own expectations.
It is time to wake up and start critically thinking about the idea that weight equals recovery. These outdated approaches are exhausting. In over 30 years of practice, we have never weighed a single person that walks through our doors, and yet there have still been many successful recoveries. You don’t need a scales to recover. You need blood tests, and actual science, not an outdated approach that shames many people by reducing them to a mere number on a scales.
Being weighed doesn’t help a person to recover, what helps them is inviting them to learn and explore how to respect their body’s needs, and how to successfully eliminate the obstacles that have been getting in the way of that up until now. What helps is to equip them with the knowledge of what freedom is, and what is possible with the powerful union that comes from reconnecting with our bodies.
One of the most important relationships you will have in your life, will be the one you have with your body.
Part of the recovery journey is learning how to look after your health. People learn to think differently about their body and how to use it. They learn about the body’s needs and how to nourish and energise it, effectively. Throughout the recovery process, people’s bodies return to the size that nature gave them. The body doesn’t want to be underweight or overweight, the body just wants to be in homeostasis.
From our experience, the more weight is introduced as a parameter of recovery, the more the condition feeds off it and focuses on it to a point of obsession. Obsession is a wonderful distraction. Families, partners, carers, and professionals can often find themselves missing the big picture. When there is so much value on weight and weighing as a practice, what are we not valuing?
One answer to this question is Humanity. The practice of weighing can be incredibly dehumanising, and fuels the deep rooted shame that an individual is already experiencing. What if we swapped out the measurement of weight with :
“What experiences did you gain this week?”
“What unhelpful thoughts and habits did you let go or loose?”
“What actions have you taken to maintain your sense of peace, Freedom, and sanity this week?”
I don’t know about you, but these feel like much more interesting questions that can add more colour to the rainbow of our recovery experiences.
So where did it come from and can it be trusted?
BMI – Body Mass Index
A measure created in the 1830s by Lambert Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian mathematician and astronomer. We need to remind ourselves that BMI is a really old and non-medical index. Quetelet was a curious man and wanted to work out the ideal weight of an average man “l’homme myen” as he called it. All the measurements were done on European men and no there was no mention of health.
In the 1970s American physiologist Ancel Keys started to promote Quetelet’s Index and it became very popular, especially with insurance companies. From our experience, using BMI in ED recovery does more harm than good. We must learn to think more critically about these charts, and challenge whether they are useful or were just created for economical purpose.
In 1942, Louis Dublin, a statistician at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, grouped 4 million people together who were insured with the company. He placed them into categories based on their height and weight. He interpreted this data to say that weight gain was associated with risk in mortality. He was the most influential person in last century to change people’s attitudes towards weight, including medical practitioners. He promotes the concept of average weight, ideal weight, and that it is not okay to gain weight with age.
In 1959, 26 other insurance companies also agreed to using these charts. This life insurance claimed that one person was healthier than the other based on their weight that was taken once in their lifetime. Their weight was only taken at the time they bought their policy.
Experts have criticised the validity of these tables for several reasons. Some reason being that people’s frame size was never consistently measured, people who were included were predominantly white and middle-classed.
People who are recovering from Eating Distress need to work with a medical practitioner. Each individual needs to be medically checked. This can be done with thorough blood tests. Health is far more than a number on the scales. There are many other, more helpful, ways to monitor people’s health. Training in medical colleges in this area is needed, and hopefully soon it will change.
Health can be determined based on changing a persons attitude towards life.
The number of people who believe that losing weight is going to make them happier is on the increase, but that is an economically driven myth. This theory has never achieved a permanent solution. It is said that the dieting industry is the only industry that grows even though it has a 98% failure rate. The answer is not our weight, but our attitude towards our bodies, and our relationship with ourselves.
It is time to think about the next generation. Do we want to leave a legacy of basing people’s worth and value on their weight, or do we want to leave a legacy of the importance of learning how to value and enjoy our bodies. They are instruments, not ornaments. Which do you believe would be healthier?
Weight obsession can bring severe consequences. The earlier we teach young people to looking after their bodies, how to listen and respect them, the more we can minimise the potential damage caused for them, and their future.