Dillan DiGiovanni thinks more people should focus on being healthy vs being thin.
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Adam Richman, the host of the popular television show, Man vs Food, is good at putting food in his mouth, but this week it’s his foot instead. The host learned that his new show, Man Finds Food, is “postponed indefinitely” due to the comments he made on the internet about being thin. The exchange proves that thin is in for some but not all people, but I wonder if the same thing would have happened if the focus was on being healthy, instead?
What began as his celebration of some recent weight loss, quickly turned nasty. Richman posted that a suit he bought last year might need to be altered again due to losing some inches. He added the hashtag #thinspiration. The word set off some commenters who took issue with his focus and larger cultural pressure of thinness as the preferred and revered body type.
I’m not going to comment on Richman’s response. I’d rather comment on what I see as a bigger problem: the focus on being people thin versus being healthy.
As a health coach, I hear this all the time. And as someone who has personally walked the weight loss walk of shame myself, I know it quite well. Media is a powerful force in our country and as a result, many of us strive to fit the mold that a certain percentage of the population fits, a percentage of which I am not a member. This is the reason why I’m looking forward to the skinny jean fad dying out.
I hear it from my clients, I hear it from friends, I hear it in my own head, sometimes: I want to be thinner.
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Because I’ve battled weight and body image issues my whole life, it took a while for me to realize that being thinner isn’t the goal I should have been striving for this whole time; I like my life better since choosing to be healthier.
I was always a stocky kid. During my sophomore year of high school, I decided I’d try to lose some weight. It started off good and quickly spiraled out of control. My eating disorder in high school stole the last two years of my high school basketball career. I didn’t have the stamina to make it up and down the court and my formerly muscular frame was reduced to a mere shell. I didn’t have the weight to hold up under the boards. It’s one of my greatest regrets that I didn’t get to finish out my seasons playing a sport I loved.
It’s true that I successfully lost weight, a lot of it, and wore clothes in sizes I had never known before. But, because I just focused on reduced calorie intake and knew nothing about good nutrition, the food I consumed wasn’t a healthy balance. I was eating things I thought were healthy but, in reality, were not. I consumed massive amount of carbs because I didn’t understand the way simple and complex sugars worked. I didn’t understand the importance of fiber and plant-based protein and how much real food you can eat before you get full. I didn’t know the connection between my cravings and my eating habits—how I often worked against my own body by eating too much of the wrong things.
When I learned all this, my pride came to a crashing halt. I thought I knew so much. In a few short months, I realized how much I didn’t know at all. My focus on being thin was so short-sighted and, in many cases, incredibly ineffective.
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The real problem with Adam Richman’s rant, in my opinion, wasn’t his insensitive comments. Yes, he was being reactive. Yes, much of what he said was unkind and cruel. To write about that story is low-hanging fruit.
What struck me the most about this story was the huge focus on being thin and how triggering it is for so many people. People want to be thin, people feel defensive about weight and body image no matter the amount of diet fads we churn through in this country. Most people don’t know that there’s a huge connection between your relationship to food and your relationship to everything in your life. Many people don’t understand healthy portions and they use food for comfort or to compensate for something missing or unfulfilling in their lives. A lot of people would rather take shortcuts and make excuses for their current habits than do what it really takes to become healthier, happier people.
I know many people do these things and think these things because I have done and thought them all. I’m writing from my personal experience battling all these thoughts, feelings and actions and working really hard, day after day, to unlearn these habits and patterns and replace them with new, healthier ones.
I learned how to ditch thinking that thin is in. I learned how to be wary of thin people, and retraining myself to not think that they are healthy just because they carry less weight. I learned how to embrace body changes and weight fluctuations happening to my own body, and become really clear and honest with myself when it was something beyond my control and when I was being lazy, ineffective or making excuses.
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The real problem with Richman’s rant is that he’s the product of a culture that has a long way to go with body stereotyping and the ways we nourish our bodies as an extension of how we nourish our whole selves. I wonder if people would have taken such issue with his post if he made the comment that he was on a path to get healthier. Thin is in but a threat to some. In my experience, getting healthier is inspiring for many people.
Even better than an apology from Richman would be a new television show where he travels around seeking out healthy food and slowly but surely transforming his self-described struggles with body image and weight before the eyes of millions of people. Instead of man vs food, he can be a role model for healthy vs thin.
photo courtesy of phil at flikr creative commons