I’ve always been active. In high school I was a year round athlete and my body reflected this. Looking back on pictures I can hardly believe that I looked like that because I always saw myself as huge. According to my weight which was 15-30 pounds higher than my friends I thought that I was so much larger than I was at 135 pounds, I had an extremely warped view on my body. Now as a senior in college I have gained about 20 pounds and it is a continuous struggle to love myself. There are days I stand in front of my mirror and feel empowered and beautiful and strong and there are days when I’m getting dressed with friends or looking at old pictures that I feel like somehow I’m failing, but why do I think that way? My view of myself has always been based on my own feelings, no one has ever looked at me and pointed out my weight gain, I haven’t faced outside scrutiny… except every time I go to my doctor, whether it be my primary care doctor, patient first, the gyno… they all have the same thing to say “You need to lose 10-15 pounds”. The first time this happened to me I went to the doctor for a completely unrelated problem, my weight or lifestyle was never brought into conversation, and then while leaving I was handed an extra paper that gave me instructions to change my diet, exercise, and lose weight and I haven’t stopped hearing it since. Over summer I went for my gynecologist visit, during my exam the topic was breached “You’re getting into overweight territory, I recommend losing at least 10 pounds”. Every time I hear this I become infuriated. Have I ever been asked what my lifestyle is like? Of course I’m not pure muscle anymore, I don’t have time to be in a sports gym at least 15 hours a week year round, change is going to happen. I try to workout regularly, I eat healthy because I feel like that is important for me personally, and at the end of the day this is my body, these are my choices, and why am I being shamed? Body weight shame happens far too much in our culture and assumptions are often made about a person based solely on weight, my sister’s doctor was telling her she was unhealthy and obese while my sister was running half marathons and in better shape then ever in her life. Weight does not reflect health, shape does not reflect health, and a doctor’s chart on my height and weight should not be used to make me feel insecure about myself or shame me to change. I am learning to love my body, listen to my body, and be healthy physically and mentally for my body and my doctors can learn to get the hell over it in my opinion.
Unruly Bodies 
Unfortunately, this appears to be a universal experience. I can see the merit in encouraging a patient to lose weight if, for example, they gain a massive amount of weight in a relatively short period of time (though, of course, rapidly *losing* weight should also be cause for alarm). Weight can definitely correlate to heath problems, but it’s not the single deciding factor in your overall heath. Even if you do somehow hit the doctor’s target weight, but you still feel like crap, can you really still claim to be “healthy”? My primary doctor told me to lose 20 lbs. back when I was at my heaviest (around 148). Instead of giving me specific instructions on how to improve my exercise and eating habits, he told me to just cut sodas out of my diet. Ha…
I definitely relate to you and your doctor’s advice to cut soda out… I was told that once and then had to explain I dont drink it already I’m currently at 155 pounds but I feel healthy most of the time, besides working out I definitely eat a lot healthier than I did when skinnier. I definitely think healthy changes from person to person and doctors can’t just labe someone based on a chart
I really liked this post! I think many people can relate to the constant “you have to be a certain weight/shape/ or size” statements that is always being thrown around. There’s never been a time where someone did not tell me that I needed to lose weight, Especially doctors! I think that once someone gets to that point where nothing anyone says matters to them, then they will be content with their bodies.
Doctors need to realize that physical health is not completely separate from mental health. If I come home from the doctor feeling like shit because I was shamed for my weight, that’s NOT going to motivate me to exercise at all! A doctor nonchalantly telling me to lose 10 pounds without taking into account my mental health won’t see any results from me. The majority of the time, doctors don’t bother to ask what you’re eating; they only look at your weight and assume you are healthy or unhealthy. That’s idiotic – that ignores the actual lifestyle of that individual. Because of my experience with doctors and with family members regarding my weight, the idea of exercise is extremely toxic and upsetting to me. When I’m at home, I feel this overwhelming sense of dread every time my mom even suggests that I work out. And then I feel guilt for NOT working out. When doctors and my mom tell me I need to exercise more, they make it seem as if the only reason I would ever work out is to lose the “right” amount of weight to weigh the “right” amount so as to no longer be categorized as “obese” on the (fucked-up) BMI scale, as if I’m losing weight for someone else, and not for myself. Exercise is never spoken of positively in terms of being kind to your body, or doing something fun that requires movement. There’s a lack of kindness when it comes to weight, especially if you’re “overweight.” Most doctors don’t seem to care about your anxieties about exercise or your income when it comes to being able to afford healthy food. It’s just “Get 60 minutes of exercise every day and eat vegetables,” it’s cold and devoid of reason – not taking many things into account such as mental health, scheduling, and economic class. Achieving physical health isn’t possible without working on mental health as well, and healthy food is more expensive than unhealthy food, making it impossible for many people to eat the foods doctors say they should.
I have a weight and body shape that doctors don’t blink at, which is hilarious because I am super unhealthy by a lot of other metrics. But weight is the only thing doctors generally care about, because it’s easier/faster/cheaper to plug some numbers into a simple equation and spit out a “treatment” than have to consider each patient’s concerns individually. So I don’t get told to exercise more or eat more vegetables or switch to low-fat yogurt or whatever, and people larger than me are ALWAYS told to lose weight regardless of the problem they actually came in for, and half the time the doctor doesn’t even have any other advice. Something could be congenital, viral, bacterial, etc and yet you’re just supposed to lose weight and that will fix anything you could possibly have to complain about?
I, along with everyone else, love this post. You would think that doctors know that people can be healthy and not weight 110 pounds. You can be “overweight” even if you’re eating healthy exercising. So why do people automatically assume that being curvy means you’re dumping the salad and eating fries dipped in ice cream every night?
One of my favorite quotes is “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” I think as college students we all abide by this, because when it comes to eating healthy and exercising while we’re all constantly stressed and on a budget and stuffing our faces in between classes, we’re doing the best we can and doctors should respect that. Not all of us can run to the organic market and stock up on chia seeds.
I can relate to your sister. I recently ran a half-marathon, and was told I hurt my back because I’m too overweight and my back couldn’t support it. That was really frustrating to hear. I eat healthy all the time and I run regularly, yet doctors and society don’t see that as a plausible option.