The other day, someone asked me to distill the message of Big Fit Deal into a single sentence. I quoted a variation of the blog’s tagline, which is that health and fitness are for everybody, and every body. I also mentioned that I am a proponent and personal practitioner of Health At Every Size (HAES). We haven’t talked about that much here, not in detail since I first started the blog back in 2012 (!).
I think it’s worth bringing up again, for a couple of reasons. The first is because it’s still not a very mainstream idea, and I think a lot of people could benefit from it. Here are the basic principles of HAES (with thanks to the Association for Size Diversity and Health [ASDAH]):
- Weight Inclusivity: Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.
- Health Enhancement: Support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional, and other needs.
- Respectful Care: Acknowledge our biases, and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma, and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.
- Eating for Well-being: Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control.
- Life-Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose.
I think these are excellent principles on which to base your health. Of course – and here comes point number two – there are a lot of people who believe that body weight is the best indicator of health, that fat people cannot also be healthy. Some even think that HAES encourages fat people to gorge and laze around. (Strange… I didn’t notice any of that in the principles above.) It’s fascinating to me that if I choose to live by these principles, some people will think I am neglecting my health because of my size. These principles allow me to accept my body at the weight it truly seems to want to be. They also help me to enjoy life more – something which is so difficult when you are focused primarily on weight loss.
One of the most important aspects of health and wellbeing is in your head. No, really! Your mental health plays a huge role in your physical health. Some people believe that we should shame and stigmatize fat people, that this will cause them to hate themselves thin. HAES, on the other hand, encourages people of all sizes to treat themselves kindly and well. Which of those approaches sounds like it would be most effective in increasing your mental wellbeing?
The final thing I wanted to talk to you about regarding HAES is that people really like to fight about it. I ran across this article, and read through most of the comments, some of which are from Linda Bacon, who wrote the book Health At Every Size. The post is actually several years old, but I think it’s still relevant, because while these two medical professionals argued about science, I sat back and thought, They are missing the point! It doesn’t matter what this study or that study does or doesn’t say. To me, HAES isn’t about the science. It’s about feeling good, making decisions for my body that help me to keep it functioning and strong, and – this is the most important part – not hating myself because of my body size. When I learned to stop hating and fighting my body, everything got better, including my physical health.
My lived experience is worth so much more than any scientific study. And my lived experience has shown me that caring for my body, fueling and moving it because I want to live long and well, is the key to health. My lived experience has shown me that feeding my body less calories than it needs to function, and moving my body because I don’t like what it looks like, are not sustainable practices, and do not make me feel good – physically or mentally.
So tell me: What do you think of the HAES principles? Do they seem like a healthy approach to life? Or do you need to see the science to know if they really work?
