Nearly every Friday for the past few months, a woman has come up to me after the body sculpting class I teach and said something like this: Whatever youre doing, its working. Sometimes its, Good job; youve lost a lot of weight. Others, it's a form of praise I didnt even know was a thing: I can really tell that youve lost weight from your face. Your face is slimmer.
My face? Thanks?
As a woman in America there are two things Ive learned through the years: 1. Always try to improve your body. 2. Always say thank you when someone gives you a "compliment." If my body is inherently in need of improvement, then when someone tells me Ive lost weight, its supposed to be a compliment. And instinctively, when I hear anything complimentary, I say thank you.
I enjoy leading this Friday morning class. Teaching provides a sense of accomplishment and gives me an incredible amount of confidence. The people who attend the class are pleasant, and I am happy to take any and all compliments pertaining to the design of the workout or how much it kicked someones ass. Thats all me. I did that. I stood at the front of the room and challenged everyone. What I didnt do was set out to lose weight.
She would just shake it off, perhaps assuming I was being modest. And yet I kept saying thank you every time she insisted that my math was wrong.
Thank youfor telling me I apparently look less awful than I used to? Im glad you now approve of me and my body?
I wont lie: I started taking working out seriously three years ago when my clothes weren't fitting. But when I started down this path, I realized I was more concerned with being in shape than losing weight. Id swim laps with coworkers and get winded after just a few turns in the pool, so every day it became my goal to swim more than I had during my last workout. Then I discovered other types of fitness activities that made me feel powerful and capable of improving. The second I stopped thinking about pounds and started thinking about personal challenges, working out stopped being a chore. I didnt lose more than a couple of pounds, and that was fine because it wasn't the point.
Now as a group fitness instructor, I make sure never to use motivational tactics centering on weight loss, calories, or earning food and treats. I want people to come to my class because they like it; because they want to use a heavier set of dumbbells than they used last month; because its their chance to see a friend who also takes the class during an otherwise busy week. Those are the things that ultimately helped me commit to a healthier lifestyle and what later inspired me to pursue a teaching certification three years ago.
I dont care about these comparisons. Ive learned enough about exercise science and social science to be fully on board with the Health at Every Size movement. I use fat not as a pejorative, but as a simple adjective, understanding that body size says nothing about ones overall health and personal values. I see that in myself: While I would never, in my new understanding of the term, call myself fat, I havent been skinny for years. I know I eat nutritious foods and I know that I am fit. Usually, that's enough for me.
And yet, every time someone tells me Ive lost weight, Im pulled into the mindset Ive been socialized to have as a woman: that this is an accomplishment, but it's also not enough. I begin to pay more attention to whether I look acceptable in an outfit before I step out of the house, and I even start crowing to people about how Ive lost a few pounds.
After a few months of those weekly compliments after class, I hopped on the scale and saw that, to my surprise, I had actually lost a few pounds. That familiar sense of socially enforced pride crept up on me, until I started to think about why those pounds left my body.
The weight vanished during a stressful semester of graduate school, during which I was working five jobs and volunteering, so busy running around most days that I rarely had the chance to eat three proper meals. It happened after a personal trainer told me I had fat aerobics instructor syndrome, insisting that I was using being busy as an excuse for not losing weight, and making me feel like a moral failure because I enjoy dessert. It happened when I was teaching the same workout so many times a week that I was overtraining, compounding my fibromyalgia and putting me in a state of perpetual dull pain.
I know this is true, but it can be hard to remember. Now every day I have to fight myself, trying to find a balance between planning healthful, properly sized meals and calculating calorie budgets for the day. I do my best to ignore the first number that comes up on my scale and focus instead on the body fat percentage and muscle mass numbers that come up next, which are more reliable indicators of overall health (if still limited in applicability). I have to remind myself over and over that exercise science says that active fat people can indeed be healthy, and cultural messages that make women feel their bodies should look a certain way have no validity.
Thats why I want to be done thanking people for telling me Ive lost weight. But I dont know how to stop. Its as reflexive a response as saying bless you when someone sneezes. Its polite. But it tears down my self-esteem to say it, and it makes it harder for all women to resist the patriarchal standards that shape our values system. I dont know if I can stop saying thanks until we all agree to. Are you with me?
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I Want to Be Done Thanking People for 'Complimenting' My Weight Loss - SELF
