There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. As vaccines roll out around the country and some parts of the world, there’s cause for relief. For the first time in over a year, many of us will greet our friends and family again. Those who haven’t had the relative privilege to shelter in place can continue to work with less fear of contracting COVID-19. There’s so much reason for relief and celebration. But still, many of us are ill at ease. Not about the pandemic, but about our bodies.
As pandemic restrictions ease, pressure to lose weight is intensifying. Many fitness and weight-loss companies are reporting a surge in new customers. Various diet companies seem to be doubling down on advertising. All the energy our society normally expends on this around the New Year seems to have delayed itself to spring, fortified by the anxiety of new weight gain and the impending mandate of “beach bodies.” And last month that pressure to lose weight reached perhaps its highest-profile moment yet, thanks to a new research letter from the Journal of the American Medical Association. The letter suggested that study participants gained an average of 1.5 pounds per month during the pandemic, which in turn led to splashy headlines and infographics, all feeding into a growing panic about the nation’s weight.
Often missing from coverage of that new research, though, were limitations of the data. Simply put, the study isn’t representative. Researchers sampled just 269 people from 37 states and the District of Columbia, and reported an average participant age of about 52 years—14 years older than the U.S. median age of 38. The study also under-sampled Black Americans (3.3% of study participants, versus 13.4% of the U.S. population, per the U.S. Census Bureau), Asian Americans (2.9% of participants, 5.9% of the U.S. population), multiracial people (4.1% of participants, 2.8% of the U.S. population), and Hispanic or Latinx people (5.9% of participants, 18.5% of the U.S. population). The study also covered the early months of quarantine last year, when many of us anticipated just a few weeks or months of lockdown and had yet to settle into our “new normal.” None of that means the research is necessarily incorrect, just that it is likely an incomplete picture that some reports are painting as something significantly more universal and damning than we can prove based on just one small study.
Coverage like this turns up the pressure on all of us to lose weight, and for some it may trigger or exacerbate eating disorders. Research shows that media coverage of the “obesity epidemic” can increase weight stigma leveled at fat people. And it creates alarm where there is simply no known solution. After all, we still don’t have evidence-based treatments that reduce body weight in the long term in a plurality of the population. The majority of weight loss attempts not only fail, but attempts to lose weight are also a predictor of further weight gain.
Regardless of what people may take away from this one recent data analysis, weight is often driven by factors well beyond our own “will power” and individual decision-making, and weight changes should never be demonized. That was the case prepandemic, and it remains the case today. But we can’t forget that none of the changes to our bodies in the last year happened in a vacuum. They happened while we wrestled unemployment, housing insecurity, an endless parade of financial anxieties, and incalculable loss. According to Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 tracker, over 565,000 people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19, and nearly 3 million have died worldwide, though researchers suspect the global death toll is significantly higher.
Amongst the struggle to survive, we’re also now being targeted by a $71 billion industry that stands to profit from these newly fortified insecurities. Indeed, those same captains of industry that profit off our desire for weight loss also own many of the companies that are credited with our weight gain in the first place. (One businessperson on Weight Watchers’ board of directors also oversees a company that has a significant investment in Keebler, for instance.)
In the grand scheme of what we have weathered in the last year, weight gain simply couldn’t be less important. These bodies have helped us survive. Still, we’re faced with constant messaging insisting that our bodies are at the root of so many of our problems. Rather than collectively tackling large-scale but ultimately solvable issues like unemployment, housing insecurity, access to health care, and wealth inequality, we direct undue focus on something we simply don’t know how to change. Instead of grappling with broader policy change, we tilt at windmills.
Over this last year, you may have put on weight. I have. Or maybe you’ve lost weight, either intentionally or due to grief, depression, a newfound diagnosis, or any of the other innumerable changes so many of us have experienced in the last year. But however your body has changed, that’s not a reflection of your individual character. It is not a measure of your work ethic, your determination, your tenacity, or your worth.
The changes in your body are not a marker of your failure, but of your survival. Your body has changed while it has done something extraordinary. Your body kept you alive, whether through privilege or biology, vigilance or fortune. Whatever your body looks like now, it is a body that has carried you through a time of tremendous tragedy, now to a point where we might finally be able to see glimmers of hope from the other side. And that matters so much more than weight gain ever could.
Related:
- 5 Ways to Make Your Fat Friends Feel More Welcome as We Start to Hang Out Again
- I’m a Fat Activist. Here’s Why I Don’t Use the Word ‘Fatphobia’
- It’s Time to Retire ‘You’re Not Fat, You’re Beautiful!’