The weight loss compliment - NOT!

You’ve lost so much weight!  You look gorgeous!
 

Two sentences, that when put together create a bad message for all of us striving to be healthy, not reach some weird stereotype of beauty.

I came head on into this problem that is perpetuated in our society when my pre-teen daughter lost a dramatic amount of weight in a short amount of time.  She was not dieting, but instead grew four inches, it was swim team season and she was swimming four nights a week and she was going through a very big hormone surge accompanied by moodiness and drama.  She was eating, but not as much as she had been, and went from the kid who would eat anything to the kid telling me everything sounded gross.  All these circumstances added together meant that her physical appearance changed drastically over a period of only about two to three months.

Every day, often several times a day, people were telling her “You’ve lost so much weight!  You look gorgeous!” or something very close to those two statements and always said in conjunction with one another.   I realized very quickly the message that my daughter was getting from these two statements being joined together and repeated to her over and over.  That message is that she did not look good before, or she looks good now only because she lost weight, or fifty more negative interpretations that can be gleaned from those two statements being uttered in combination.

I am adamant that her self-worth not be tied to her physical appearance, but I do want her to have a healthy approach to caring for her body and maintaining her health.  She has been told since birth that she is beautiful, and that what makes her beautiful is that she is a loving, caring, empathetic human being.   Each time I heard someone saying these two statements to her, I cringed.  People thought they were being nice, and supportive and even encouraging, yet these supposed affirmations in combination were doing just the opposite.

In talking with her she reaffirmed my suspicions.   In her mind, people were telling her that the path to beauty was to lose weight.  We began having talks about food being fuel for our bodies, about taking care of our body in all ways, not just weight, and how beauty is so much more than a number on a scale.  We looked at pictures of runway models who are nothing but skin and bones and then images of healthy weight women in real life bodies.  I took to the internet to show her the before and after images of photos and magazines covers that are altered and retouched, showing her that the altered images are not real life. 

I’m asking everyone to be conscious of the destructive power of this well intended compliment.  My recommendation to anyone who comes upon someone who has recently dropped weight is to replace these two statements with two that are much more motivational and positive.  How about, “You’ve lost weight!   I bet you feel amazing and I can see in your face you feel so good!”