Please Don’t Compliment Me on My Weight Loss |
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Weight loss is not a reliable measure of health, well-being, or worth.
Praising weight loss reinforces harmful beliefs about which bodies deserve approval.
For people in eating disorder recovery, body comments can reactivate disordered thoughts.
We can show care more thoughtfully by complimenting the person, not their body.
“You look amazing. Have you lost weight?”
This is meant to be a compliment. It’s usually said warmly, sometimes even enthusiastically. In our culture, weight loss is widely understood as something positive, something to celebrate. Yet the ripple effects of comments like this can be more complicated than people realize.
In my work as a therapist specializing in eating disorders and body image, I hear a version of the same story again and again. The time in someone’s life when they received the most praise for their appearance was also the time they were the most unwell.
They were restricting food.They were purging.They were exercising compulsively or barely eating enough to function.
And people kept telling them how great they looked.
Weight Loss Doesn’t Tell Us What We Think It........