The Weight of Culture

“Have you lost weight? You look good!”

I told her honestly that I didn’t know if I had lost weight or not. I’ve not been paying attention to that. I got rid of my scale ages ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if I did though, but I disliked the compliment afterward. How do you know the circumstances under which a person loses weight?

We live in a culture where we always assume weight loss is a positive thing, which is infuriating. Not all of us are happy about it. In my case it means a lot of bad things because of my type 1 diabetes. It means my blood sugars run way too high. It means I’m in Ketosis which can become Diabetic Keto Acidosis very quickly and is an extremely deadly and dangerous situation.

But people only notice the external result, and because our society tends to be superficial they applaud the external result as if I’m taking good care of myself when it is the opposite. The complexities of human bodies aren’t often taken into account. Neither is the complexity of the psyche. The assumption that the person who has experienced weight loss is healthy doesn’t account for chronic illness or mental health issues. We don’t think of eating disorders. We don’t think about exercise addiction. We don’t think about the struggles of being a type one diabetic. We don’t think about chronic pain that can cause either weight loss or weight gain. We don’t think about thyroid conditions that do similarly.

Because as a culture we want thinner bodies to be healthy bodies. Even when they aren’t. It needs to stop.