LET’S STOP FEELING ASHAMED ABOUT DIETS
Last week, Weight Watchers announced it was rebranding to WW, signalling a more holistic approach. But when did it become so shameful to say you simply want to lose some weight, asks Polly Dunbar
Before my recent holiday to Mallorca, I realised, while trying on a normally trusty pair of shorts, that I’d put on weight. I knew why: during those glorious weeks of sunshine over the summer, I’d skipped from barbecues to al-fresco rosé sessions with all the carefree abandon of someone with the metabolism of a teen supermodel.
Sadly, that someone is not me, so I did what I always do when I want to lose a few pounds. I went on a diet.
A diet? That’s not a word you hear very often in 2018. Our current obsession with holistic wellness and body positivity has loaded it with connotations of outdated beauty standards, deprivation and self-loathing. It’s become passé – shameful, even – to admit you’re on a diet. Hence Weight Watchers, the grande dame of the slimming club world for the past 55 years, is dropping the ‘weight’ from its name and rebranding itself as WW. CEO Mindy Grossman said in a statement that the company remains ‘committed to always being the best weight management program on the planet’, but that it also wants people to focus on eating healthily, exercising and having a more positive mind-set.
This is all very zeitgeist-embracing, but people go to Weight Watchers for one reason: to lose weight. So, why has it become taboo to admit that sometimes, when we know we’ve been overindulging and our clothes feel uncomfortably tight, it isn’t meditation we’re after, but a plan that helps us cut back on pizza and cake?
OK, we all know diets are problematic. The average dieter in Britain starts four new diets a year, losing an average of 3kg before gaining the weight back again. Adopting a healthy lifestyle in the longterm is better for us than a cycle of getting on and off the short-term dieting wagon. And, of course, as Jameela Jamil pointed out in her brilliant iweigh campaign, there are far more important ways to measure our worth than by a number on the scales.
But, the reality is, most women I know – including me – do diet occasionally. We all have our own, perfectly valid reasons: because we like looking a certain way, or we want to get back into a nice dress, or we find dropping a few pounds gives us more energy. It’s just that nowadays, rather than admit what we’re doing, we often say we’re on a ‘health kick’ or trying to ‘eat more healthily’. We’re worried that if we say we’re dieting it’s like admitting we’re bad feminists, who can’t accept ourselves as we are. What we’re doing is the same, though – we’re reducing the amount we eat. It’s boring and involves self-restraint, but it works. And if it’s done in a healthy way, what’s wrong with that?
Personally, I’d rather join a club that promises to help me lose weight than one that cloaks the issue in concern about my wellbeing. Let’s call a diet what it is and stop feeling ashamed. We are entitled to do whatever we want with our own bodies – and sometimes, what we want is to be able to fit into our favourite pair of shorts.