'I'm in my 30s and I'm begging you: please stop talking to me about your weight loss.'

This post discusses disordered eating and could be triggering to some readers. 

Please stop talking to me about your weight loss.

I remember when my body stopped being something I used to move through the world in, and started feeling like currency. I was 13 years old, and my straight-up-and-down, athletic figure was softening as I entered puberty, and I was buying teen magazines, looking at the cover girls and fashion models and thinking, “That’s what the perfect teenage girl looks like.” Tall but not too tall, boobs but not too big, and most importantly, slim-hipped, flat-stomached and smooth-skinned.

As my body adjusted to rushes of hormones, I became increasingly dissatisfied with it. I hated my body from that early age, fighting against its natural form with every crash diet under the sun. I saw it as something I had to control or else. Or else boys wouldn’t like me. Or else I wouldn’t be cool/cute/worthy compared to my peers. Or else I wouldn’t have value.

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This battle culminated in some seriously disordered eating through my late 20s and early 30s. I doubled down on the body hate and sustained myself on an alarmingly restrictive diet that left me irritable, exhausted and depressed. I was the slimmest I’d ever been, and the most unhappy, finding all my self-worth in my dress size and in a constant state of anxiety about my weight.

This finally sent me to therapy and over time, I loosened the controlling grip and started to shift my thinking. But honestly, it’s a daily challenge not to go back to those dark places, as anyone who has gone through a period of disordered eating will tell you. Whenever I hit hard emotional times, my instinct is to control my body again, to obsess over what I put into it.

Now in my 30s, I am so tired. I don’t want to be obsessed with my size, a number on a scale. I don’t want to feel guilty whenever I eat a decadent meal or feel “good” when I choose the salad. I want to eat for energy and joy, not for weight loss, and I want to exercise for strength in my mind and body, not to fit a pair of jeans.

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had this realisation, but I’m noticing a lot of weight loss chat around me at the moment. Every time I open social media, it’s before and after posts and people holding out the waistbands of pants that no longer fit them. In conversations with friends and family, it comes up so casually. “I lost three kilograms last month!” someone will say, after previously lamenting going up a size after an indulgent Italian holiday.

When we celebrate weight loss like this, what we are saying there is that there’s an acceptable and unacceptable size to be. There are no two ways about it – a before and after post implicitly says, “My body was worse. Now it’s better.”

We are shaming the size we were, and celebrating the smaller size we’ve reached because we find that size to be more acceptable. 

This would be no-one’s business if it was all internalised. It is your body, your choice. But the moment we discuss weight in positive and negative terms with friends, sisters, mums, the moment we share a weight loss journey on social media… we’re contributing to toxic body standards.

What’s wild is that I don’t believe any of us want to contribute to toxic body standards. We love seeing more body diversity in advertising campaigns and media. We would never want another woman to hate her body. But because this culture is so deeply ingrained, we feed into it – even if we don’t intend to.

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One of my friends has a strict rule – she will not engage in talk about her body or anyone else’s. She flat-out does not discuss weight gain or weight loss, and will shut you down if you do. It’s a lifestyle I’m trying to take on board as I rethink how I perceive my body, and the ways I have contributed to both my own toxic attitudes, and those of society.

If we want to live in a world where our bodies aren’t currency, we have to be the change. We have to be aware of how we speak about our own – both internally and externally, but especially externally.

When you celebrate your weight loss, you send a message. That being slim is more valuable. Even if you personally just believe being slim is more valuable to you, it doesn’t matter. When you talk about your weight loss to friends, when you share online about it, you’re reaffirming the age-old message that there are acceptable and unacceptable bodies.

We’ll still screw up – this is an attitude that’s been fed relentlessly in us since childhood. What’s important is recognising it and trying to do better. As uncomfortable as it is to sit with, most of us have been contributing to the very culture that exhausts us with relentless self-hate. It’s time to break that cycle.

Melissa is a freelance writer. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok.

For help and support for eating disorders, contact the Butterfly Foundation‘s National Support line and online service on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673) or email support@thebutterflyfoundation.org.au. 

You can also visit their website, here.

Featured Image: Supplied