Why I No Longer Coach Intentional Weight Loss | #10

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When I first started out in the fitness and wellness industry, I coached intentional weight loss because I knew it was expected of me. I preferred to help people get strong, build muscle, and feel more empowered, but I believed that weight loss and fat loss for clients who wanted it was just part of the job.

I eventually reached a point where I truly felt like coaching weight loss as a primary goal no longer aligned with my values. However, I wasn't sure if I could build a sustainable business without it. So I went into intensive research mode to learn as much as I could about the alternate weight-inclusive paradigm.

I ultimately decided that I no longer wanted to take on intentional weight loss clients, and a lot of other things changed, too. For example, I stopped centering my own thin, privileged body in my social media. I stopped taking measurements of my clients' bodies and asking them to take progress photos. I also brought social justice to the forefront of my work and committed to “learning in public.”

It seemed unethical to me to promise people weight loss as a solution for my clients' problems when I knew that I couldn't help them sustain it for the long-term, and I knew they'd have to adopt potentially unhealthy behaviors to reach their goals.

Health At Every Size (HAES) and weight-inclusivity are all about ways that we can adopt health-promoting behaviors without worrying about our weight on the scale specifically. This is in contrast with the popular practice of telling people in larger bodies that they should lose weight through any means necessary, even if those means are ultimately unhealthy.

Since adopting these practices in my coaching, I am much happier with the work that I do, and I see long-lasting changes in the health and well-being of my clients.

Mentioned in This Episode

• Christy Harrison's Food Psych podcast
• To learn more about white supremacist beauty standards, I recommend the book Fearing The Black Body by Sabrina Strings
• An illustration of what set point theory is and how it works
• Helpful books to learn more about Health At Every Size (HAES) and intuitive eating include:
  • Health At Every Size
  • Body Respect
  • Body of Truth
  • Intuitive Eating
  • The Intuitive Eating Workbook
• You can find more information about why diets don't work in these resources:
  • The Weight Of The Evidence
  • Why do dieters regain weight?
  • 10 Reasons To Stop Dieting Forever
• Resources that debunk the connection between health and weight [TW: many of these resources use stigmatizing language such as “ob*sity” or “morbidly ob*se”]:
  • Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong
  • How Obesity Became a Disease
  • ‘The Obesity Paradox:' When Obese Patients Fare Better Than Healthy Ones
  • Study: Healthy Obese People Don't Face Increased Death Risk
  • How and why weight stigma drives the obesity ‘epidemic' and harms health
  • Big fat lies about obesity
• Resources that explain why “concern trolling” (i.e., shaming people for their bodies because you're worried about their health) is both harmful and counterproductive:
  • If you're right about your fat friend's health
  • 11 Reasons Your ‘Concern' for Fat People's Health Isn't Helping Anyone
  • I'm So Tired of Being Told that my Fat Body is Going to Kill Me
  • To those who want your fat family member to lose weight
• Resources that support a weight-inclusive approach to care:
  • Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift
  • Is Permanent Weight Loss a Myth?
  • The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss
  • A weight-neutral versus weight-loss approach for health promotion in women with high BMI: A randomized-controlled trial
• Databases where you can find HAES-informed, weight-inclusive practitioners in various fields:
  • The ASDAH HAES Expert directory
  • The Intuitive Eating Counselor directory
  • The Superfit Hero Body Positive Fitness Finder

Featured in This Episode

Shohreh Davoodi (she/her) was the host of the Conjuring Up Courage podcast during the show's three-year run. Currently, Shohreh is focusing her attention on being a writer and creator. You can keep up with Shohreh by subscribing to her newsletter, The Queer Agenda, and following her on Instagram and TikTok.