Let’s stop commenting on people’s weight uninvited

“Oh my god, Alexis! You look amazing!”

“What’s your secret for losing so much weight?”

“I’ve never seen you look so healthy!”

These are things that were said to me in 2019, at the age of 33. At my thinnest since I was a teenager. I’m going to be honest with you – sometimes I loved being thinner than I am now. Finally all of my clothes fit me properly – I could get into size 14 trousers without them pinching, my size L leggings from a high street store that will not be named were comfortable instead of showing off my muffin top. I felt confident wearing clothes I never had the confidence to wear before and actually started to buy clothes that didn’t completely cover my shape. And because people kept telling me how fantastic I looked, I felt like I needed to stay like that forever – because obviously being thin is the ultimate goal, right?

Let me tell you something – that is not correct. And we need to stop commenting on people’s weight and placing thinness on a pedestal of being the epitome of health. Because when I lost over two stones in weight last year, it wasn’t all due to good diet and exercise. It turned out I was literally starving myself to thinness.

I wouldn’t classify myself as having an eating disorder. I can’t even begin to imagine what that feels like. But I would classify myself as having disordered eating which is something a little different. Let me explain how I came to be under 10 stones for the first time since I was about 12 years old. In 2016 I injured my knee at a dance intensive in Portugal. It was so bad that I had to use crutches for a bit and just rest for several months. In reality, as a dance and fitness instructor as well as a performer, I couldn’t just sit around and wait for my knee to heal before going through rehab. I had dance rehearsals coming up for my annual festival’s show, I had choreographies to learn and practice, I had classes to teach. So what actually happened is, I rested as much as possible but I also self-medicated with way more ibuprofen than I probably should have been taking. That kicked off a six month long, non-stop bout of acid reflux. I took all the pills under the sun, but nothing would touch it. My oesophagus was being burned on a daily basis by stomach acid, and so I had to go in for a gastroscopy. Turned out, I had a hiatus hernia – essentially my stomach sometimes pushes its way though my diaphragm. This, they said, was the cause of my acid reflux, but at 2cm only there was no need to do surgery. “What do you suggest then?” I asked. “Go back to your doctor and find some pills that work”, was the response as they stamped my discharge papers.

I felt like crying then. Daily acid reflux is exhausting and incredibly painful. I’d taken all the available pills, I was drinking aloe vera juice on the regular and had tried many of the herbal supplements recommended online. Nothing was working. So I decided to try an elimination diet – my first thing to cut was milk and within three days my acid reflux was gone. I was jubilant! After 6 months of daily agony, it was finally over. I haven’t (intentionally) had milk since, and I put it down as my body finally realising that I couldn’t digest lactose – apparently this is very common, even if you’ve been drinking milk your whole life. Over the coming months I changed my diet completely – I cut out dairy of all kinds, closely followed by cutting out chicken – the only meat I ate before I became vegetarian. And I had two years of happy digestion, very rare occurrences of reflux and those were usually when I was stressed or I had eaten way too much food! I got to learn when my stomach was pushing up through my diaphragm, what it felt like and how to push it back down. “I can live with this”, I thought.

But in December 2018, the reflux came back, with a vengeance. At Christmas I was careful not to overindulge so I wouldn’t end up with reflux, but two days after Christmas, it started to come back. At first I thought it was the richness of the foods being eaten and that it would die down in a few days. But it didn’t – it persisted, and worse than my original bout in 2016. I was already eating mainly vegan at this point, so I didn’t know what else to cut out. But I had to start cutting things. Anything spicy was gone. No tomatoes in any form because they are a common culprit for causing reflux. No alcohol, no caffeine, no sugar. I cut out every small pleasure in life until I was literally only eating vegetables and a few fruits. And I was restricted on which ones I could consume. Then I decided I would only eat between the hours of 8am-8pm daily, which was really difficult when I wasn’t getting home from teaching classes some nights until 10pm.

At the same time, I was the fittest I’ve ever been – I was doing hot yoga every day at my local studio, dancing, doing Pilates and teaching on top of all that. I was working out a lot, and it really showed in my body – I was getting visibly stronger and when I started to lose weight I was initially delighted. I put it down to being more active and eating clean. After the first stone came off and my weight continued to go down I started to get worried – what if there was something seriously wrong? I’d had a cancer scare the year before, what if they’d missed something? What if my body was trying to tell me something was seriously wrong? Before freaking out, I downloaded My Fitness Pal and started tracking what I was eating in a day. And what I found startled me. I’m not sure why – I’ve studied nutrition, I know how calories work – but I was surprised to realise that most days I wasn’t even making it to 1200 calories a day. Some days I was only eating 800 calories a day. And maybe 1200 calories is sustainable for someone sedentary, but I was working out more than I ever have in my life! I desperately needed to be consuming 2000 or more calories a day! And I tried to add more but honestly, it was really hard to do that when I didn’t feel like eating most of the time. I felt constantly bloated, even though I wasn’t, and I rarely felt like I actually wanted to eat even though I was hungry. It’s like my whole digestive system broke – because I never felt hungry. The only way I’d know I was hungry was when I’d start being irritable or feeling dizzy. And suddenly it all made sense why I was so often having dizzy spells or why I’d feel irrationally pissed off most of the time. And unfortunately I had to just ride this out until the reflux stopped, because cutting sugar, caffeine and alcohol didn’t make any difference at all.

When the first stone came off, I was happy for people to tell me I looked amazing. Sometimes it would sting – like, didn’t I look amazing before? Can I only look amazing if I’m thin? Is that what people really think? When the second stone came off, I’d smile at the perceived compliment, but inside I was crying. I was in so much daily pain, I’d tried everything to stop the reflux, I was hungry even if my body wasn’t sending signals to tell me to eat, and I really started to internalise this belief that being thin meant being beautiful. And that before I was thin, I couldn’t have been beautiful. I started to resent every time someone commented on my weight in a positive way, because getting there wasn’t a positive experience for me. And before it happened, I hadn’t even really thought that much about wanting to lose weight. I acknowledge that my weight loss was a combination of things – cutting out sugar and alcohol almost certainly helped, especially as I have unhealthy coping mechanisms of drinking and eating too much when times are tough, and after my cancer scare the previous year I had done a fair amount of drinking to numb the worry (and a fair amount of over-indulging to celebrate when I got the all clear), which caused me to put on some weight. But mostly I attribute it to the huge disparity between how much I could eat and what I could eat compared to how much exercise I was doing. I mean it goes to show that if you control your calories enough and you workout enough, you will shed some pounds. But to lose two stones I was pretty much unintentionally starving myself. And you can’t tell me that that is healthy either?

My reflux bout has ended once again, and I dread the possibility of another one in 2021 – like maybe I just have to deal with these months long bouts every two years? But that’s not the point of my blog. The point is, we need to stop focusing so much on people’s weight and how it presents in their bodies, and we need to stop complementing people for their weight loss uninvited because you just don’t know how they got there. And more to the point – just stop commenting anything on people’s weight, because it’s none of your damn business!

Maybe they have an eating disorder and you’re reinforcing the behaviour by complementing them? Maybe they’re stressed, going through a divorce or a break up, or someone died. Is telling them how great they look going to help in that moment? Maybe they’re ill and have no control over their weight – look at Chadwick Boseman and the negative comments about him losing weight online while he privately battled colon cancer for four years. Positive or negative, words have an impact. If someone invites you celebrate their weight loss – or their weight gain – with them, that’s the time to tell them how great they look. Not all thin people are healthy, not all fat people are unhealthy. Thin doesn’t equal health.

If you want to pay someone a complement, try to think of something better than their weight. Because we all want to be valued for who we truly are, not for the way we look, and how much we weigh at any given time shouldn’t be the barometer for how much people value us. I’m relieved to be able to tell you that currently I am able to eat whatever I want with minimal chance of negative consequences regarding my reflux – I know the things that really are not good for me and avoid them. I can finally have caffeine again (which I didn’t really miss all that much, but I am partial to tea and coffee!), I definitely eat too much sugar and should probably work on reducing that, and spicy food is back on the table (and I really did miss that!). And alcohol is also back, though I try to limit to a couple of drinks a week so I’m not overdoing it. I’ve put a little weight back on over lockdown because I’m exercising slightly less than I was before and I’m able to eat more foods. I’ve put on a few pounds over lockdown but I feel ok about that, because I know that I’m eating healthily and not starving myself any more. And I’d much rather that than spend my days hungry trying to be thin.