What Is Your Healthy Weight?

Do you use BMI charts or height/weight charts to find your ideal “healthy weight”? Maybe a calculator on a website or an app that spits out a weight you “should" be. Have you been upset with yourself because you can’t seem to get or stay in your “healthy range”?? And ever wonder if that’s all a bunch of BS?

It is.

Diet culture has us believing that in order to be healthy, we need to weigh a certain amount according to our height. There is SO much more to health than your weight. Losing weight is not a guarantee that your health will improve. Why are we prescribing weight loss for health when 95% of diets FAIL us???

Here’s something. Just because a person gets to their “healthy weight” and ideal BMI does NOT necessarily mean they are healthy. When someone is told by their doctor to lose weight to improve a specific health outcome, what ends up happening most times is the person diets, loses weight, and after some time starts to gain weight back. They’ve now slowed their metabolism from the diet. They may gain back even more than where they started from.

None of this helps. It causes more harm than good. So why the hell do we keep using these “healthy weight” and BMI charts to tell us what we should weigh in order to achieve health???

AT MY LOWEST WEIGHT many thought I was this super-fit, picture of health. I WAS NOT. Yes, I went for my physical and my blood work was fine. I fit right into where I needed to be with my BMI so doctors thought I was just perfect. 

I was stressed, anxious, irritable, fatigued, and depressed over all the pressure I put on myself to stay that way. I lost my period several times throughout my life from weight loss. Yet I was “healthy”. And THAT is the biggest problem with society telling us we NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT TO BE HEALTHY. There are MANY things you can do to turn your health around. LOSING WEIGHT is NOT the answer to all the health problems. And it can be causing many other issues. 

A fellow non-diet dietitian, Emily Fonnesbeck, RD, said it best here with her Instagram post: 

What is a healthy, ideal weight for you? Not one you figure out using an online calculator. What the hell does that online calculator know about YOU? Your genetics? Your body type? NOTHING. It knows nothing. 

Your healthy weight is one you can maintain with no stress. Eating food that you find satisfying, nourishing, that doesn’t make you feel sick, that energizes you. It’s one you can maintain with exercise and movement that feels good and not torturous, forced, or painful. 

Your healthy weight is not discovered through 30-day challenges, accountability through social media posts, tracking your intake in a food diary app, eating only during certain times of the day, and eliminating food groups.

How have you tried over and over to get to your so-called “healthy weight”? How have these attempts failed you? Have you changed your views on the connection between weight and health? Please share!