No, there is nothing wrong with me for wanting to lose weight.

I just need to vent about this for a second. I have successfully been sticking to a new lifestyle change for the first time in my life, and it feels amazing. I struggled with binge eating disorder for years before this, and I feel so happy and free to not have binge eating in my life anymore. Prior to deciding to get my life together, and a bit before my disorder got bad, I was strongly believed in the "Health at Every Size" (HAES) movement. I stopped following it when I realized that no, you actually can't be healthy at every size. I'm currently in school in a STEM field, and a lot of the things that were being said in that community about weightloss and obesity did not align with the science on the matter. That was a few years ago back when the movement had less of a following. I see messages from it a lot more now, however, and some of them are really discouraging. For example, a lot of influencers will pathologize weight loss and say that there must be deeper reasons why someone wants to lose weight. The reasons, they say, might include low self esteem, or unresolved issues with your past. Well, what if I just want to be healthy? What if I'm tired of being fat, not because of low self esteem, but because it's objectively unhealthy and I can't achieve my goals in this body? What if I don't want to feel controlled by food anymore? What if I don't want to be fat for me, and not for others? There is nothing wrong with me for wanting to lose weight. A big part of my recovery from binge eating was realizing that I kept binging simply because I kept acting on the urges, and not because I was using food to cope with anything. I think the idea that THERE IS something psychologically wrong with a person for wanting to lose weight stems from another idea that's common in these communities: that you should love yourself at every size. Honestly, I agree with this idea, but not with how they promote it. Personally, I was only able to get my life together when I accepted where I was at with my eating disorder, and when I decided that I was going to love myself no matter what. But, that being said, loving yourself doesn't mean not changing yourself. The HAES community seems to perpetuate this idea that loving yourself and changing yourself are incompatible. Well, I disagree. I am changing myself BECAUSE I love myself.

Anyway, that was my rant.

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