Fitness Without Weight Loss: Why I Stopped Chasing Thinness
Chasing after fitness without weight loss caused me to desire 3 words spoken to me.
“You lost weight”.
I took pride in it and secretly gleamed with excitement when someone said it to me. Recently though hearing these words hit me differently because it was never my goal to lose weight. As I shared in my previous post, I just came back from NYC. While there I did not notice the weight loss.
In fact, I thought I was gaining weight since I was living it up. But I was going to the gym consistently, walking daily everywhere since the city is so walkable and joined Harlem Run Club. I arrived in the city knowing that fitness for me was not about aesthetics. It was simply a way for me to release stress and be in community with others.
You know what’s funny? I feel like when weight loss was no longer the goal, I then proceeded to lose weight. My mindset wasn’t always this way though because a few years ago, I was so obsessed with these 3 words – “You lost weight,” – that I was on the verge of developing orthorexia, an unhealthy obsession with eating only “healthy” foods. Yes, it sounds like a fake disorder. Like girl, be for real you were obsessed with healthy food? *insert roll eye*. But I had no idea that what I thought was balance was me heading down a dangerous path.
My Disordered Eating & Fitness Journey
Lemme take y’all down memory lane in how I ended up with problematic disordered eating tendencies. Let’s start in my early 20s and college year when I was very type A with everything. I became vegan for a little bit not due to moral reasons or the environment but because I knew it would help me shed weight. Fitness for weight loss instead of fitness without weight loss was the goal. Simultaneously, I was also the most disciplined meal prepper. I want to clarify that there is nothing wrong with meal prep. In fact it’s quite time efficient and beneficial in a busy schedule. However, for me it was all about control and shaping my diet in a way for me to look a certain way.
Oftentimes people looked at my lifestyle and admired it. What people didn’t see were the moments in the shower and my bedroom picking at my body weeping with guilt after eating too much sugar one night or deeply dissatisfied seeing the fat on my body. But I thought this was normal. Even worse, I thought my obsessive tendencies were healthy.
I really believed – If I’m not beating myself up about what I ate and how I look, am I even healthy?
I realized that this obsession was crippling me when I went to a dietitian on my college campus while I was training for a half marathon in 2019. I said that the goal of the session was to figure out what to eat as I train. In actuality, one main goal was looming underneath – to lose weight. It was there that my dietitian looked at me and said 3 words that weren’t the 3 words I wanted to hear:
"You Are Undereating"
I was confused and flabbergasted because I didn’t think that was true. There were days I was BINGEING! It would happen later in the day oftentimes since I was not eating enough earlier in the day.
After not believing this dietitian, I went to 2 different ones.There was a particular session with my last dietitian that still sticks out in my brain. I thought I was entering another regular appointment but I had an accidental therapy session. We were trying to get to the root cause of my obsession to be as thin as possible. She kept asking why and before I knew it I was crying over the zoom screen and saying, “ I don’t feel like I am enough”.
I told myself that my constant weight loss pursuit was about health but I just wanted to be enough – an idea that trickled into every area of my life. My body had to be enough and look good enough to myself and others. Even after losing weight, it never felt enough. There was always more to lose and I was never fully satisfied. When I cut out a whole food group then brought it back in my life, the weight would come back, so I felt like whatever I did was not sustainable. The fad diets and obsessive patterns simply weren’t working.
How Am I Now?
That was 2021 Ayomide, but in 2025 now where am I at?
I am finally at a point where if someone says I’ve gained or lost weight I am so much less bothered because I have realized that at the end of the day someone’s comments on my weight are unimportant. My value and my worth is not tied to my weight. So many more things matter in life than looking like a particular body type. How do I treat people? Do people feel safe, seen and joyful around me? Am I growing as a person? This is more important than whether my pant size is in the double digits or nah. Understanding this concept was the slow start of making fitness without weight loss the goal.
But how did I get to this point of feeling pretty neutral? It was hella hard. Lots of unlearning occurred between 2021-2022. Many tears and deep introspection followed but it helped having a dietitian walk me through it all.
However, I recognize that oftentimes people don’t have the privilege to have a dietitian. Luckily mine was covered by my health insurance but some people don’t even have access to health insurance. Then there is the added layer of people living in food deserts while also trying to survive financially in THIS economy. Due to these barriers, I want to share some tips that have helped me over the years without having a dietitian.
How I Began To Heal
The main thing that has helped me is changing up my social media feed with representation & education.
I had to ask the hard questions. “Am I following a lot of thin white girls or buff Black girls on instagram that make me feel insecure?” Social Media can be a breeding ground for comparison. But it can also be manipulated for your benefit. As counterintuitive as this may sound, social media actually helped me to be more at peace with my body because I became picky about who I followed.
The older I get the more I like following people that I can relate to. The ones who motivate me instead of making me feel bad about my body. In the Black community we have our own issues of pressuring girls to look a particular way. The curvier slim thick look is overly praised. Therefore, it’s been vital for me to consume content that spread positive messaging. Here are people that I have followed who have helped me on my journey:
1) Change Your Social Media Feed
- Danyele Wilson: Seeing a TALL Black woman who has a similar built to mine has been empowering. She talks about fitness from an athletic standpoint instead of from a ‘shrinking’ perspective. I love her vulnerability about her own insecurities. In 2020, when I ran into her account, her presence online felt like a breath of fresh air because I finally saw someone who looked like me.
- Food Heaven Podcast: Black woman dietitians that are more weight inclusive and culturally informed. They recently rebranded to “Diabetes Digital Podcast” but they have SO many old podcast episodes that are informative and relatable.
- Ajahzi: I love following normal people living normal life. In 2020, I remember noticing Ajahzi having a lot of revelations I had. She realized that chasing after the thin white girl body type wasn’t the way especially because our bodies are not naturally built that way. Watching people like her grow comfortable in their body made me more comfortable.
- SoheeFit: not a Black woman but a really informative woman. She does such a wonderful job bringing in research to help people understand how to improve their relationship with food and our bodies.
A few other girlies that I love are alittletaeste, Courtney Sarracino and oreyfit. I feel like all three are underrated as heck. They may talk about weight but they are also just normal girls around my age group that I can relate to who love fitness and that is the content that I want to consume.
2) We Don't Know Others' Full Story
I’ve come to understand that you don’t understand why or how someone is the weight they are. For example, for me, my weight loss can often be stress induced. Although I’ve come a long way with how I view food and eating, I still don’t eat enough for 2 reasons: My ADHD pill and stress/forgetfulness.
My ADHD pill blunts my hunger and I have a tendency of forgetting to eat especially in high stress. Someone recently told me, “I feel like you are someone who forgets to eat”. This is 100% true. Sometimes I get really invested or lost in what I am doing so the concept of eating leaves my brain. Therefore, I am way less jealous and envious of others body types because I know that I don’t know their full story. Like me they could have lost weight due to stress or may not have even recognized their weight loss.
However, the purpose of this post is not to make you feel ashamed for wanting to lose weight. We live in such a weight centric society it’s hard not to desire weight loss. I also believe in body autonomy. Basically, the idea that people can do whatever they want with their bodies, so I don’t judge if people desire weight loss.
I just wanted to share these thoughts to induce hope for another way to view health and wellness because I remember how my weight centric ways brought so much anxiety and stress in my life.
Disclaimer
It’s also soooo much easier for me to say “don’t be weight centric” because I benefit from thin privilege. I may not be the thinnest person in the room, but I can navigate the world without people judging me or assuming that I am “lazy”. It’s easy for me to find sizes in stores. I don’t have problems using everyday devices like sitting in a chair or using a blood pressure cuff.
This is one of my first few posts because as I dive into sharing fitness content, I want my message to be very clear. My fitness posts are not about fitness with the goal of weight loss in mind. In fact, I like the way Danyele Wilson words it – to focus more on what we are gaining instead of losing. I can confidently say in my late 20s, fitness is a means of enjoyment. It is way to ease stress and challenge myself like how I used to as a teen athlete.
I also want to make it VERY clear that I am not perfect at this nor am I an expert. As a certified personal trainer, is my fitness regime and eating perfect now? 100% no. Do I wake up every day with a proper image of my body? 100% no. Regardless, I am much less anxious and obsessed with my body looking a certain way and it feels SO freeing.
My Fitness Plan Today
In NYC, I lost weight completely by accident. Now I’ve noticed that I’m becoming anxious about gaining the weight back. Like I said earlier, I am nowhere near perfect. I still have to check in with myself and assess the fatphobic comments within myself. So, after little thought, I’ve decided to do a new challenge – run a half marathon. I know that sounds counterintuitive. Ayomide, you are telling me that some of your old habits are creeping in so you think it’s logical to engage in more fitness? But here me out:
The last time I trained for a half marathon was in 2019. This time while training, it’s going to be completely different. I am not doing this for weight loss or to look a certain way. This time I’m doing it because I want to challenge myself and switch up my routine. I also want to encourage myself to eat more while embodying the concept of fitness without weight loss.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of my current weight is because I am not fully nourished. Running a half marathon will push me to eat more and fuel my body. Then I will be able to sustain myself while training and also on race day.
I engage in fitness because I love it and it builds my functionality in the long run. I want to get back to eating hella protein in order to build muscle so when I’m older I don’t struggle lifting things or walking from one location to the next. Simultaneously, I want to mix weightlifting with cardio to build my cardio capacity while also keeping my muscle strength.
Therefore, the start of the fitness portion of my content is going to be about fitness without weight loss -an ongoing lifelong journey of training and fueling myself not for aesthetics but for fun and functionality. How have you tried to heal your relationship with fitness? What has worked for you? Add your comments below!
