Why you should stop trying to lose weight through dieting and focus instead on fitness and healthy eating

As someone who has suffered from and eventually escaped the diet roller coaster, and who has been on a mission to help others get off it, too, I follow anti-diet voices on social media, many of whom are nutrition experts. I am usually all nods when scrolling through their posts, but a recent trend of messages unsettled me.

At first glance, they seemed to go beyond anti-diet and verge on anti-healthy. One post proclaimed that any attempt to lose weight is a diet. Think about that for a second. If we treat “diet” as a four-letter word, then the message is that trying to lose weight at all – even in a healthy way – is something to be condemned.

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It got me wondering whether the anti-diet movement has gone too far. Should people really be discouraged from pursuing weight loss, even on a sound lifestyle plan, when it could lead to better health – less knee pain, getting off blood sugar medications, reducing the risk of a heart attack and so on?

To dig deeper, I spoke to several thought leaders on the issue and came to the conclusion that the post was onto something: Although weight matters when it comes to health, the true path to wellness may be to not try to lose weight at all.

“Overweight and obesity are serious threats to health,” says Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “If we really care about someone, we want them to be as close to a healthy weight as possible; there is absolutely no question.” But the number on the scale is only one indicator of wellness.

“No matter what your weight is, you can improve your health by being physically active, eating a healthy diet and not smoking,” Willett says.