The Fear of Weight Gain

and some thoughts of what we can do about it

Feb 18, 2024

woman in black lace panty — Photo by Monika Kozub on Unsplash Seeing a variety of body types can really help accept our own.

If I was to name one thing that all my clients share accross the board it would be this: The fear of weight gain.

Alongside the desire to lose weight is the most common thing I see in my clinical practice. Yes even as someone who works from a weight-inclusive, non-diet perspective, or stance, people still want to lose weight. Of course, why wouldn’t you, we do live in a socitey that is hyper focused on thinness as the path to success and even “health”.

But even when someone doesn’t want to lose weigth, they sure as h*ll don’t want to gain any, even when it is a much necessary part of healing. And this is independent on current body size.

Tackling the fear of weight gain is important

I don’t believe that we can work on our relationship with food without also looking at how weight and our relationship to weight / body size / fatness plays a role. This means that we need to look at Diet Culture, and the deeper roots of Diet Culture. Being afraid of gaining weight can keep you trapped in the Diet-Restrict-Binge Cycle, and if you are healing from a restrictive eating pattern fear of weight gain becomes a barrier to increasing food intake in the nutition rehabilitation process.

Weigth gain is often necessary for healing the malnourishment that comes with longterm chronic undereating. I would argue that this includes chronic dieting and yo-yo dieting.

So why are you so scared to gain weight?

The short answer: Weight stigma and internalised fat phobia

First of all I want to acknowledge your feelings. There may be a whole host of reasons to why you feel like gaining weight might be the worst thing ever. Maybe you’ve sacrifised a lot of time, energy, money and more to have the body you have today.

Maybe you fear that if you let go of the grip of controlling and micro managing you body you will be sacrificing your health. Maybe you feel that if your body became bigger then no one would ever love you?

I want to acknowledge the fact that this blog post will fall short of all of all the intricacies of this question, so I have listed a few further resources at the end and to invite you to go deeper.

I want to acknowledge my own thin privilege. Though I have held a lot of internalised fat phobia for decades, I have not lived in a body which has been discriminated towards because of size.

When did you learn that your body was a problem

When I think back, I can remember times, even as a pre-teen being conscious of my body and what other people might think of it, and how thinking that it was too big. Where and when did I learn that?

Where and when did you learn that your body was a problem?

Because my wild guess is that it is not something you were born doing.

It is cited that girls as young as five are body conscious and by the time they are 10 they will either have dieted or is thinking about dieting. Where do they get this message?

There can be a lot of diet messaging in the family (common), and there is also a lot of sneaky subtle messages in kids’ books and films about how certain body types are more preferred and better than others, so no wonder we internalise this message!

As kids our developmental stages are such that we cannot easily differentiate between what is not about us and what is us. We make everything about us, because this is the level of complexity our brains can comprehend. So hearing that fat or bigger bodies are bad, and that your own body is big typically translates to: My body is bad = I am bad.

As I don’t have kids I am not really aware of all the current books / movie / series trends but this list is good if you are looking for more body positive stuff for your kid(s).

Weight stigma hurts

Weight stigma hurts everyone, but it hurts people in larger bodies more. This is as a result of direct discrimination such as stereotyping, less chance of getting a higher paid job (despite appropriate qualifications), less or no option for comfortable seating in restaurants, hospitals, planes etc. Medical anti-fat bias is also incredibly common and results in people in bigger bodies often being given weight loss advice, regardless of medical concerns. Leading to sometimes serious underlying medical issues getting missed or neglected.

Others things that is blatant anti-fat bias and weights stigma are: unsolicited comments on food choices when eating, or body comments simply for walking down the street. This is something people like me in smaller bodies tend to be shielded from (thanks to our thin privilege.)

Typical stereotypes of people in lager bodies are: lazy, gluttonous, lack of willpower, stupid, less intelligent amongst a few.

Weight stigma hurts people in smaller bodies too, including those who have lost weight and now live in a smaller body. A big part of why you might be afraid of gaining weight is that you if your body gets bigger, chances are you will now be treated with discontempt or with down right discrimination. And no one wants that.

You might have been bullied about your weight in the past or you might have had well-meaning parents or relatives who decided to try and protect you from bullying and thus put you on a diet at a young age.

It makes sense that you will do what you can to try and protect yourself, or someone else from harm. However, dieting in itself is causing harm as it is the leading cause of people developing eating disorders or disordered eating.

Maybe your fear of weight gain is because of health

Of course if (or when) your body changes, how you experience your body will also change. This is until your proprioception (how you experience your body in space) has adjusted. This tends to be more challenging the more rapid the weight gain is.

The of course there is the whole conversation about health and weight, which is another topic altogether but

Ragen Chastain

’s work is a really great place to start unlearning and unpacking all of this.

Journal Questions to help when you fear weight gain

– If you could eat anything you wanted knowing it would not affect your weight, what would you eat?

– When did you learn that your body was wrong?

– What would it mean if there was nothing wrong and nothing to fix with you or your body?

Question the stuff that you have internalised.

Be honest with yourself, are you prepared to spend the rest of your life focused on trying to lose weight or maintaining your weight if it takes over your life?

Accept that bodies change. They are living breathing beings. Your body will not be a 20 year old’s body when you are 40, or 60.

Diversify your social media feed to see bodies of all sizes. Body diversity is real, but it is not happening on social media unless you make it happen. Don’t underestimate how powerful this one strategy is to undo some of the internalised messaging around bodies and weight.

Be kind and compassionate towards yourself as you are navigating this. A lot of feelings will inevitably come up. Anger, grief, sadness, joy, liberation, and more. Go gently.

Remember, you can trust your body and show your body that it can trust you too, by feeding it regularly and adequately, doing movement that feels good and rest when needed.