As a size 10 I definitely wouldn’t consider myself overweight. My jeans are a little harder to do up and my tummy is definitely wobblier since having my third child five years ago. But overweight? Unless I’m suffering from acute body dysmorphia, I don’t think so.
Recently, however, I went on a wellness retreat at a hotel in the south of France where the wellness advisor told me I should lose a few kilograms. Nestled among the hills above the glittering seas of the Côte d’Azur, it was the sort of hotel that wouldn’t look out of place in a Slim Aarons photograph, and on first appearances it looked like the sort of place you’d go to sip a negroni by the pool, not be advised to lose belly fat.
But it turned out this hotel took weight loss pretty seriously. With three “intensive weight loss” programmes, my wellbeing check-up didn’t diagnose my resting heart rate or my cholesterol levels, but rather how much fat was distributed on my body. Stripped down to my knickers, I stood on a machine that weighed me and measured my body-fat distribution by radio frequency, including visceral fat (the hidden kind that’s stored deep inside the body, and wrapped around internal organs). They also, somewhat terrifyingly, tested my body to see whether it was young or old for its age.
The results were then printed out and explained to me along with a programme for nutrition and exercise. My markers were all within the healthy range and, thankfully, my body’s age matched my actual age. But then the health advisor dropped the “w” bomb. She told me that while I wasn’t in any danger zone, according to my BMI, I could do with losing a few pounds in order to be at my optimum weight.
Now I’ll be honest, I’ve never been told to lose weight before. I have never owned a set of scales because I don’t want to obsess over the way I look, nor do I want to encourage my teenage daughter to obsess over her body. But I felt a little offended. OK, I would like to be able to do my jeans up without holding my breath, but overall I’m happy with the way I look and rarely question it.
Walking back to my room I felt annoyingly deflated, as if I’d failed a bit. I asked my 16-year-old whether she thought I needed to lose a bit of weight (not a question I have ever asked her before as I would never want to encourage any weight-loss paranoia) and she just said: “Don’t be ridiculous.”
However, if truth be told, it made me wonder for the first time since my teenage years whether or not I needed to shed a few pounds.
It also made me wonder whether France may be completely unaware of the body positivity movement we have here in the UK, one that celebrates curves, and embraces all body shapes and sizes. If I lost “a few kilograms” I would be a small size 10 – but is that their body ideal?
From my experience, the French aren’t shy about talking about weight loss. I recall a conversation with a pregnant British friend a few years ago who lives in France. She had put on a few pounds and her doctor had ordered her to go on a diet in the second trimester. I remember thinking how this would never happen in the UK, and in fact how it could be the sort of thing to whip the tabloids into a frenzy: “Pregnant woman advised to diet!”
But unlike us, the French actively encourage weight loss and the words that shout from the hotel website are “Love Losing Weight”. A spokesman from the hotel said: “We aren’t a clinic, we don’t take care of sick people,” before adding, “almost everyone wants to lose weight.”
That last sentence is deemed fairly controversial in the UK today. It wasn’t always like this, of course. Twenty years ago, magazines were awash with tips on getting the perfect “beach body” (you may remember the Special K advert that asked “Can you pinch more than an inch?”). But a quick glance at today’s magazine covers and scroll through social media shows we no longer write about weight loss in this way, and that “diet” has become something of a dirty word.
The body positivity movement, which celebrates all body types, is undoubtedly a force for good. Born out of social media, it feels like it has finally shifted our view of what a healthy body should look like, challenging weight phobia and liberating people with different sizes, shapes and body types. You need only compare a recent cover of British Vogue, which shows models of every size, shape and age, to a 1990s cover, which featured models a size 8 or smaller, to see how far we’ve come.
A few years ago I wrote a feature for a newspaper, which ran an accompanying picture of me on a paddleboard in a swimming costume and I received a message from an eating-disorder specialist who said I was wrongfully promoting being slim.
In France, there’s nothing woke about the attitude to weight loss however. Pamela Druckerman, the author of the bestselling book French Children Don’t Throw Food is an American living in Paris. She says: “I don’t think the French got the memo that women are beautiful in every size.” She says that slim, size 8 models still adorn every page of French glossy magazines and billboard campaigns, and that she notices a big difference between the eating habits of French and American women.
“The French definitely have smaller portions, they rarely snack between meals, and most women eat fruit for dessert. There is zero prejudice about wanting to be slim.”
So whose attitude to weight is right? Some health experts would argue that body positivity encourages obesity. We all know that obesity levels in the UK are at an all-time high, the highest in Europe. According to the NHS it is estimated that one in every four adults and one in every five children aged 10 to 11 is obese. According to the World Obesity Atlas these figures are set to rise from 23 per cent for men and from 37 per cent for women by 2030. It’s worth noting that obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) as 30 or above, yet many experts argue BMI is not an accurate way of measuring good health.
Either way, the conversation is a very difficult one to navigate. In one corner we are rightly smashing through the ingrained narrative that a size 8 is the ultimate body goal, but in the other, health experts are worried about the serious health risks of obesity.
According to Cancer Research UK, obesity is the second biggest cause of cancer after smoking. Meanwhile, the British Heart Foundation says it contributes to 31,000 heart and circulatory deaths every year and is believed to account for 80 to 85 per cent of the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
Yet when anyone mentions “weight loss” or “diet’” they are often accused of being fat-phobic. Sometimes it feels that the pendulum has swung so far in favour of bigger bodies that it’s not OK to be a size 10 nor want to be one.
As for France, while there is a perception that as a nation they are pencil slim, their obesity levels have also risen in recent years. While remaining much lower than the UK, a 2020 study by the Ligue Contre l’Obésité showed that 17 per cent of the French population are obese, a figure that has doubled since 1997. France’s obesity levels have particularly jumped in the 18-24 age bracket, which shows a 400 per cent increase over the past 25 years.
It’s becoming increasingly confusing what “healthy” is and whether weight gain (and weight loss for that matter) is good or bad. Performance coach Harry Jameson, who is the founder of Pillar Wellbeing (opening at Raffles London at the OWO this summer), says it’s a challenge at the moment to talk about obesity without opening yourself up to people accusing you of fat-shaming. He believes the solution to good health is all down to education. “Rather than using a shaming mentality, it’s important to talk about the facts and the pitfalls of a poor lifestyle. Teaching good food choices, exercise, sport and movement is only positive and I’ll happily argue with anyone who says it’s not,” he says.
“No country has the correct policies when it comes to food or diet culture,” says psychologist and author of Fat Is a Feminist Issue Susie Orbach. What she says is clear is that we need to overhaul the way we think about food and exercise. While the Government is focusing on limiting junk food placement in supermarkets, putting calorie counts on menus, and trialling an app soon in Wolverhampton that rewards healthy eating and exercise, Orbach says we have it all wrong.
“Weight loss doesn’t interest me,” she says. “We should be focusing on the emotional meaning of food and what it means to us and why we are hungry, and why we are stimulated to eat complete rubbish, or foods that are wholesome and nourishing.”
I couldn’t agree more. It has been proven that diets don’t work. We need to focus on health and wellbeing first and foremost and what our bodies are capable of, rather than obsessing over what they look like. Or as Orbach puts it: “Even if you are the ‘right weight’, it doesn’t mean you have a good conversation with food.”
Orbach describes us in today’s social media-obsessed world as “constantly facing a camera rather than getting on with life. We are all wondering what we look like when walking down the street.” Jameson agrees that we need to move away from a focus on size and weight and what we look like in the mirror, and instead his ethos is to educate people on the importance of a happy, healthy and constructive lifestyle, including how we eat, move, rest and play.
I am a case in point. Being weighed and told to drop a few pounds to reach my optimum weight planted a seed of doubt about the way I look. As a result I cut out snacking between meals. Is that such a bad thing? Should I have argued my case with the wellness advisor about why health can’t be measured by fat alone, rather than walking out feeling a bit wounded? After all, who’s to say what my “optimum weight” is anyway?
What do you think of the French versus British approaches to weight loss? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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I'd never been told to lose weight – until I went to a French wellness resort - The Telegraph
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