This is simply not necessarily true. Even when weight loss is intentional and the goal, that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for the individual. In fact, given that dieting is a major trigger for eating disorders and disordered eating, it’s quite often NOT healthy, though still applauded and celebrated.

Furthermore, all sorts of things can trigger weight loss… stress, grief, depression, illnesses like cancer, etc. They’re not necessarily healthy things or positive things. We’ve been taught to see weight loss as such a positive that we often “congratulate” a serious illness or eating disorder and have no idea.

Hell, when I was in the worst of my dieting and eating disorder days, I had a friend with scleroderma who lost over 100 lbs. She was miserable, in a lot of pain — and when she told me that part, I actually, appallingly, said to her, “well at least that’s a silver lining!”

She said, “trust me, no one wants to lose weight this way.”

I thought, I do. I’ll lose weight however I possibly can…

She was dead before the end of the year.

So don’t assume that weight loss = health. It too often doesn’t, even when the person is being celebrated for their weight loss “accomplishments.”

Finally, mental health is critical to overall health. The narrative that weight loss is the only way to achieve overall health (which is often at least partially beyond our control) fuels a LOT of very unhealthy behaviors that cause poor mental health. And again, too often these behaviors are viewed as enviable or willpower or self-control or some other supposedly positive thing… and yet the person might be in the worst place they’ve been in terms of both physical AND mental health. But all anyone cares about (too often including doctors) is that they’re losing weight. The cost of that is inconsequential.

Until it’s not.