purplerabbits

The problem is that I do genuinely believe that no-one should diet, because I do genuinely believe that they do harm to the body in the long term. Now, this may, in time, be proved false, but there seems a reasonable amount of evidence to support it at the moment. However, I would also say that I appreciate that this is not where the world is at.

Hmm. Maybe it would do me good to try and write out what
I think, because sometimes I slide further into "no-one
should ever diet under any circumstances" than I want to.

I think my attitude is basically that I believe dieting is usually harmful in the long term, but metabolisms vary sufficiently that I consider it possible that this is not true for everyone, and I am also aware that it can have short-term benefits. I believe many of those benefits can be achieved in other ways, but that not all methods are equally convenient to every person in every context.

I believe that given my own personal history, I will be healthier if I do not diet and concentrate instead on increasing my trust in my own body's instincts, increasing the quality of what I eat and finding forms of exercise that I enjoy. The first two of those are sometimes in conflict, which I am in the process of figuring out how to resolve.

I believe that others have the right to reach their own conclusion on where the balance of the risks and benefits lies for them, and to implement their conclusion, and indeed I include in that the right to choose to self-harm [*], through dietary restrictions as through anything else.

I share your concerns about the difficulty of making such choices freely in our current culture, but I don't believe it's impossible, and I prefer not to second-guess the choices of a particular individual, or the freedom of those choices [*], unless either I am responsible for them (my kids, say) or they have invited my opinion. I have acquired more knowledge of how diets work in the short-term than was good for me, and if someone has made an informed choice to diet, I am usually willing to share anything from my experience that seems like it might help them to achieve their goal in the most healthful way possible, provided I think I can do it in a way that won't add to the social pressure on them to diet (and if I can't, I consider that a fault in my own communication skills).

On the other hand, I think activism that increases general awareness of the risks of and alternatives to dieting increases both the ease of making a free choice to diet and the ease of making a free choice not to diet, and is therefore a Good Thing.

I also think that activism that makes women who choose to diet feel guilty for not being feminist enough, or variations on that theme, decreases the ease of making either choice freely, and is therefore a Bad Thing [*].

[*] I am not suggesting that anyone on this thread or your original one is doing any of these things; they are all patterns I have sometimes come across elsewhere.

You see, I don't see the 'obvious implication' in what Paul has said. Just because eating less can mean people lose weight doesn't mean that overweight people are choosing this, or that choosing it would be bad. But then I know how helpful and supportive and non-judgemental (and how *not* like "a man") Paul has been with me, both during the nine years he's been with me while I wasn't dieting and during the one year when I have been. I would have hoped that other people who know him and me would also know this, and would have been less swift to leap to damning conclusions, but then, as I said, it's a terrifyingly emotive subject.