There are high highs and weird lows to significant body change. Here’s what I’ve learned. In my early 20s I lost around 70 pounds. Now I’m 34 and am still that much lighter. …

“Skinny” and “fat” aren’t enough. Content note: Description of body sizes, weights, weight loss. There was some conversation last week about actor Emma Thompson donning a fat suit as Miss Trunchbull in the upcoming Netflix film, “Matilda the Musical.” Why, many people ask, do films and television continue to cast…

Some foods offer more or less nutrition than others. We shouldn’t think of food as “bad” or “good,” but we should understand it better to make choices in a twisted system. Bon Appétit, a leading American food publication, says it’s redefining “junk food.” It recently published a package of stories about how it’s “time to look beyond the nutrition label and recognize that junk food can be good to us, too.” BA asserts that “junk food” — which it defines as…

You, the customer, have to push for it. Note: If you like this piece, subscribe to my newsletter on body image, strength training, and eating, Body Type. Writer Amanda Mull recently published a piece for The Atlantic: “What the Fitness Industry Doesn’t Understand.” (Read about Hampton Liu’s excellent beginner exercise YouTube videos in the piece!) It doesn’t understand…

On manic preoccupations, beauty as self-worth, and raising children in an appearance-obsessed world. Note: Contains discussion of disordered eating, weight loss/numbers, and instances of body shaming/harassment. After we’d learned that beauty and male attention were ostensible commodities, sometime around seventh grade, my best friend-slash-neighbor and I would sometimes walk to “The Rock.” The Rock was a flat-topped boulder in the lawn of a…

There must be a reason why they can’t shut up about how great exercise is. I’m a “fitness”* person. I like to work out, I do it often, and I want to talk about it. Fitness people are annoying. They can be smug, self-righteous, bottomless fonts of unsolicited advice. They enjoy doing what many people dislike and want them to do it, too. …

Our conversations about bodies are a little broken. We can fix it. If you like this post, please subscribe to my newsletter, Body Type! Note: Contains discussion of disordered eating behaviors. I got a newsletter recently with the title: “If My Daughter Wanted to ‘Eat Healthier,’ I Would Respond Like…

Meals that give you some nutrition, but also take almost no time, are possible. If you enjoy this piece, please check out my newsletter, Body Type: bodytype.substack.com. Eating is exasperating. Not the act, but the planning and deciding. In the past I would have considered figuring out what to eat just for myself more vexing than being in a group chat of people figuring…

When you get smaller, people say weird things, you think weird things, and you might be kind of sad I had no idea how weird going from living in a fat body to a not-fat body can be until I experienced it. For so long, I only saw weight loss stories of complete, transformative triumph–the body was “fixed.” The work was done. …