Healthism: Nuance, self-compassion, and re-defining “health” to fit your lived experience
By: Hadley Gordon, MS, RDN, (she/her)
Are you pursuing “health” in your life but coming up short? Are you feeling overwhelmed by all of the recommendations floating around in mainstream media and simultaneously ashamed that you can’t do it all? Keep reading to hear some thoughts on how to re-frame this concept and step into a more compassionate and nuanced space as it relates to your pursuit of health.
If you take a second to step back and look around, it becomes clear that society’s view of health is privileged and oversimplified. It’s no question that nutritious food is beneficial for human bodies – just as it is no question that sleeping an average of 8 hours nightly, moving your body regularly, and engaging in stress reducing activities are all behaviors that promote a less stressful state of being. Although this information is so widely understood, underlined, and repeated, the dialogue around it neglects the complexity of individual circumstances. Additionally, the communication of this information to the public oftentimes leaves out any discussion of healthism, which is necessary in evaluating your individual choices and actions.
The overall goal of this blog post is to motivate you to ask the following questions:
What is “health” to society and to me?
Am I invalidating my own lived experience or giving up important aspects of my life within my quest for “health”?
If so, is that really a quest for “health”?
Where do I personally want to go from here?
Humans are complex creatures:
Humans are complex creatures with whole lives, responsibilities, traumas, fears, disabilities, circumstances, and limitations that must be considered when discussing “health”.
Nutrition in general is a relatively new field with very significant limitations in its research. These can include lack of diversity, small sample sizes (therefore unable to fully represent the general population), self-selection bias (the concept that people in nutrition studies choosing to be involved potentially have more time and effort to make nutrition a main priority for the length of the study than the average human), and/or many others. These limitations all leave out extremely important nuances, which are necessary for implementing different dietary modifications.
Leaving nuance out of nutrition recommendations stemming from dietary research inherently neglects lived experiences that directly get in the way of such recommendations. For example: an affluent, white, cisgender, able bodied, non-fat male working a traditional 40-hour per week job with a yearly income of >$100,000 would likely have the time, energy, access, money, and mental space necessary to eat 3-5 fruits or vegetables daily, prioritize eating at home over grabbing “fast food”, or make it to the gym 5 days per week. However, a queer, fat person of color working 2 jobs making minimum wage with lived experience that involves stigma from healthcare providers, systemic oppression, and debt (from buying a car in order to make it to work) likely does not have the time to even get 8 hours of sleep, much less cook a homemade meal, nightly.
Just like these examples, you yourself are a complex being with lived experiences that dictate your ability / capacity / desire to engage with any set of behaviors that may contribute to what science indicates is healthy.
What is “health”?
By now you’ve probably noticed that “health” has been in quotation marks throughout this entire blog. This is intentional to give due justice to the fact that the concept of “health” is often discussed in an objective manner when it can truly be seen as something extremely subjective. Each person has the power to determine what “health” means for them individually as well as what priority “health” as a whole has in their life. However, because our society functions in such a way that “health” is often discussed in an objective manner, we will look at it this way first.
Because our society is founded upon a culture of white supremacy, we exist in a system that is hyper-fixated on “perfection” in all aspects of life – including “health”. This pursuit of perfection is fundamentally unachievable and often lands people in compromising positions.
Disordered eating is commonly based upon the desire to be “perfect” with regard to nutrition as a pursuit of “health”. However, it turns out that “health” – objectively – involves much more than just eating fruits and vegetables. When we focus too much on one area of “health”, such as nutrition, we can unintentionally neglect other areas that are equally as important. Below is a diagram showing just how many factors impact “health” (note: this diagram is not exhaustive, see: other).
This is just one example of how leaning too far into just one area of your health can disrupt the stability of others. In many cases, quests for weight loss that turn into disordered eating or eating disorders can lead to medical instability, increased systemic stress, social complications, spiritual disconnection, malnutrition, mental health disruptions, and even financial upsets.
Another example here involves considering the stress that circulates within one’s nervous system when they focus really strongly on comparing foods and making the “best” food choices. It can be assumed that the stress response associated with the inner turmoil of hyper-fixating on food choices to the extent of not being present in life could be damaging to overall well-being or “health”.
What is “healthism”?
Healthism, defined by R. Crawford in their 1980 publication, refers to “the preoccupation with personal health as a primary – often the primary – focus for the definition and achievement of well-being; a goal which is to be attained primarily through the modification of life styles.” As a society that is fixated on “health” in general (as indicated by the constant influx of new science and “health” information being communicated on all levels of media), it is a foreign concept to consider the option to not have “health” as the primary focus for achieving well-being; however, that doesn’t mean it has to be. The idea that we must be “healthy” is an idea rooted in white supremacy and ableism. Humans do not always have access to “health” – referring to the blanket term used in mainstream society – nor does “health” need to be the main goal of human life. It is up to you, and you alone, to decide what the pursuit of your life is, taking into consideration all that your humanness entails. It is also well within your right to determine what “health” means for you! It can absolutely include all of the components of the above diagram and more, OR it can include none of them.
Applying this to your own life:
As it turns out, lack of “health” (whether objective or subjective) is not due to individual failure – forget the age-old adage of discipline and ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Instead, lack of “health” can be attributed to the many barriers inherent in our society (think: system-wide issues such as homelessness, oppression, poverty, productivity expectations, etc.), the complexity within an individual's life circumstances, and/or different definitions or priorities for different individuals.
It is possible to apply all of this to your own life through the following steps:
Define “health” for yourself – this can be a really complex and even traumatic part of this process. Doing this with the support of trusted individuals or healthcare professionals can provide a safe space to unpack limiting beliefs, individual circumstances, and even safety around going against the grain within society.
Assess what kind of priority you’d like that definition to take in your life – again, this can be complex and support can be beneficial here.
Take steps to achieve that level of priority – apply self-compassion to your own experiences through recognizing and validating all of the barriers you have in your life that get in the way of your definition of “health”. This practice of self-compassion allows you to shift away from shame/guilt and towards recognizing how oversimplified health recommendations truly are.
Either on your own or with support, you can step into the space of adjusting the way you view “health” to fit your needs!