Busting the "If You Eat Like Me You Can Look Like Me" Myth
Written by Isabel Vasquez RD, LDN
We’ve all heard the myth that if you just eat “right” and workout, you can have the body of your dreams. Fitness and diet influencers and TV ads spew this idea all of the time. Usually, they’re promising that if you follow their meal plan and workout regimen you can have a body like theirs.
Yet, this is a myth. Body diversity is natural and normal, and even if we all ate and moved the same, our bodies wouldn’t all be the same.
Even the word ob*se is rooted in this myth. It comes from the Latin word obesus, meaning “having eaten until fat”. It’s part of why we avoid using this word in our work here at Your Latina Nutrition; it can be incredibly stigmatizing.
The truth is, there’s an immense amount of judgment in the assumption that people’s eating habits and exercise habits determine their body size. It overlooks the other factors that play a bigger role in determining our body size, and it’s highly stigmatizing specifically towards larger-bodied folks.
In this article, we’ll share four reasons why the idea of “if you eat like me you can look like me” is a myth so you can start embracing your beautifully unique body how it is.
Body diversity is normal from childhood
For children and teens, growth charts are used to measure changes in height, weight, and body mass index (BMI).
Example of CDC's height and weight for age growth chart for girls ages 2-20
Without going into too much detail, growth charts are comprised of percentile curves representing normal growth and development for kids and teens. The curves were created and revised using height and weight data collected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
So, for example, if a child trends in the 50th percentile for height, that means that if you lined up 100 American children in height order, that child would be right in the middle of the pack.
Medically, we expect a child or teen to trend around the same percentile for height and weight throughout childhood and adolescence, and it’s normal for different children to trend at different percentiles.
All that to say, even from childhood, body diversity is normal and natural! So how can we expect adults to fit one very narrow mold?
The role of genetics and metabolism
Your metabolism is what keeps all the functions running in your body whether you're resting or active, including cell repair, respiration, blood circulation, temperature regulation, and much more.
"People might have fast, slow, or average metabolism, regardless of their body size and composition," says Dr. Chih-Hao Lee, professor of genetics and complex diseases at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Many of us have firsthand experience with these metabolic differences. You might know people in smaller bodies who tend to eat more than others in larger bodies without gaining weight, and you may know people who’ve tried dieting but don’t sustain the weight loss. You might even have had that experience yourself!
These metabolic differences have a large genetic component, and play a large role in our body size. That brings us to the next factor: set point weight theory.
Set point weight theory
Related to the above points is set point weight theory. This is the idea that our bodies naturally gravitate towards a weight range, largely influenced by genetics, and will fight to maintain that range.
Related: What is Set Point Weight Theory?
This set point range could very well be within the “ov*rweight” or “ob*se” BMI categories, and that doesn’t mean your body is any less worthy.
Set point theory is a proposed explanation for why weight loss attempts almost always result in weight regain.
Simply eating and working out like someone else is not going to result in sustainable body changes. In fact, when our bodies feel threatened (through restriction or deprivation), they kick into semi-starvation mode, slowing down metabolism as they try performing as many functions as they can on minimal fuel.
This was demonstrated in the Biggest Loser study, which showed notable decreases in resting metabolic rate (RMR) among participants who had lost substantial amounts of weight on the show.
They needed to eat a dangerously low amount of calories to maintain the weight lost on the show.
This explains why up to ⅔ of dieters regain the weight lost from dieting and more. For those who are eating intuitively, weight set point can shift for reasons including hormonal shifts, age, and medications.
Our appearance says little about our eating and movement habits
At the end of the day, we can’t tell anything about someone’s eating or exercise habits based on how they look. And despite what society tells us, we can’t control our body size just by changing our exercise or eating habits.
Show yourself an immense amount of compassion as you come to terms with this.
Especially if you hold one or more marginalized identities, it can be painful to imagine that fitting in with the dominant identity is out of reach or would lead to extremely disordered eating or exercise behaviors.
That being said, we can work to plant seeds towards more inclusive care and a more inclusive society. It begins with getting curious about our own biases and getting honest with ourselves.
Your weight says little about who you are. You have inherent worth and deserve respect regardless of your health status, movement level, or eating habits.
For education on how to ADD nutrition to your favorite Latine cultural dishes, make peace with food, and focus on your health without dieting, check out our nutrition library.
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