Diet culture in muted beige yoga sets and New Year, New You nonsense
The Phrase That Makes My Eyelid Twitch
Every time I see a coach promising to help you “release excess weight,” my whole body does that full-system flinch.
You know the kind of thing I’m talking about:
“In my 12-week program, you’ll balance your hormones, release excess weight, and enjoy your favorite treats without guilt.”
Soft beige branding. Probably a lotus image somewhere. Green juice in abundance.
And underneath all that soothing language?
The same old story:
Your current body is a problem.
Your weight is a diagnosis.
Your appetite is suspicious.
I don’t hate these providers as people. A lot of them genuinely care. Many are trying to step away from harsh diet culture.
But I do have a bone to pick with this kind of language.
You cannot heal people with the same vocabulary that hurt them.
This isn’t about word-policing or being “too sensitive.”
It’s about what those words do to people’s nervous systems, and what they quietly reveal about whose bodies are considered acceptable — and whose are treated as mistakes.
Let’s talk about it.
Table of Contents
- Diet culture in muted beige yoga sets and New Year, New You nonsense
- The Phrase That Makes My Eyelid Twitch
- The Benefits Aren’t the Problem. The Framing Is.
- When “Liberatory” Wellness Still Worships Thinness
- The Quiet Violence of Calling a Body “Excess”
- How Pathologizing Weight Backfires (For Your Health, Too)
- What’s Actually True About Metabolic Health (Without the Body Shame)
- Language, Safety, and the Nervous System
- What a Truly Liberatory, Body-Neutral Approach Looks Like
- You Can’t Heal People With the Language That Hurt Them
- Want Support That Doesn’t Treat Your Body Like a Problem?
The Benefits Aren’t the Problem. The Framing Is.
Let me say this clearly:
Metabolic health is not the villain here.
Things like:
- steadier energy
- fewer crashes
- improved blood sugar regulation
- better sleep
- more mobility
- feeling less inflamed and more alive in your body
Those are neutral, valid, good outcomes.
They’re not diet culture. They’re physiology.
There’s an entire, well-documented framework — Health at Every Size® (HAES®) — that argues we should focus on weight-neutral outcomes instead of making weight loss the primary goal. My entire business is built on a HAES-aligned foundation: we focus on behaviors, capacity, and lived experience — not the number on the scale.
HAES emerged in response to evidence that intentional weight loss often fails long-term and can worsen health, and that stigma itself harms people’s health. PubMed+1
So no, I’m not mad at:
- helping someone improve their A1C
- supporting joint health
- improving cardiovascular fitness
- teaching people how to stabilize their energy with food and movement
I’m mad at how those benefits get packaged:
“Release excess weight.”
“Indulge without guilt.”
“Drop the holiday pounds.”
“Trim stubborn fat.”
These phrases aren’t neutral descriptors. They carry the entire worldview of diet culture on their backs:
- Smaller bodies are better bodies.
- There is a “right” amount of you. Anything above that is “excess.”
- Eating certain foods should cause guilt by default.
- You must constantly monitor, fix, and control your body to be acceptable.
The benefits are fine.
The framing is the problem.
When “Liberatory” Wellness Still Worships Thinness
Here’s what drives me up the wall…
So many modern wellness offers are trying to do this little dance:
- “Love your body!”
- “Trust your intuition!”
- “Ditch diets!”
…and also:
- “Release excess weight!”
- “Flatten your belly naturally!”
- “Drop two dress sizes without dieting!”
Pick a lane.
You cannot invite someone into body liberation while still marketing to their fear that their body is wrong.
You cannot preach intuition while using fear of fatness as your main sales hook.
Research in weight science has already been pushing back on this for years. Work by Lindo Bacon and others shows that a weight-neutral focus on behaviors — things like movement, intuitive eating, and stress reduction — can improve health markers without the collateral damage of chronic dieting and weight cycling. PubMed+1
At the same time, motivation research in exercise (Teixeira and colleagues’ self-determination theory review) has consistently found that autonomous, self-directed motivation — not shame, pressure, or fear — is what predicts long-term movement. PubMed+1
So when a practitioner says:
“I help women step into food freedom and body love and also finally release that stubborn excess weight…”
What I hear is:
“I know you’re exhausted by diet culture, so I’m going to say ‘body love’ out loud… but I still believe the real win is a smaller body.”
It’s like trying to sell revolution using the logic of the oppressor.
You can call it “empowerment” all day. If your marketing still worships thinness, it’s just diet culture in a yoga wrap.
The Quiet Violence of Calling a Body “Excess”
Let’s zoom in on that word for a second:
Excess.
“Excess weight.”
“Release excess fat.”
“Let go of what no longer serves you” — and by “what” they mean… your body.
That word sounds clinical and harmless. But inside that one word is a whole hierarchy.
Because if there’s “excess” then there must be a correct, acceptable, ideal version of you:
- a correct size
- a correct shape
- a correct outline of your body where everything outside the line is wrong
It suggests there is literally too much of you.
That some part of your physical existence is a problem by definition.
And this didn’t appear out of nowhere.
As sociologist Sabrina Strings argues in Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, the belief that larger bodies were undisciplined, unhealthy, or morally inferior did not come from neutral medical science. It grew out of racism, Protestant moralism, and white supremacist fears about Black women’s bodies. (NYU Press)
Fatphobia, Strings argues, is about using the body to justify race, class, and gender prejudice — not about protecting health. Center for the Study of Women
The thin ideal was built as a way to separate “civilized” white femininity from the stereotypes projected onto Black women and other marginalized bodies. (Reparations Club)
So when someone casually calls your body “excess,” they’re not just using a random word. They’re unconsciously echoing a hierarchy that was never about health in the first place — it was about control.
So when someone casually labels your body as “excess,” they are not just being a little rude. They are echoing a system that has historically:
- pathologized Black bodies
- tied fatness to laziness, lack of self-control, and moral failure
- used body size as a tool of social control
As a coach, I talk about this often with clients. Because your body image didn’t come out of your individual “willpower.” It came out of systems that trained you to see certain bodies — especially Black and fat bodies — as problems.
I’m not going to dive fully into that history here (that deserves its own post), but this matters.
Because the language we use about bodies always carries a lineage.
And when practitioners repeat phrases like “excess weight,” even wrapped in soft spiritual or holistic aesthetics, they’re standing on a very old, very violent foundation — whether they mean to or not.
“Excess weight” isn’t a neutral health term. It’s a slur in a lab coat.
How Pathologizing Weight Backfires (For Your Health, Too)
When we call weight “excess,” we’re not just describing. We’re pathologizing.
We turn body size into a disease in and of itself — which is scientifically shaky and deeply harmful.
It treats your weight as a disease to be cured rather than one of many neutral traits your body can have.
And pathologizing weight:
- increases shame and body surveillance
- makes people less likely to seek medical care
- contributes to stress, anxiety, and disordered eating
- can directly harm health outcomes
Author and organizer Aubrey Gordon has written extensively about how anti-fat bias itself — not fatness — is a major driver of poor health. Weight stigma leads to delayed care, misdiagnosis, and mistreatment.
Meanwhile, mainstream medicine’s overreliance on BMI has been critiqued for narrowing what’s considered a “healthy” body and ignoring the real harms of stigma. Journal of Ethics
From a behavior-change perspective, this is also just bad strategy. Self-determination theory research keeps showing that shame and external pressure actually undermine sustainable behavior change. Autonomous, internally meaningful reasons for moving your body predict better adherence over time. PubMed+1
So when a practitioner says:
“I’ll help you finally lose that excess weight so you can feel confident again…”
They’re doing at least three harmful things:
- Treating your current body as a medical problem.
- Tying your self-worth to thinness.
- Ignoring the fact that chronic stigma, not body size itself, may be at the heart of a lot of health issues.
That’s not neutral.
That’s not “just marketing.”
That’s harm.
What’s Actually True About Metabolic Health (Without the Body Shame)
Here’s the part that gets completely lost in “release excess weight” culture:
We can talk about metabolic health honestly without making your body the villain.
We can care about:
- blood sugar regulation
- cholesterol and blood pressure
- joint function and pain
- sleep, mood, and energy
- strength, mobility, and endurance
…without implying that these things are only worth pursuing if they result in visible weight loss.
Hormone expert Dr. Lara Briden, for example, writes about insulin resistance as a metabolic condition that affects things like PCOS, perimenopause, and cardiovascular risk — and can be addressed via nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress, not just weight loss. NDNR+1
Her work is a great example of something that should be basic but still feels radical:
Metabolic information can be specific and science-y without pathologizing body size. The goal is metabolic flexibility and quality of life, not squeezing your body into a racist, arbitrary ideal.
Similarly, HAES-aligned approaches say: focus on behaviors like intuitive eating and gratifying movement; let weight land where it lands. The goal is metabolic flexibility and quality of life, not squeezing your body into a racist, arbitrary ideal. PubMed+1
Motivation researcher Dr. Michelle Segar makes a parallel point about movement. People stick with exercise when it feels supportive, enjoyable, and personally meaningful — not when it’s framed as punishment for having the “wrong” body. Michelle Segar Strategy+1
So an honest, liberatory framing of metabolic care sounds more like:
- “We’ll work on stabilizing your energy so your afternoons don’t feel like a crash.”
- “We’ll support your joints so walking, climbing stairs, and moving through your life feels more doable.”
- “We’ll help your nervous system feel safer so movement feels less like an attack and more like support.”
Notice:
No moralizing.
No pathologizing your shape.
No promise that your body will become “less” in order to be worthy of care.
Just more supported.
Language, Safety, and the Nervous System
Here’s the part that gets completely lost in “release excess weight” culture:
Why am I so fired up about a few phrases?
Because for many of us, health and fitness spaces are already loaded with nervous system landmines.
And language is one of the first ways your body decides:
“Am I safe here?”
If you’ve lived through:
- chronic dieting
- eating disorder treatment
- overexercise
- medical fatphobia
- body-shaming families or partners
…then your nervous system is already on high alert in health and fitness spaces.
When a provider uses phrases like:
- “stubborn fat”
- “problem areas”
- “excess weight”
Your nervous system reads it immediately:
“We are not safe here. We are a problem to be solved here.”
Even if consciously you’re like, “They seem nice!”
some deeper part of you has already decided, “This is not a safe place to be fully myself.”
That matters.
Because behavior change — especially with movement and food — requires trust:
- trust in your provider
- trust in your own signals
- trust that you won’t be shamed for having a human body
If their language keeps poking old wounds, your nervous system is going to fight the process the whole way:
- you’ll rebel
- you’ll ghost the program
- you’ll dissociate during sessions
- or you’ll comply on the surface while feeling more disconnected underneath
And then, predictably, they’ll say:
“See? You just don’t have enough discipline.”
No.
You just didn’t have enough safety.
You cannot build sustainable behavior change on top of a nervous system that is bracing for impact.
Safety isn’t optional. It’s the foundation.
What a Truly Liberatory, Body-Neutral Approach Looks Like
So if “release excess weight” is out, what does a more liberatory approach look and sound like?
Here’s how I think about it in my work as an Intuitive Fitness Coach and within my Elite Everyday Athlete framework:
1. No body pathologizing. Ever.
I don’t:
- call your weight “excess”
- talk about “problem areas”
- treat fatness as a medical emergency by default
I do talk about:
- pain
- energy
- mobility
- sleep
- strength
- stress
- your actual lived experience inside your body
2. Weight-neutral, HAES-aligned framing
I focus on behaviors and capacities:
- How is your body feeling and functioning?
- What does “more support” look like in your real life?
- What kinds of movement feel regulating, grounding, or empowering to you?
Weight is not the report card.
3. Nervous-system-first coaching
We’re not just training muscles. We’re training safety:
- titrating intensity
- honoring pain and fatigue
- building in rest on purpose
- choosing movement that feels like care, not punishment
4. Honest language, no euphemisms
Instead of softening violent ideas with spiritual gloss, I just… don’t use the violent ideas.
You will never see me write:
“release excess weight”
You might see:
“build strength so stairs don’t suck”
“move in a way that actually works with your cycle and your energy”
“support your joints so playing with your kids feels less painful”
“find movement that feels like it was built for your body, not someone else’s ideal”
I don’t pretend bodies don’t matter.
I just refuse to treat any body as a problem to be solved.
5. Your body, your rules
You are a whole human with:
- history
- context
- trauma and tenderness
- joy and preference
- responsibilities and constraints
The point is not to sculpt you into something more palatable. The point is to help you build a relationship with movement that actually feels like care, grow your capacity to live the life you want to live, and experience strength, stability, and presence in the body you have right now.
Your body is not the obstacle to your life.
It is your life.
My job is to help you inhabit it with more trust, not to whittle it down.
You Can’t Heal People With the Language That Hurt Them
If someone is still selling you “release excess weight” and “indulge without guilt,” they are not doing something edgy or evolved.
They are doing what the wellness industry has always done:
- pathologizing bodies that don’t fit a racist, arbitrary ideal
- monetizing your shame and calling it “empowerment”
- dressing up old harm in new fonts and softer words
If you’re someone who’s been burned by this language before, you’re not crazy for feeling that little internal flinch when you see those words.
Your body is reading the subtext.
Your nervous system is clocking the threat.
Your intuition is saying, “We’ve been here before and it did not go well.”
You deserve support that doesn’t require you to see your body as a mistake. You were never “too much.” Your body was never “excess.”
You deserve practitioners who have done the work to unlearn the racist, fatphobic, perfectionist lineage behind the “ideal body” — and aren’t just slapping new fonts on old harm.
And if you’re a provider reading this and feeling called in: good.
This isn’t about shame.
It’s an invitation.
You get to evolve your language.
You get to drop the euphemisms.
You get to build offers that don’t rely on people hating their bodies to say yes.
That’s the work.
That’s the revolution.
And no, we’re not going to sell it using the logic of oppression.
Want Support That Doesn’t Treat Your Body Like a Problem?
If this made your shoulders drop a little in relief — like, “Oh, it’s not just me” — here are a few ways we can work together:
- 1:1 Intuitive Fitness Coaching (with personal training)
For women and non-binary folks who want a shame-free, body-neutral training plan designed around their actual life, energy, and capacity — not some imaginary “perfect” week.
- Movement Mindset Coaching (coaching only)
For folks untangling from diet culture, healing their relationship with movement, and wanting nervous-system-aware coaching without live workouts.
- Why You Hate Fitness (on-demand workshop)
A $25 workshop that helps you understand why traditional fitness has felt so awful — and how to start building a relationship with movement that doesn’t rely on body shame or “excess weight” narratives.
Because you were never “too much.”
Your body was never “excess.”
And you get to choose a version of fitness that finally treats you that way.
