Episode 3: Myth: Dieting and weight loss will fix my fertility
Episode Summary
On this episode of Fat and Fertile, we explore the myth that weight loss and dieting will fix fertility.
We look at three different assumptions that mean that the idea of dieting as a fertility fix persists and the one piece of advice I give all my clients around food.
What to Expect from the Podcast
Dieting is ineffective and harmful, leading to disordered eating and negative impacts on mental health and metabolism. Behavior changes, such as increased physical activity and healthier eating, are more beneficial than weight loss. Nicola also critiques the concept of "fertility diets," highlighting that social determinants of health, like access to care and stress management, are more impactful on fertility than diet alone.
Highlights
Myths About Dieting and Fertility
Weight Loss and Its Implications
The Problem with Fertility Diets
Social Determinants of Health
Links and Resources
Nicola’s book, Fat and Fertile
Get Involved
Nicola would love to hear from you! If this episode resonates, share your story, ask a question, or leave a review.
Support the Podcast
If you’re enjoying Fat and Fertile, please share this episode on social or leave a review! Every share helps make this info more accessible to everyone who needs it.
Explore More with Nicola
Support My Work: Buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi to help keep my podcast and free resources accessible.
Follow Me on Instagram: Join me here for fat-positive fertility tips, updates, and encouragement.
Free Resources for Fat Folks: Access a hub of tools designed to support your fat-positive fertility journey, including guides, checklists, research summaries, and my popular Can I Get Pregnant in a Bigger Body? workshop.
👉 Explore all these resources here and take your first step toward parenthood without stigma or shame. I’m cheering you on every step of the way!
-
Steve, thanks for tuning in to episode three of fat and fertile the podcast. In this episode, we will be covering the persistent myth that dieting and all weight loss is the solution for fat people to fix their fertility. We're going to explore three main points around the idea that dieting and losing weight will help you get pregnant. But first things first, unless you've had a blood test or a scan that shows there is something specifically going on, then there is no reason to assume that you need to fix your fertility. Doctors do not possess X ray eyes where they can diagnose you based on your body size. That is not how medicine works. If there is an issue and all bodies have issues, all bodies experience health complications now and then then, it needs to be diagnosed with the proper tests and using the diagnostic parameters for that individual illness. A classic example of this that I see time and time again is PCOS, or polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a hormonal and metabolic condition that many, many folks navigate and have, and I've lost track of the amount of people that I've spoken to who've been diagnosed based on body size alone. I want to make this really clear that is not medicine. You cannot give someone a diagnosis based on their body size. That is just bias. Pure and simple, PCOS has a set of three very specific criteria, and you need two of those before you can be formally diagnosed with it. Those three criteria are an irregular cycle cysts on your ovaries and increased levels of testosterone or androgens in your blood, so you need to have blood tests and you need to have an internal ultrasound scan before you can be given that diagnosis. And it happens so often to fat folks that we are diagnosed purely based on our body size, not using medicine. So the point that I'm trying to make here is that fatness does not equal and healthy, and fatness is not a cause of fertility issues. Just because you are fat, that does not mean that there is anything wrong with your hormones or that your body is making it more difficult to get pregnant, which is why prescribing weight loss or dieting is absolutely not evidence based and totally unethical. And I'm going to explain why, because the second piece of this puzzle is that most clinicians wrongly assume that we can easily change our weight without any negative side effects, and this is a big assumption, the reality is that weight is non modifiable. Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean is that you cannot control your weight. The mantra eat less, move more, grossly oversimplifies the incredibly complex nature of your body. Your weight is controlled by over 100 different factors. And I'll reference some research around this in the show notes. And we know from decades of research that any form of intentional weight loss ultimately fails. There are books and countless studies on this, so I'll reference some sources in the show notes for you to go and research this idea further. But in a nutshell, whenever you've been on a diet and it's failed, it's not your fault, no matter what diet that was, no matter what food you cut out, or time that you didn't eat, or smoothie or shake or juice, no matter what it was if you regained weight afterwards, it was not your fault. For all different types of diets, you'll likely lose weight in the short term, whether that's a little or a lot, but the majority of folks will go on to regain any weight that they've lost, and it's not because you're lazy or unmotivated, it's simply because diets don't work. No diet has any evidence that it works long term. If you look at any of the research papers that look at the results of dieting, they only ever measure it in the short to medium term, and you can see on their graphs that as soon as they stop measuring people's outcomes, the graph is starting to tip. Into where people are regaining that weight and often more. But what's the harm? You might ask? You know, okay, maybe it doesn't work, but is it doing any damage? Really well? It turns out, dieting is really, really problematic and really harmful. Dieting leads to disordered eating patterns and eating disorders, and it can have a huge negative impact on your mental health. Think of all that time, energy and money that you've spent focused on diets, on weight loss and food. I've spent the majority of my teens and my 20s hyper focused on making my body smaller. My whole life revolved around following a diet, failing a diet, moving on to the next one, and continuing that cycle. My brain was chock a block full of thoughts around what I could eat, what I couldn't eat. If I could have another biscuit? Should I eat another thing? I'm so hungry, maybe I can't eat that feeling guilty for what I had eaten. It was exhausting. And when I finally said, Enough is enough, the amount of brain space that I then had three to think about other things was huge. It felt like such an enormous weight had lifted off my shoulders. So there is harm that comes when we're dieting, and it impacts not only our mental health and our ability to do other things, but it also impacts our metabolism. We know that dieting has a negative impact on our metabolism. And we can see that with the idea of weight cycling, where our weight, after many years of yo yo dieting, will go up and down and up and down. As we try one diet, regain the weight, try another diet, lose some regain the weight and this weight cycling, where your weight is going up and down over time, we know, has a negative impact on our metabolism and how our body functions. So, yeah, so dieting is not without its risks, which is really, really important if you want to pursue weight loss to know all of the facts around it before you decide whether you want to do it or not. Another thing that you might have commonly heard in the fertility world is this idea that if you just lose five to 10% of your body weight, then your body will magically become more fertile. It's used by so many doctors, fertility clinics, websites, forums, it's really everywhere. Every, practically every website that talks about fertility talks about this. So I'm going to tell you why this is total bullshit. Firstly, it makes absolutely no sense. Let's take an example. Say, we have someone with a high BMI. They lose 5% of their body weight and they still have a high BMI. So this person has reduced their BMI slightly, but they still have a high BMI. How can this person suddenly become more fertile than someone who was at that weight to start with. How can we say that? Oh, fatness is bad. Fatness is infertile and healthy, yet somebody still remain in that bracket that we've deemed unhealthy, but all of a sudden now, because they've lost this magical percentage, it makes them more healthy. It's almost like there's not actually about the weight, and it isn't, which is the whole point. What I believe is actually going on here is that when doctors see that somebody starts to lose a little bit of weight, and then they just get pregnant,
people are often changing their behaviors. So with that little bit of weight loss, people are doing something differently, and it's those behaviors that are making the difference, not the weight, not whether the weights got up or down, because, because some of those behaviors will actually be supportive of their fertility. So things like moving your body, drinking more water, eating more fruit and vegetables. It's not about the restriction of the dieting or the weight loss that's making the impact, but it's those behavior changes, and it's that is the important thing, because it's the behaviors that we can control, not the weight, and this is at this result has actually been shown in research. So one study, which, again, I'll reference in the show notes, looked at two different groups of people. The first took part in health promoting behavior, so things like moving your body, drinking more water, eating more fruit and veg. So. And the other group didn't was like a control group, but what they found is, compared with the group who didn't do the health promoting behaviors, the people who did them saw a positive impact on things that we can measure, like blood pressure and blood sugars, which we know impact health regardless of whether their weight went up, went down or stayed the same, so the people who were performing these behaviors found that they had a positive impact on their health, and it was irrelevant what their weight did. Yet, the majority of studies that look at weight and health, they don't separate out this idea that the behaviors have an impact versus the weight change. But what about fertility diets? I hear you ask, surely eating their quote, unquote, right foods will help to get pregnant faster, even if my weight doesn't change, and I really understand why we want this to be true. Dieting in any form is basically telling our body that it's in a famine, an illusion, and evolutionarily speaking, that meant it was a terrible time to get pregnant. So our bodies learned that when there was a famine going on, that we need to save resources as much as possible, including shutting down reproduction until a time when food is available and you'll be able to get enough food to sustain you your pregnancy and your future baby. Evolutionarily speaking, that makes total sense, because when food wasn't abundant, as it is for the majority of folks now, it made sense for your body to be able to shut that on and off to continue the species well. Now there are 1000s of fidelity act diets out there, and they say things like cut out sugar and coffee and dairy and adding all these other specific foods that give you all these other specific minerals and vitamins, and they must be right, right? And I totally understand why these fertility diets have become so popular. Food is the one thing that we can control out of a million things that feel outside of our control when it comes to fertility. But I think it's really important to take a bigger picture. Look at this, because restricting foods and putting rules on food can be really damaging to our mental health, and especially for folks fat folks who maybe have had a history of dieting, it's really important to see whether the potential benefit of that is outweighs any potential harm. So I want to introduce you to this idea of the social determinants of health. And this is a thing that's been studied many times by different organizations and companies, including the CDC, which is the Center for Disease Control within the US. And these are things that have been studied on a population level to find out what really impacts our health as a population of people, and what all of these studies have found is that the majority of our health is impacted by things totally beyond our control, like our genetics, our biology, our access to health care, like how quickly we can see a doctor or a specialist if we need to basic things, Like our access to food, to clean water, to shelter, to warmth, and all the so called lifestyle factors make up about 15 to 20% of what impacts our health. So it's a really small percentage of actually what is going to impact our health when we look at it like that, and in that 15 to 20% that includes how much sleep we're getting, how we react to stress, our hydration, our food, our movement, it's everything that's in our control. So we're sold this idea that food and exercise rule our health, and those are the only things that make a difference, but actually they make up a tiny portion of what impacts our health and other things like getting enough rest, getting good quality sleep, finding ways to support our stress, drinking enough water, those things have just as much impact as the food that we eat, restricting our food, especially if you're someone with a history of disordered eating, or an eating disorder, can cause more stress and can rule out any of the potential benefit that you might get from any of the nutrients in the food that you choose. And if you think about food on a like global scale. On we eat a tiny portion of what foods we could be eating on this planet. If you imagine all the different foods and plants and animals that exist on this planet, we eat a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of those. So why are those the foods that make up a quote, unquote, balanced diet? It's purely based on what foods we've had available to us as a population, as we've developed over years. It's based now on what foods are trendy, what foods Western culture has deemed acceptable, what health slogans companies are marketing their products with, and how we've cultivated food over time. It's not about really. What is that balanced diet is just random the foods that we've deemed normal and normalized to eat over time. And of course, that changes with every culture. Every culture on our planet has different foods that are normalized for them. So it's total garbage that there is this thing as a balanced diet that everybody eats and it makes sense for their body, like when you think about it in the global perspective, like it makes no sense at all. So the only piece of nutrition advice that I ever give people is to eat enough full stop. And while that sounds simple, that can actually be a lot harder than you think, because we've been taught to undernourish our bodies for years through diets and through ideas of what we, quote, unquote, should be eating, as long as you are getting carbs, fats and proteins in your body, and your body is getting enough energy to feel safe and to thrive, that is going to be what signals to your reproductive system that it's safe to get pregnant. I know how hard it is to move away from this constant message that you need to change what you eat or the size of your body to improve your chances of getting pregnant, and no matter what action you've taken in the past, you are only doing your absolute best with the information you had. So this is what I would love you to take away from this episode, fat bodies are so capable of getting pregnant. Fat does not equal unhealthy, and your body is so capable of that your weight isn't within your control to change no matter what you do, your weight isn't modifiable over the long term. And finally, you do not need to find yet another fertility diet to get pregnant. All you need to do is feed your body enough so that it feels safe. I'm sending you so much love as you navigate this because dieting, weight loss. These messages are everywhere, and I know how difficult it can be to filter them out. So I'm sending you so much love, and I'm here if you need anything.
Get Involved: Nicola would love to hear from you! If this episode resonates, share your story, ask a question, or leave a review. You can also join the Fat and Fertile Alliance - a friendly space to connect with others on similar paths.
Support the Podcast: If you’re enjoying Fat and Fertile, please share this episode on social or leave a review! Every share helps make this info more accessible to everyone who needs it.
Apologies for any typos - transcribed byhttps://otter.ai - it can make mistakes! If you need clarification on anything - please get in touch!