What Does Weight Loss Mean to You in Midlife?

If menopause is your second puberty then it’s also diet culture’s second time to have a really good go at you! A a woman in my fifties, my body has been changing and the diet industry is happy to offer to help me “fix” it. I’m blasted by social media ads and influencers telling me I can get rid of my “meno belly” in a thousand different ways.

Frankly, I didn’t even know what a meno belly was or that I needed to take action about it except that my little phone wouldn’t stop telling me. My point: Diet culture isn’t just coming for our girls, it’s finding that midlife women are also a great population to pressure into weight loss.

I don’t yet have answers (still working on helping our tweens and teens); however I was interviewed about weight for a piece written by Gabrielle Moss that appeared in ADULTED Magazine (January 2023) and wanted to give it more places to line online.

I can’t tell you the first diet I went on — it does not hold the same sentimental place in my heart as, say, the first boy I kissed (Andrew Conway) or the first thing I shoplifted (Wet N Wild nail polish, metallic blue). But I can tell you that I have been on a lot of them.  
 
I’ve spent the past few decades periodically dieting my brains out — cottage cheese dieting, Master Cleansing, South Beaching, calorie-counting, low-carbing, and attempting to subsist on “a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner.” But in all those years of dieting, I’ve never really dug into why.

I mean, of course, we live in a cruel, biased culture that sends the message that women need to be as small as possible to have any value. But I can’t tell you what all that dieting and all those dreams of weight loss actually meant to me, personally. 

“When we focus on food, we’re trying to regain control of our lives,” says Amelia Sherry, MPH, RD, a registered and certified dietitian/nutritionist. This can be especially pronounced in midlife, when metabolism usually slows, changing our weights and bodies in ways that may feel out of our hands. 

“Much like adolescent girls, hormonal changes are causing our bodies to change, and since we live in such a looks-obsessed culture, it can make us feel like our identities are changing…which isn’t true at all,” says Sherry. Read more of What Does Weight Loss Mean to You at Midlife. 

Wish you knew more about diet culture and how it’s influencing you and your daughter? I’m happy to help you with that! Check out “What is Diet Culture? A Guide for Moms Raising Girls” to get answers.