The Body that’s Never Enough - What's Behind our Impossible Standards?
There’s an assumption that sits behind most diets and weight loss journeys - that once your weight, shape or size has changed enough, you will finally feel ok about your body. The discomfort and dissatisfaction you experience around your body will stop, and peace and confidence will follow.
Except, in reality, it doesn't seem to work that way.
In this blog, I explore the evidence revealing how, contrary to the narratives we internalise from diet culture, getting closer to the 'slim ideal' doesn't reliably bring the relief or ease people expect, and sometimes does quite the opposite.
The moving goalposts
Weight loss is often described in the language of achievement - you set a goal, you apply yourself to making changes with discipline and, once targets are reached, standards are met and worth is finally proven.
And, it’s fair to say, that in the early days of reaching weight goals, many people can and do experience a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Plus, well-intentioned comments from other people about how they look may well provide some positive reinforcement, giving self-confidence a further lift.
But for a lot of people, that lift doesn't hold for long.
At the same time they reach their original ‘ideal weight’ they lose motivation to follow the same vigilant diet and exercise regimes that got them there. The pendulum effect kicks in and eating starts to swing out of control. A gain of a pound overnight can trigger a wave of failure, never mind the total distance already travelled.
Other people find that the target numbers they originally wanted to reach become their new baseline and, rather than these milestones bringing contentment, the mind creates new targets which seem to feel just as far off as the original one did. A smaller dress size reveals a new set of 'flaws' to work on and it feels like there is always more standing between them and 'enough'.
Effectively, the end point still feels exactly one step out of reach, no matter how many steps have already been taken.
What is happening here? Often a form of body surveillance has taken hold - which is the constant monitoring of your body against the body ideal that you've internalised.[1] You scan for flaws, assess yourself against thinner bodies, scrutinise your eating and exercise as moral markers of control. This behaviour isn't a form of vanity or superficiality - it is a psychological mechanism that becomes activated once you've internalised the thin ideal as something worth pursuing.
For some people, this state of vigilance around food, eating, body monitoring and appearance can intensify over time. So the goalposts don't just move, they become obsessive, and this can develop into patterns of disordered eating or contribute to clinical eating disorders.
These experiences are certainly not personal failings, even if they feel like it. They are part of well-documented patterns. Research on thin-ideal internalisation consistently finds that body dissatisfaction tracks more closely with ongoing comparison to an ideal than with actual body size.[1] When women compare themselves to someone thinner, dissatisfaction increases - including among women who are already slim. This partly explains why dancers, models and athletes in leanness-focused sports so often report high rates of body dissatisfaction, despite sitting closer to the cultural ideal than most of us ever will.[2]
My key message here is that proximity to the slim ideal doesn't necessarily create a sense of freedom around food or safety, ease or satisfaction in the body that is often assumed - it simply tends to relocate the body goalposts whilst intensifying the fear of weight gain, trapping us in an endless cycle of vigilance.
The weight loss fantasy
The pursuit of the slim ideal can bring other challenges too. Many people attach a wider, more profound promise to weight loss, for example, “When I reach this number, I'll finally feel confident and happy. When I'm slimmer, I'll find love. When I fit into this size, I'll be worthy of success.”
It makes complete sense that we believe these types of narratives as they have been sold to us relentlessly, woven into films and advertising and social media, reinforced by diet culture's core message: your body is the problem - so when you fix it, everything else you dream of will follow. Diet culture doesn't always sell diets directly - it cleverly sells the fantasy that your body is the barrier between you and the life you want.
So the cruelty is what happens next. You reach the number and fit the size, and the confidence doesn't fully materialise, the relationship doesn't appear or the promotion doesn't happen. Essentially, have been desiring changes in your life that were never directly linked or dependent on your body size in the first place.
No-body wins IN DIET CULTURE
If weight loss doesn’t provide a straightforward solution to the problem of body dissatisfaction, and nor does it automatically make all our dreams come true - then the problem can't actually be the body size in the first place.
If you are living in a slimmer body with a fear of weight gain or a drive to be smaller still, or if you are living in a larger body feeling wholly dissatisfied because you don't fit the cultural slim ideal, these are two sides of the same coin.
The real problem here is the coin - the cultural machine that manufactures a fear of body fat in the first place, that drives our body standards and that judges us.
Consider how this plays out in the tabloids and social media. After years of having her larger frame critiqued, earlier this year Kelly Osbourne was targeted online with sharp criticism for looking "too thin and fragile" after noticeable weight loss. At the same time, Taylor Swift faced online shaming in 2024 for the appearance of her stomach. Meanwhile, several stars once celebrated as body-positive icons - Meghan Trainor, Amy Schumer and Mindy Kaling among them have faced a different but related backlash, accused of betraying the body positivity movement after their own weight loss, much of it linked to weight loss medications.
The diet culture machine profits from our insecurities and tends to use the media as a tool for delivering its primary narrative about the slim ideal as well throwing in contradictory judgements about the human body, particularly the female body, making it a moving target to critique, compare and consume. It doesn’t care about real health and wellbeing but tends to cycle through its demands, finding fault wherever it looks. No body wins here - except the system selling the ‘solution’.
MY CONCLUSIONS
If no body, at any size, feels entirely safe or is protected from judgement, and weight loss rarely delivers all its promises, then it is worth asking ourselves - what is the real problem here?
Could it be that our bodies aren't the issue at all - but the unrealistic standards we feel pressured to meet and the channels that promote those standards.
If you struggle with your weight, size or shape - whatever body you are living in right now - then instead of allowing your mind to dwell on thoughts about what is ‘wrong’ with your body, consider asking yourself "what is diet culture asking of me and why does it never seem to be satisfied?"
Our bodies can be respected, cared for, and our health nurtured independently of diet culture’s standards and regardless of how closely we match up to the slim ideal. So let’s stop measuring our bodies against externally imposed lines that keep shifting and bring in more compassion and neutrality around our here and now bodies, exactly as they are today.
References
[1] Fitzsimmons-Craft, E. L., Bardone-Cone, A. M., Crosby, R. D., Engel, S. G., Wonderlich, S. A., & Bulik, C. M. (2012). Explaining the relation between thin ideal internalization and body dissatisfaction among college women: The roles of social comparison and body surveillance. Body Image, 9(1), 43-49.
[2] Arcelus, J., Witcomb, G. L., & Mitchell, A. (2014). Prevalence of eating disorders amongst dancers: A systemic review and meta-analysis. European Eating Disorders Review, 22(2), 92-101.
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