Is it really self-love if it only comes after weight loss?

We often think of it as empowerment. But if acceptance only shows up once our body conforms to the thin ideal, what are we really celebrating?

Lately I’ve been struck by how often women proclaim love for their bodies or talk about how they’re done shaming themselves, but only after they’ve lost a significant amount of weight.

A friend recently shared a heartfelt post on Facebook about enduring years of fat shaming and ridicule for her size. Now, she says she’s finally learned to look at herself with tenderness, even if she doesn’t always recognize this new (thinner) version of herself. Another confided to me that she’s been using a GLP-1 medication to help her lose weight and for the first time feels like she can love her body.

These kinds of stories pop up every now and again as public declarations from women who’ve survived years of frustration and shame, and finally feel worthy of love and acceptance after changing their bodies.

I believe them. I hear their relief. I feel the emotion behind their words.

But every time I hear this type of body-positivity proclamation from someone newly thin, I can’t help but think: Is it really acceptance? The kind that lasts? Or is it a fragile version of self-love that would shrink if the weight came back?

I’m all about women feeling good in their bodies, but I want it for all women, and not just those who fit a narrow beauty standard.

Shrink first, love later

Because more and more, especially since the widespread use of GLP-1s for weight loss, it feels like we’ve doubled down on one of diet culture’s most damaging messages: shrink first, then you’re worthy of love and acceptance.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t want to lose weight or feel good in our bodies. And I’m the first to admit I spent years doing everything in my power to make my body to conform to something it couldn’t be. We live in a culture that celebrates thinness and punishes fatness, so of course, we all want to meet this standard. And there are real consequences for not doing so. But shouldn’t the goal be to treat our bodies with kindness even when they don’t meet the ideal? Shouldn’t the goal be to treat all bodies with kindness?

How diet culture keeps sneaking back in

I hadn’t planned to write about this. But then an email from the women at Feisty Media showed up in my inbox. They’d noticed a troubling trend in the last year: female athletes were once again prioritizing thinness over mental and physical health. Along with the email came a guide outlining the risks of dieting and “underfueling.” It talked about low energy availability and Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), terms I’d never heard of, along with the reasons female athletes under-eat and the consequences of doing so.

But tucked in the middle of this otherwise factual resource, they had included a quote from Oprah Winfrey, apologizing for her role in diet culture. The intention, I think, was to illustrate just how long and deeply we’ve been entrenched in diet culture, but the fact that they included it told me they thought her words were sincere.

“I’ve been a steadfast participant in this diet culture,” Winfrey, 70, explained. “Through my platforms, through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years, through online ― I’ve been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight loss shows and makeovers I have done, and they have been a staple since I’ve been working in television.”

The quote wasn’t from a discussion about cultural harm. It aired during a WeightWatchers special Oprah hosted in May, just a few months after she revealed she was stepping down from the WW board and using a GLP-1 for weight loss. In that earlier conversation, she said she was “done with the shaming, from other people and particularly myself.”

Here’s a woman who has had the most visible and lengthy struggle with weight loss of any of us. And yet she’s also profited from a system that’s taught women to hate their bodies. WeightWatchers made her hundreds of millions (estimates run between $200-400 million) until that model began to collapse, and she stepped away.

There’s something deeply contradictory about this: the same system that shamed her made her rich, and now that she’s finally lost the weight (and her cash cow has run dry), she’s declaring herself free of it.

Love that depends on thinness

Here’s the thing that gets to me: Women everywhere seem to applaud these proclamations, or at least take them at face value, because they sound like empowerment.

The message is:

At last I’m accepting this body. I’m not going to apologize for it or hide it or make excuses for why it’s not better. I’m going to treat it well. And no longer let myself or anyone else shame me because of it.

But here’s the catch: these proclamations almost always seem to come after weight loss.

Now, it’s possible the newfound self-love is genuine. The woman finds herself amid this transformation and realizes she was always worthy of love, and vows to never let that go, no matter her future size. But when it only shows up after reaching the ideal, we have to ask ourselves: is it truly permanent, or is it contingent on staying in this idealized state?

What happens when the body inevitably changes again, through aging, illness, pregnancy, injury? Will that self-love stick? And if not, what can we do to build the kind that does?

What real body acceptance looks like

Self-love is hard, even with weight loss. It’s the rare woman who loses the weight and finds the love, because more often than not, when we reach the goal, we’re led to believe it’s still not enough.

The harder act, the one that truly pushes back against diet culture, is to say: I will treat my body with dignity no matter what size it is. To extend care to the body that, despite extreme efforts, hasn’t shrunk. Or the one that used to be thinner and isn’t anymore.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t offer grace to ourselves or others who are just trying to belong, or to make amends for the failings of the past, including Oprah.

But we do need to examine the messages we’re sending when we only express love, or reject the shame, after achieving a culturally acceptable body. Because whether we mean to or not, we reinforce the thin ideal and the belief that reaching it is a prerequisite for peace.

And this doesn’t apply to those living in the most marginalized bodies or who face compounded bias because of race, disability, or gender identity. They are living in a harsher, more hostile world, where no amount of self-love guarantees safety. The rest of us owe them more empathy, more solidarity, and a lot less judgment.

One of my favorite quotes is: “When you know better, do better.” And that applies here. Many of us are recovering from years of internalized shame and disordered thinking. We deserve patience and grace as we try to do better. But part of doing better means asking hard questions, not just about ourselves, but about the systems we’ve accepted as normal.

Real acceptance isn’t something you only allow yourself after you’ve shrunk, starved, jabbed, or reshaped yourself into something more palatable.

True body acceptance is messier. It means staying in relationship with your body through change. It means showing up for yourself even on the days when you catch a glimpse in the mirror and don’t like what you see or when you slip on your favorite jeans and notice they’re tighter than they used to be. It’s choosing to love your body even when you don’t like it.

It’s saying: I love and respect my body exactly as it is today. And I’ll keep loving it tomorrow, no matter how it changes.

As someone who gained almost 40 pounds when I stopped dieting, I can tell you this isn’t easy. There are plenty of moments I still struggle. But I can tell you, I know my body’s worth now in a way I never did when I was trying to shrink it.

So I’ll come back to the question I asked at the start:

If you only find body acceptance after losing weight, have you really found it?

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Let me know what you think…

If self-love shows up only after weight loss, is it really self-love? If you’ve found self-love, what did it take to get there? How do you practice kindness toward your body even when you don't like it?