With celebrities like Jessica Biel taking to Reddit to share her cheat-day habits, and Ronda Rousey using to the platform to
share her morning meals, it’s not surprising to learn that Reddit has a
pretty robust weight-loss subreddit channel. With more than 670,000
subscribers, a weight-loss Quick Start Guide, and tons of 30-day challenges, Reddit’s LOSEIT channel is home to a huge online weight-loss community.
The page welcomes all users with the intro line: “If you need to lose
2 pounds or 200, this is the reddit for you. This is a reddit for
support and advice—please respect each other’s feelings.” Think of the
channel as an online support group where people get real about their
progress, struggle, and successes (on and off the scale). There’s no
question that for some, LOSEIT is a great tool: the site boasts a
shocking 1,360,831 pounds lost total and an average of 38.5 pounds per
user, after all. But before you turn to the Internet’s most addictive
website for weight-loss support, you need to read up on a few
guidelines—the kinds nutritionists want you to know
Anyone who actively uses Reddit will admit
that the site has an addictive quality. And with many apps that make the
site easy to access when you’re on the go, it’s not hard to get
addicted to scrolling the homepage. While that’s not necessarily harmful
when it comes to animal memes, becoming obsessed with scrolling through
weight-loss content can result in a literally unhealthy obsession, says
Keri Gans, R.D.N. certified yoga instructor and owner of Keri Gans Nutrition.
The platform offers an opportunity to post both non-scale victories
(NSV) and scale victories (SV), and while every pound lost IS a victory,
says Gans, posting a SV for every single pound lost can be a trigger
for less healthy habits. “A lot of people have a bad relationship with
the scale. They become an emotional slave to the number the machine
reads,” she says. It has the power to resurrect a poor body image,
encourage obsessive weighing, and set a pretty bad emotional tone for
the day, she adds. “We’re conditioned to think less is more, which means
that weight gets associated with self-worth and feelings of value,”
says Jessica Cording, R.D., C.D.N, certified weight management
specialist, and owner of Jessica Cording Nutrition.
If you post every time you lose one pound, not only could it lead to
obsessive thoughts about losing the next pound, it could also lead to
feeling value-less if, for whatever reason, you gain a pound back, she
explains.
Plus, generally speaking, one to two pounds is the maximum weight
that's healthy to lose per week, so if you’re posting weight-loss
“successes” more often than once per week, chances are that you aren’t
going about your weight loss in a healthy way, adds Jessica Crandall, R.D and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. (Learn how bone broth can help you lose weight with
Women's Health's Bone Broth Diet.)
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| Christine Frapech |
The scale is only one measurement and is not
the full picture, says Crandall. For example, a very lean person could
have a high percentage of visceral body fat around their organs, meaning
that they are actually not healthy, explains Cording. While the scale
might not show that, the scale combined with body fat percentage might,
she explains. That means that if you’re using the “scale victory”
channel to post weight loss, make sure that isn’t the only way you’re tracking your success.
Plus, knowing what you weigh without taking any context or variables
into account is a recipe for dangerous relationship with the scale, says
Cording. “The scale cannot measure hormones, your time of the month,
how hydrated you are, the last time you’ve pooped, or the sodium content of your most recent meals,” she adds. All these factors play a role in how much we weigh.
So instead of focusing just on pounds lost, focus on NSVs such as
improved energy levels, sleep quality, blood pressure, cholesterol,
blood sugar, and inches lost. After all, put together, those markers are
a much better measure of your health, says Bonnie Taub-Dix R.D.N., founder of Better Than Dieting and author of
Read It Before You Eat It.
However, even if posting in NSVs is your motivation-jam, Cording
recommends also keeping a journal to personally keep track of how you’re
feeling about your journey day-to-day.
Related: 12 Empowering Ways to Track Your Fitness and Weight-Loss Progress—Without Stepping on the Scale
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| Christine Frapech |
Another one of the LOSEIT channels is called “Tantrum Tuesday”,
and it’s a place for people to post and share their weight loss-related
rants. Each week around 500 people take to the thread to share their
latest drawbacks, rants, and complaints, and others upvote their comment
in solidarity. “Not everybody is created equally. So, while for some
having a safe place to vent can be valuable and useful, for others it
can cultivate feelings of powerlessness and negativity,” Gans says.
If ranting helps you let go of the negative emotion, then the thread
could be useful, but if ranting sets the tone for your day and makes you
feel defeated, it would be best for you to avoid that particular forum,
and instead stick to a channel like “Motivation Monday.” But, even if
ranting in Tantrum Tuesday helps you let go of your own struggles,
reading other’s rants is probably not the best use of your time or
energy, Crandall adds. “Tantrum Tuesday is probably a place you want to
say it, leave it, and dont read it ,, she adds
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| Christine Frapech |
Despite being an anonymous community of a lot
people, Reddit is a pretty respectful online space, and questionable
posts are often quickly taken down by Reddit moderators. However,
anytime there is an anonymous online platform, there is potential for
people to be the ugliest version of themselves, Gans says.
So before entering any online weight-loss community, make a promise to
yourself that you won’t respond to other’s posts with negativity, or
respond if someone comments rudely on your own post. “When it comes to
weight-loss goals, specifically, any kind of negativity can derail you,”
says Cording. Think: emotional and stress eating, a down-in-the-dumps body image, and deflated confidence levels.
RELATED: The 5 Best Weight-Loss TV Shows, According To A Nutritionist
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| Christine Frapech |
Reddit users typically choose to stay anonymous, but LOSEIT encourages that users ditch their anonymity on “Track With Me Thursday.”
Track With Me Thursday is a separate thread devoted to helping users
make weight-loss pals, or “accountabilibuddies,” outside of the
anonymity of Reddit. The thread is a place for people to share their MyFitnessPal, Garmin, LOSEIT, and Instagram usernames, and gain access to the rloseit Facebook group, which puts faces to usernames.
If you’d prefer to stay anonymous and not use that particular forum,
that’s totally okay, and is actually more in line with how Reddit is
traditionally used. However, research has shown that people with support from friends and family
are more successful at losing weight than those who do not have a
support system, which is why Gans and Cording recommend that users have a
weight-loss buddy whom they love, trust, and support to share victories
and setbacks with outside of the online community.
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| Christine Frapech |
Making “healthy” versions of some of our
favorite desserts and comfort foods can be a great way to encourage
healthy eating, says Taub-Dix. But just because something is posted in “Wecipe Wednesday,”
doesn’t mean it’s actually healthy, warns Gans. While some recipe
sharers use MyFitnessPal to share the calories and nutritional value of
the shared recipe, not all users include that information in the the
original post. So instead of just assuming that anything that’s posted
in the thread is healthy, do a bit of research. Plus, with resources
like Yummly and so many nutritionists and dietitians posting recipes to their personal blogs with healthy-eating recipes, it’s pretty easy to find healthy recipes of your favorite foods, says Cording.
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| Christine Frapech |
Depending on the person, progress photos can be a great way to
visually track progress, and looking at other’s transformations can be
encouraging, says Gans. But take everything you see with a grain of
salt—especially if something seems too good to be true. “With all the
photo-editing software and apps out there, it’s easy to edit photos, so I
caution against putting too much weight in other people's progress
photos that are on the internet,” adds Taub-Dix. That means if looking
at other people's progress photos start to make you doubt your own
transformation or feel negative towards your own progress, stop looking.
You won't believe these transformation photos were taken 60 seconds apart:
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| Christine Frapech |
There’s a lot of talk about whether or not the phrase “cheat day”
should be ruled out from our weight-loss vocabularies, but that’s not
the only phrase nutritionists caution against using when discussing
weight loss. The way we speak about our weight-loss journeys will
ultimately affect how we feel about them, says Crandall, so the more
positive we can be in our word choices the better. “You could ‘should’
yourself to death, so both in everyday speech and in online channels, I
caution against language about what you ‘should’ have done,” she adds.
Similarly, she also cautions against blaming phrases like “X made me do
it” because they dish off responsibility and avoid ownership.
Even language that demonizes certain foods or actions such as “I know
I shouldn’t eat bread,” or "I ate dessert, so I need to work out,”
should be avoided, says Gans, noting that they create dangerous crime
vs. punishment mentalities. Instead, reframe things as “I try to eat
mostly whole-grain breads,” “I ate dessert, and that’s okay,” or “my
workouts are a gift, not a punishment.”
RELATED: 6 Mistakes You're Making With Your Soup That Are Making You Gain Weight
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| Christine Frapech |
Reddit can be great for some, while not
working for others because it’s less individualized than other
approaches, says Crandall. If the channel doesn’t work for you, don’t
sweat it. Instead, try a nutritionist or dietitian who can help you
create a weight-loss plan that is specific for you, she adds. Even if
you find the platform to be supportive, don’t expect the community to be
your everything, she adds.
