By Siobhan Cole

The first time I set foot in a Slimming World meeting, I was young enough to be occupied by the toys in the corner of the room laid out for kids dragged along by their parents. It was there, in those meetings, that I first began to absorb the idea that fat was bad; our bodies were projects to be worked on, and if I tried hard enough it was perfectly possible for me to look like a Spice Girl.

I’m not angry with my parents for taking me. They were as much at the mercy of societal fatphobia as we are now, perhaps even more so because in the early 90s, fat acceptance was the preserve of self-published ‘zines that were never going to make it into the hands of a working-class couple from South Wales.

I am angry, however, with Diet Culture and companies like Slimming World that prey on people’s insecurities, that promise them the attainment of their ‘dream weight’ but in reality leave them with a lifetime of shame, yo-yo dieting, disordered eating and negative body image.  All for profit.

I am very angry that the Government is now paying them to do this.

Slimming World was ubiquitous in my childhood. I went from sitting in the corner of meetings to, when I was a little older, perusing the handbooks that were left lying around my house. I began following the plans myself as I became increasingly dissatisfied with my body. Finally, I officially joined at around thirteen years old.

That’s where, for me – and for many other women I have spoken to – it really began to unravel. There I learnt to categorise food as either ‘Free’, ‘Healthy Extras’ or ‘Sins’. I learnt that avocados and mashed bananas should sit in the same category as alcohol and Mars bars. I learnt that if I wanted some cake, I should make it out of Weetabix, sultanas and a tablespoon of xylitol. I was told to weigh and measure my food. I was told to keep a food diary. I was also told I would be weighed in public every week.

While precise numbers weren’t shared, gains and losses were celebrated or commiserated with en masse, during a process called ‘image therapy’. As part of this ‘therapy’, the group would come together to idolise thinness and shed literal tears over our bodies and the myriad ways we’d failed them over the previous week. Binge-eating was normalised: it went without saying that after weigh-in, we’d all go home, eat until we felt sick and then spend the week trying to atone before a day’s starvation on weigh day.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like disordered eating to me.

In my early teens, my periods stopped for a year. Later on, I became bulimic. In my twenties, I was diagnosed with binge-eating disorder and began to self-harm. My mental health was appalling and the way I felt about my body was at the centre of it all.

So yes, I’m angry.

The diet works at first – as all diets do. According to their website, on average Slimming World members lose around 4% of their body weight in 12 weeks and 8% in 6 months. However, the information on what happens to the vast majority of their members after that is suspiciously lacking. No wonder, really, when what we do know is that the vast majority of diets fail to make people thinner or healthier in the long term. Most people ‘diet up’– lose a little, gain a lot, lose a little, gain some more and so on and so forth until the weight they started at is a distant memory.

What diets do achieve is that they trigger eating disorders. According to a large study of fourteen and fifteen year olds carried out in 2016, dieting is the most important predictor of developing an eating disorder.

If this is the case, why is the Government currently handing over millions in public funds to Slimming World and other commercial ‘weight loss providers’ for weight management services? Health Professionals are referring those who fall into ‘obese’ or ‘very obese’ BMI categories (which is problematic in itself) to these services for a 12 week subsidised membership.

The evidence they cite speaks of modest, short-term losses for those with high engagement with their programme. And that’s all that seems to matter – these losses. Not health, just weight loss, and I’d like to know why, when the two are not inextricably linked. Health is complicated and bound up with many social determinants, a fact that this scheme fails to address.

I’m not just angry – I’m concerned.

Hospital admissions for eating disorders rose by 84% between 2016 and 2021 and we are living through a mental health crisis. The NHS is not equipped to deal with it getting any worse. Whilst I’m sure some people would say the NHS is also struggling to deal with the cost of obesity, I would argue that in the long run, this scheme will cause more problems than it solves.

It has taken me years of unlearning to get to a place where I feel comfortable both around food and in my own skin. I would urge anyone stuck in a cycle of bingeing and restricting to stop. Look to the work of @curvynyome, @alexlight_ldn, @yrfatfriend and @drjoshuawolrich before you get on those weighing scales. A better life exists. I promise you.

Siobhan Cole is a UK based writer who lives in Oxfordshire. She is particularly interested in diet culture and class and is working on a novel that deals with these themes, among others. You can find her on Instagram @_SiobhanCole or Twitter @_Siobhan_Cole.