Even today, after years of being involved in fitness, fitness groups, group fitness classes, gym workouts, and running groups, I still walk into a gym and feel out of place.
I’ve been using gym equipment for decades. I know how to use the machines and how to lift free weights. But every time I go to the gym I avoid the free weights and only use certain machines. Why? Well, first of all, some of the machines are literally not built for my body. Weight limits make use of some equipment unsafe for some bodies. Sometimes even the machines that are adjustable don’t fit my proportions. As for free weights – that little voice says, “You’ll do it wrong and they’ll laugh at you.” Worse yet, that little voice says, “They’ll take pictures of you and post them online.”
Sometimes I see people who look like me at the gym. But I never see people like me portrayed at the gym. When I walk into the gym, I see pictures everywhere – on the walls, on the ceiling, on posters, on flyers – of people in small, thin bodies engaging in movement. But not once have a seen a picture of someone in a body that looks like mine on a wall in any of my gyms – and I’ve been to many over the years.
If, after reading that paragraph, your first thought is, well, we all should have a goal of looking like those people, I’m going to gently let you know right now that you are wrong, and that you are, sadly, a victim of our thinness-obsessed diet culture.
The bodies you see portrayed on the gym walls are a reflection of an “ideal” that some marketing company decided was de rigeur for the time period in which the ad budget was announced. Those bodies are not representative of the majority of people in our country (or world, for that matter). When 73% of women in the US are plus-sized, but all you’re putting on the walls of your gym is people in thin bodies, you’ve got some work to do. And let’s be real, these are usually white people in the pictures as well – kudos to your gym if they’ve actually recognized that people of color exist, but tokenism is a thing, too.
You might think that since a gym’s bottom line is literally dependent on the people who purchase memberships, that they might consider creating an environment that is more welcoming to 73% of a population. However, because we’ve all been fed the line that “thin is best,” gyms don’t portray anything but thin people in their marketing materials. “Fitspo,” they call it. You’ll join their gym because you want “results” that mean you’ll be thin and attractive and all of your problems will go away. And when that doesn’t happen, you stop going to the gym – but you don’t cancel your membership, so the gym doesn’t care. The gym isn’t incentivized to change their marketing materials because most people still continue paying.
I asked a gym manager if they had hired any size-inclusive or HAES-informed fitness instructors, or had made strides to help people in larger bodies feel more welcome at their gym. Their response was, “Our average member is overweight so many of our classes consist of larger-sized men and women.” There are several things wrong with this statement.
First of all, simply having classes that have larger people in them is not the same as outwardly advertising inclusive classes. To do that, a gym needs to take active steps toward making their gym more inclusive. This includes changing their marketing imagery to include pictures of people in larger bodies using their equipment and engaging in movement in a gym context. This also includes hiring fitness professionals who are certified Size-Inclusive Fitness Specialists, or simply fitness professionals in all sizes of bodies. And an easy way to do that is to just ask – go on social media and ask for fitness professionals or even just active people in larger bodies. Photograph them, hire them, ask their opinions about their representation in the fitness community.
Secondly, using inclusive language is important. Using descriptors such as “people in larger bodies” or even just the word fat are acceptable in a fitness context, and use of these descriptors in class names and marketing imagery can go a long way to making people in larger bodies feel more welcome. “Fitness for Fat Bodies,” “Body-Positive Tabata,” or “Size-Inclusive Movement” are fine as long as the focus isn’t on shrinking those bodies.
Speaking of shrinking, taking a focus off of weight loss should be a goal as well. Science has been showing for decades that dieting doesn’t work. Weight loss can and does happen when bodies become more active, but that doesn’t mean that it should be a goal. The body shame that happens when people weight cycle (the cycle of restricting food and increasing activity, which leads to a plateau, then to stopping the diet when it “isn’t working anymore”) can lead people to stop engaging in fitness altogether. Making the goal to simply engage in movement without changing your body is empowering and health-promoting without the shame or dangers of weight cycling. This means getting rid of “Biggest Loser” competitions, before-and-after photos, and weighing and measuring gym clients.
The biggest shift has to be in mindset. Many gyms exist simply to encourage weight loss and change body shapes and sizes. Encouraging movement, however, is a much more inclusive strategy that will allow more people to not only join, but stay with your gym. When the goal is a health promoting behavior like “move your body” with no judgement on the type of movement or the changing of that body, more people will be encouraged by the results, as opposed to feeling shamed that their body doesn’t look like the images on the walls, or that their body has not continued shrinking despite their continued efforts.
All of these strategies are not only inclusive, but beneficial to gyms themselves – if gym owners and managers change their mindsets and truly look at how they can benefit the most people. For every person who comes into the gym and continues doing so, there are more people who join, go once, then never go again. Building a community of clients who feel accepted, included, and supported is a much stronger goal to work towards, and that says a lot about a gym that has made strides toward inclusion.
The Fat Athlete 