The internet was in a tizzy recently as Adele posted a picture of herself on Instagram. In her picture, it was clear that she has lost a lot of weight. Her face isn't really clear, but if you showed me the picture without knowing who it was, I would never have recognized her. 

It was also international no-diet day yesterday, and I thought I would end up writing a scathing post about how awful dieting is (which is true) but there are several other factors beneath the surface in a story like this that I wanted to talk about, like the fact that I actually don't know what is going on with her body any more than anyone else does.

It cracked me up to read the comments where people were saying she had gastric bypass and then someone else would say "oh no she did it naturally". As if anyone has any idea! None of us know. For all we know she is perfectly healthy with many possible reasons why her body changed, and equally possible, she is ill and suffering. Who knows!

So I tried not to get sucked into the comments for too long - people are going to view her situation as good or bad and everyone is going to think they are right.

In addition, yes - Adele is looking extremely thin, but I don't know what she has done or how she has done it. I know people are pointing to disordered eating to say she must be starving herself - but to play devil's advocate - it also occurred to me that some people are also in larger bodies because they have an eating disorder.

Meaning, if a bigger body or a smaller body could be suffering from an eating disorder, then I really can't tell anything about a larger body that has become smaller.  Maybe the bigger body she had was the result of an eating disorder. The point is - I don't know and I'll never know and it's none of my business.

What I do know is - let's not make judgments and let’s not assume we ever know what is going on in someone else's life with their body. 

Next, when it comes to the messages that are being spread in the comments, Adele herself said nothing about her body in the post. People were naturally complimenting her on her appearance because our culture is taught to praise thinness and weight loss. 

Now I think it's ok to say someone looks great if you think they look great. Where I think it becomes problematic is if you can only see the beauty in a thin body.  I see people in big bodies who are so stunning they take my breath away as much as people in smaller bodies. Beauty is not size specific.

(It didn't use to be this way - I had to open my eyes and let go of my limiting beliefs and societal conditioning surrounding beauty and expose myself to a wider range of bodies, as well as learn to admire and appreciate my own body. That helped me to see the beauty in all bodies more than anything.)

If someone is only able to see the beauty in one specific way - that feels to me like a place there is room for growth and time to diversify your Instagram feed.

The part in all this that I do think is the very important to mention is how clearly uneducated people are when it comes to weight and health.

So let's say for a minute that Adele lost a lot of weight by intentionally restricting in some way - whether that was "naturally" or through surgery.  (Again, we don't know that this is what happened, but let's assume.)

Many people were praising her weight loss as being healthy.  How do they know? The truth is if you are restricting yourself and don't get the calories your body needs - it fails to function properly. There are serious consequences to restriction, mentally, physically, and emotionally when we don't get enough nourishment.

Likewise - someone who has a bigger body is not necessarily unhealthy. It varies wildly person to person and depends on a multitude of factors such as levels of stress, habits, and behaviors, access to quality food, and lived experience to name a few.

In addition to lack of nourishment when someone restricts, 95% of people who lose weight intentionally gain it back within 3-5 years. This has physical implications as well. The yo-yo aspect of dieting has been proven to be more unhealthy for people than staying the weight that we are.

Praising the efforts of intentional weight loss is therefore dangerous and misguided. "Working hard" to achieve something that is unlikely to last and that puts your health at risk does not make a lot of sense. If you had to work that hard at it - maybe it wasn't what your body really wanted.  (And to be fair, “working hard” was the assumption of the commenters and had nothing to do with Adele herself, we have no idea how "hard she worked.")

As for her mental, emotional, and spiritual states? Again, we don't know - which is just another reason why it's so ludicrous to look at just her thin body and assume she is healthy. 

We don't know how it happened and we don't know how it feels to be experiencing what she is going through. She may be happy as a clam or full of anxiety.

People tend to assume thin also means happy and that's just not true. 

In summary, it seems to me there are a few issues here.  There is the concept of what is beautiful, there is the health of a certain size body and there is the minding your own business when you have no idea what is going on with someone.

Our world loves to comment on other people's experience so I'm not even going to try and get people to stop, but I have to roll my eyes hard when anyone talks like they actually have any idea what is happening - especially with a celebrity who is a complete stranger to you. But whatever.

As far as the concept of beauty, I think we can all do some work to expand that definition and open our eyes to the diversity in beauty. Thank goodness we don't all look alike, how boring would that be.

And as far as intentional weight loss is concerned or the health of a certain size body - that is the only place I draw a hard line in the sand. The pursuit of intentional weight loss (presuming that is what she did) is harmful and does have consequences that unfortunately most people don't understand. 

In addition, fat doesn't mean unhealthy or unhappy anymore than thin means happy and healthy for every body every time. These are the places where we need to wake up, have more awareness, and make more conscious choices about our thoughts and beliefs as a culture.

In the meantime, why don't we simply wish Adele a fantastic birthday (which is what her post actually referenced) and keep the conclusions about her health and happiness to ourselves?

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash