The Return of Skinny - Why women are paying the price... again.

Every generation of women seems to inherit a new version of the same message: your body is something that needs to be fixed.

When I was younger, the goal was simple. Be smaller. Eat less. Take up less space. The number on the scale became the measurement of success, and many women spent years believing that if they could just lose enough weight, they would finally feel confident, healthy, and happy.

Thankfully, over the last decade, we started to see a shift. Women began embracing strength instead of just size. We celebrated lifting weights, building muscle, fueling our bodies properly, and recognizing that health was about much more than the number on a scale.

For a while, it felt like we were moving in the right direction.

But the pendulum appears to be swinging back. The pursuit of “skinny” is returning, and once again women are being influenced by images of dramatically smaller bodies without enough conversation about what it takes to get there and, more importantly, what it may cost your health when you do.

Hollywood has played a significant role in this shift. Celebrity transformations are everywhere. Social media is filled with before-and-after photos of women who didn't ever need to lose weight, now teetering on emaciated and calling it toned. Unfortunately, weight loss medications, particularly GLP-1s, have become a common part of the conversation around achieving this trendy look.

Just to be clear, I'm not judging anyone’s choices. There are people who require serious intervention and have benefited from these medications.

The concern is not that these tools exist. The concern is when we once again confuse weight loss with health.

Because all weight is not created equally.

The scale does not tell you whether you lost fat, muscle, water, or bone. It does not tell you whether your metabolism is functioning better, whether your blood sugar is more stable, whether your inflammation has improved, or whether your body is becoming stronger and more capable.

And those are the things that determine how well we age.

This conversation is especially important for women in midlife because menopause is already a time when preserving muscle becomes more critical. As estrogen declines, women naturally become more vulnerable to losing muscle mass and bone density. If we add chronic dieting, inadequate protein, and a focus on becoming as small as possible, we may unintentionally accelerate the very things we are trying to prevent.

I understand why women are drawn to quick solutions. I truly do. Most women I speak with have tried “everything under the sun” and still nothing's working for them. Desperation often overrides our better judgement.

For years, women have been told that if they are gaining weight, struggling with cravings, experiencing fatigue, or feeling unlike themselves, the answer is simply to eat less and exercise more. When that approach fails repeatedly, the diet culture says there's something wrong with you. But your body is not broken. She’s trying to tell you something.

Symptoms are signals.

Weight gain, poor sleep, brain fog, cravings, low energy, joint pain, and changes in how your body responds to food are not random failures. They are your body communicating that something needs attention. I know this because I lived it.

For more than 20 years, I had arthritis. I accepted pain as part of my life because I didn’t know there was another possibility. I also seemed to catch everything going around. Getting sick two or three times a year for weeks at a time was normal for me, and when my third child was born, I even developed pneumonia.

If someone had told me back then that I would one day be healthier and stronger in my 50s than I was in my 20s and 30s, I would not have believed them.

Yet that is exactly what happened.

Today, I have been pain-free from arthritis for 18 years, my immune system is stronger and I entered menopause without ever experiencing a hot flash. Not because I found a magic solution, but because I learned how to support my body instead of constantly fighting against it.

I want women to understand that getting older does not automatically mean declining.

Your body is your vehicle that drives you through life. And just like any vehicle, it requires the right fuel, maintenance, and care if you want it to keep driving down the highway and not break down on the side of the road on that long journey ahead.

You wouldn’t ignore the check engine light in your car and simply unplug it, you'd take it into the garage and have it looked at. Yet when it comes to our bodies, we often ignore the signals until they become impossible to overlook.

The goal should never be to create the smallest body possible. The goal should be to build the strongest, healthiest body possible.

A body that allows you to travel, play with your grandchildren, lift your luggage, enjoy your hobbies, and continue doing the things you love without your health limiting you.

Because healthy aging is not about trying to recreate the body you had at 25. It is about building the body you want to have at 65, 75, 85, and beyond.

My goal has never been to help women simply lose weight.

My goal is to help them build a body that lets them live longer, stronger, healthier, and truly enjoy the life they've worked so hard to create. The thing is, when you do build that healthy body, the weight takes care of itself.

For more information on how to build your best body in menopause and beyond, check out the FIT Menopause Method.