Verified by 
In the United States, body positivity has become a dominant social movement. Here's what I cherish about body positivity. I am for self-love, self-compassion, and an appreciation of individual differences. Your body, similar to the content of your mind, is unlike the other 7.9 billion inhabitants of Earth. For me, I have matching moles on my left and right forearms, the second and third toes of my feet are bigger than my first toes. And as my three daughters enjoy mocking, for some reason there is hair on only 50 percent of the top of my feet.
Where body positivity meets concern, in my view, is when a person's physical health is precarious. As of 2016, the best estimate of the obesity rate in America is a full 36.9 percent of adults. The state with the highest obesity rate, Mississippi (40.8 percent), also has the dubious distinction of the lowest life expectancy rate (74.5 years). Obesity is associated with an increase in cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and strokes, and sleep disorders. And if you care about racial diversity, know that the prevalence and consequences of obesity are greater in Black and Hispanic men and women, especially when paired with insufficient economic resources to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, or living in neighborhoods without a supermarket that stocks healthier foods. So with this large body of science, no, I am not positively inclined toward obesity. Besides smoking, it is one of the most preventable causes of death and injury.
Consider another message by the Academy Award-winning actress Octavia Spencer, "Be happy in your own skin. If you are unhealthy, start by making small changes to become healthier. You are unique, beautiful, and worthy." Now that's a body-positive and health-promoting message that dovetails with science. We can engage in self-love without necessarily arguing that obesity is nothing more than a cosmetic issue.
More importantly, we can take steps to follow Spencer's advice. By no means do I have sufficient room to detail what we know about combatting obesity or reducing racial and economic disparities in access to healthier food and services to aid them (physical therapists, fitness instructors, dieticians). But what I can offer is one strategy to deal with one problem. It's an impressive intervention, devised by Dr. Katy Milkman and her colleagues.
How do you motivate people to engage in healthier behavior? Eating more vegetables? Drinking more water? Stretch the body? Exercise? Milkman wondered if you could motivate people to do something they should do such as go to the gym if it is paired with a highly desirable activity. For instance, you only get to scroll through social media, watch televised sports, or listen to the next episode of that true-crime podcast if you do the work and go to the gym. Pairing an indulgent, pleasant activity with engaging in something that should be done is what she calls temptation bundling.
How the Research Worked
Her team initially tested this idea with faculty and staff at a university, where everyone had access to a gym on-site at work. After gaining information on novels they found personally tempting to read, these novels were loaded onto smartphones. They would get access to the smartphones to listen to these novels when they entered the gym for a workout. No deception. Participants were told that this was a motivational strategy. When you're craving the next chapter of the true-crime drama, there is only one way to get the next installment—go to the gym, grab the device from a locker, and start listening during the workout.
And temptation bundling worked. In the first seven weeks of the intervention, 51 percent of participants visited the gym once per week compared to the 42 percent in the control group (who merely received a message that exercising improves health and a $25 gift card to Barnes and Noble). There was an interesting additional effect where people who enjoyed the first workout during the initial intake experienced a much stronger intervention effect. If you liked working out more from the start, you hit the gym more frequently. Thus, there is something about using temptations to boost willpower and also an appreciation of the mood enhancement effects of exercise.
Did Temptation Bundling Aid with Weight Loss?
Returning back to the health benefits of being physically fit, it's worth pointing out that temptation bundling didn't just increase people's presence in the gym. People lost weight over the 10-week study, and reduced their body fat percentage and waist size.
There are no simple solutions for slowing or reversing the rise in obesity in society. What we shouldn't do, I argue, is pretend obesity is positive. There is too much data to suggest it is a risk factor for disease, compromised daily functioning, and death. No message about being positive is going to override this important health information. Treat yourself with kindness and compassion. One of the best ways of doing this is to honor yourself with self-care.
The author's latest book is The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively.
References
Kirgios, E. L., Mandel, G. H., Park, Y., Milkman, K. L., Gromet, D. M., Kay, J. S., & Duckworth, A. L. (2020). Teaching temptation bundling to boost exercise: A field experiment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 161, 20-35.
Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. (2014). Holding the hunger games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management science, 60(2), 283-299.
Popkin, B. M., Du, S., Green, W. D., Beck, M. A., Algaith, T., Herbst, C. H., ... & Shekar, M. (2020). Individuals with obesity and COVID‐19: A global perspective on the epidemiology and biological relationships. Obesity Reviews, 21(11), e13128.
Ryan, D. H., & Kushner, R. (2010). The state of obesity and obesity research. JAMA, 304(16), 1835-1836.
Wyatt, S. B., Winters, K. P., & Dubbert, P. M. (2006). Overweight and obesity: prevalence, consequences, and causes of a growing public health problem. The American journal of the medical sciences, 331(4), 166-174.
