Lizzo Promotes A Detox Diet To Her Millions Of Fans And Just, NO
Lizzo has always been a body positive queen. What happened?
We’ve always thought we could turn to Lizzo for body-positive inspo whenever we were feeling down about our bodies. She’s given entire speeches about her power despite her body not meeting conventional societal beauty standards. She’s shared her ups and downs and everything in between and shown how to overcome it all. She’s been adamantly outspoken about how her life isn’t about meeting anyone’s standards for beauty but her own. And now we’re left feeling some kind of whiplash, because Lizzo (that Lizzo) shared a “detox” diet on Instagram.
She posted a video to her Reels about the 10-day diet, where her daily food intake appeared to consist of three smoothies, some cashews, apples with peanut butter, cucumbers, and a whole lot of water and tea. Worst of all, the video was complete with before-and-after photos, which are such a toxic part of diet culture.
In the Reel and in her stories, Lizzo shared day-by-day full body shots and side-by-side comparison photos.
She also did a “What I Eat in a Day” series of stories that appeared to be aggressively low in calories.
In other words, for anyone who’s ever suffered from disordered eating or struggled with their body image, it was some triggering AF content. How did we go from the queen proclaiming that she doesn’t work out to meet YOUR beauty standards — to this?
Needless to say, fans were not impressed. The comment section was filled with despairing (former?) Lizzo supporters.
As fans correctly pointed out, “detox” diets are fad diets that have no basis in science. Your body has a liver and kidneys that are designed to clean out toxins, and no further action is needed. In reality, these kinds of diets tend to be extremely restrictive and give the illusion of extreme weight loss in a short period of time, when in reality, your body just drops a few pounds of water weight after being starved.
After all the backlash, Lizzo responded, claiming that she was doing the diet not for weight loss, but for her health.
“I feel like, as a big girl, people expect if you are doing something for health, you’re doing it for a dramatic weight loss, and that is not the case,” she said. “In reality, November stressed me the fuck out. I drank a lot, I ate a lot of spicy things and things that fucked my stomach up. I wanted to reverse it and get back to where I was. I’m so proud of myself. I’m proud of my results.”
She added, “I’m a big girl who did a smoothie detox and I wanted to share it with you guys. And every big girl should do whatever the fuck they want with their bodies.”
That’s true — everyone should do what they want with their own bodies. But they should also be free from celebrities peddling harmful diet-culture products that promote speedy weight loss over health.
