Why You Should Start Giving Non-Physical Compliments

TRIGGER WARNING: this post contains sensitive information. If you are currently struggling with or have struggled with an eating disorder, body dysmorphia, or are sensitive to body image issues, this may not be the blog article for you, and I recommend you hop over to my other blog posts like What Is Nutritional Therapy or 5 Tips to Balance Blood Sugar.

Looking at that title, you might think, “Of course, we shouldn’t comment on other people’s bodies, isn’t that obvious?” But I want to break this down a bit more. In my middle school and early high school days, I struggled with an eating disorder. On top of not nourishing my body properly, I was also over-exercising. During this time, I was extremely underweight. It’s interesting to look back at old photos of myself and wonder how I could have ever thought I was overweight. This is largely one of the main reasons I NEVER recommend anyone ever use the BMI chart as a way to measure the health of their weight. The BMI was actually created by a mathematician, not a health professional, as a way to measure weight and help to allocate resources by the government in the 19th century, but there are many problems with it. I will do a more in-depth post on the inaccuracy of the BMI chart later, but to sum it up for you, BMI does not take into account muscle mass or genetics. It was also designed on the readings of white males.

I come from an interesting family. My mom’s side of the family is made up of primarily small, petite people. My dad’s side of the family, on the other hand, is full of very large, tall, muscular people. My older brother took after my mom, my younger brother took after my dad, and I ended up somewhere right in the middle. I’m tall, but not very tall. I’m muscular, but not quite as athletically inclined as my dad was (hello 1990’s bodybuilder). I always sat in an interesting in-between. But because of my muscle mass, I always weighed about 15-20lbs over my “ideal body weight” for my height on the BMI chart. And this played a huge role in my disordered eating habits. One Google search threw me into an overweight category that I felt constantly at war with.

I very specifically remember one Christmas. I had just recovered from the flu, enough to attend family dinner to celebrate the holiday. I was unable to keep any food down for almost a week, and in just 7 days, I had lost 10 lbs. While my mom shared the story of how sick I had been, one family member the comment, “Well, that’s an easy way to lose weight!” Looking back, I now know they meant no harm by that comment. I also know now that they weren’t meaning that I needed to lose that weight, but at the time, that’s not how I took it. I thought they were calling me fat. And I believed it.

Unfortunately, I think this also sheds light on our imperfect humanity. My tendency used to be to assume the worst about myself when someone else received a compliment. One of my old roommates was a very beautiful individual. She would get a lot of attention from guys, and many comments about her beauty when we were out in public. One of my friends met her, and made the comment to me, “Wow, she is gorgeous!!” and I somehow assumed she was implying that I just wasn’t as pretty as her. Whether she was or wasn’t, it wasn’t fair or right of me to assume the worst of myself because of someone else’s gift, and that has taken me a long time to learn. Our words are so powerful. And it takes a lot more words to fix a problem than it does to cause one.

All of that to say, in the last few years, one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned is to stop commenting on other people’s bodies. No matter how harmless it may seem, I just don’t even venture down that road. When people at work start talking about how they need to lose weight, I recognize this as a potential trigger for myself, and I just remove myself from the conversation. And here’s the thing; us talking about other people when they aren’t around, even if it is perceived as good, just isn’t necessary. Who cares if so-and-so has been losing weight? Why do we need to be talking about that when they aren’t around? Why do we even need to be talking about that? What good is that doing? It helped to give me some amazing perspective a few years ago when I had a friend who was struggling with a parasite. She was an amazing, strong athlete, but had lost a significant amount of weight from being so sick. People were constantly complimenting her. And I remember her saying, “People are complimenting me for being sick. They can’t see that the cause of my weight loss is caused by this sickness. They can’t see that this is negatively affecting my athletic abilities. They can’t see that I’m losing all of my muscle and can’t play my sport anymore. All they see is that I’m smaller.” Ouch. This says a lot about our society. We have idolized small to a fault.

Here are some better compliments to give to people that don’t solely focus on their weight or physical appearance:

Compliments to avoid:

“You’ve lost weight,”

“Have you been working out,”

“You look smaller,”

“You look beautiful today,” (and while I do think it’s okay to let someone know they’re beautiful, sometimes insinuating that they look good today and imply they don’t look as good on other days)

Instead, try saying something like:

“You look so vibrant and happy,”

“I love your style,”

“Your laugh is contagious,”

“You’re such an encouraging person, it’s a delight to be around you.”

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but this is a great way to start practicing complimenting people without putting emphasis on their looks. Let’s just try to always be mindful of the fact that there’s probably more going on underneath than what we can see.