With celebrities like Jessica Biel taking to Reddit to share her cheat-day habits, and Ronda Rousey using to the platform to share her morning meals, it’s not surprising to learn that Reddit has a pretty robust weight-loss subreddit channel.
With more than 670,000 subscribers, a weight-loss Quick Start Guide, and tons of 30-day challenges, Reddit’s LOSEIT channel is home to a huge online weight-loss community. The page welcomes all users with the intro line: “If you need to lose 2 pounds or 200, this is the reddit for you. This is a reddit for support and advice—please respect each other’s feelings.”
Think of the channel as an online support group where people get real about their progress, struggle, and successes (on and off the scale). There’s no question that for some, LOSEIT is a great tool: the site boasts a shocking 1,360,831 pounds lost total and an average of 38.5 pounds per user, after all.
But before you turn to the Internet’s most addictive website for weight-loss support, you need to read up on a few guidelines—the kinds nutritionists want you to know.
1. Don’t post a “scale victory” every time you lose a pound
Anyone who actively uses Reddit will admit that the site has an addictive quality. And with many apps that make the site easy to access when you’re on the go, it’s not hard to get addicted to scrolling the homepage. While that’s not necessarily harmful when it comes to animal memes, becoming obsessed with scrolling through weight-loss content can result in a literally unhealthy obsession, says Keri Gans, R.D.N., certified yoga instructor and owner of Keri Gans Nutrition.
The platform offers an opportunity to post both non-scale victories (NSV) and scale victories (SV), and while every pound lost IS a victory, says Gans, posting a SV for every single pound lost can be a trigger for less healthy habits. “A lot of people have a bad relationship with the scale. They become an emotional slave to the number the machine reads,” she says. It has the power to resurrect a poor body image, encourage obsessive weighing, and set a pretty bad emotional tone for the day, she adds. “We’re conditioned to think less is more, which means that weight gets associated with self-worth and feelings of value,” says Jessica Cording, R.D., C.D.N, certified weight management specialist, and owner of Jessica Cording Nutrition. If you post every time you lose one pound, not only could it lead to obsessive thoughts about losing the next pound, it could also lead to feeling value-less if, for whatever reason, you gain a pound back, she explains.
Plus, generally speaking, one to two pounds is the maximum weight that’s healthy to lose per week, so if you’re posting weight-loss “successes” more often than once per week, chances are that you aren’t going about your weight loss in a healthy way, adds Jessica Crandall, R.D., and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
2. Don’t forget about “non-scale” victories.
The scale is only one measurement and is not the full picture, says Crandall. For example, a very lean person could have a high percentage of visceral body fat around their organs, meaning that they are actually not healthy, explains Cording. While the scale might not show that, the scale combined with body fat percentage might, she explains. That means that if you’re using the “scale victory” channel to post weight loss, make sure that isn’t the only way you’re tracking your success.
Plus, knowing what you weigh without taking any context or variables into account is a recipe for dangerous relationship with the scale, says Cording. “The scale cannot measure hormones, your time of the month, how hydrated you are, the last time you’ve pooped, or the sodium content of your most recent meals,” she adds. All these factors play a role in how much we weigh.
So instead of focusing just on pounds lost, focus on NSVs such as improved energy levels, sleep quality, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and inches lost. After all, put together, those markers are a much better measure of your health, says Bonnie Taub-Dix R.D.N., founder of Better Than Dieting and author of Read It Before You Eat It. However, even if posting in NSVs is your motivation-jam, Cording recommends also keeping a journal to personally keep track of how you’re feeling about your journey day-to-day.
3. When it comes to venting: say it, leave it, don’t read it.
Another one of the LOSEIT channels is called “Tantrum Tuesday”, and it’s a place for people to post and share their weight loss-related rants. Each week around 500 people take to the thread to share their latest drawbacks, rants, and complaints, and others upvote their comment in solidarity. “Not everybody is created equally. So, while for some having a safe place to vent can be valuable and useful, for others it can cultivate feelings of powerlessness and negativity,” Gans says.
If ranting helps you let go of the negative emotion, then the thread could be useful, but if ranting sets the tone for your day and makes you feel defeated, it would be best for you to avoid that particular forum, and instead stick to a channel like “Motivation Monday.” But, even if ranting in Tantrum Tuesday helps you let go of your own struggles, reading other’s rants is probably not the best use of your time or energy, Crandall adds. “Tantrum Tuesday is probably a place you want to say it, leave it, and don’t read it,” she adds.
4. Don’t respond negatively, and don’t respond to negativity.
Despite being an anonymous community of a lot people, Reddit is a pretty respectful online space, and questionable posts are often quickly taken down by Reddit moderators. However, anytime there is an anonymous online platform, there is potential for people to be the ugliest version of themselves, Gans says.
So before entering any online weight-loss community, make a promise to yourself that you won’t respond to other’s posts with negativity, or respond if someone comments rudely on your own post. “When it comes to weight-loss goals, specifically, any kind of negativity can derail you,” says Cording. Think: emotional and stress eating, a down-in-the-dumps body image, and deflated confidence levels.
5. Find support systems outside of LOSEIT, too.
Reddit users typically choose to stay anonymous, but LOSEIT encourages that users ditch their anonymity on “Track With Me Thursday.” Track With Me Thursday is a separate thread devoted to helping users make weight-loss pals, or “accountabilibuddies,” outside of the anonymity of Reddit. The thread is a place for people to share their MyFitnessPal, Garmin, LOSEIT, and Instagram usernames, and gain access to the rloseit Facebook group, which puts faces to usernames.
If you’d prefer to stay anonymous and not use that particular forum, that’s totally okay, and is actually more in line with how Reddit is traditionally used. However, research has shown that people with support from friends and family are more successful at losing weight than those who do not have a support system, which is why Gans and Cording recommend that users have a weight-loss buddy whom they love, trust, and support to share victories and setbacks with outside of the online community.
6. Just because a recipe is from “Wecipe Wednesday” doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
Making “healthy” versions of some of our favorite desserts and comfort foods can be a great way to encourage healthy eating, says Taub-Dix. But just because something is posted in “Wecipe Wednesday,” doesn’t mean it’s actually healthy, warns Gans. While some recipe sharers use MyFitnessPal to share the calories and nutritional value of the shared recipe, not all users include that information in the the original post. So instead of just assuming that anything that’s posted in the thread is healthy, do a bit of research. Plus, with resources like Yummly and so many nutritionists and dietitians posting recipes to their personal blogs with healthy-eating recipes, it’s pretty easy to find healthy recipes of your favorite foods, says Cording.
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7. Take other peoples’ progress pictures with a grain of salt.
Depending on the person, progress photos can be a great way to visually track progress, and looking at other’s transformations can be encouraging, says Gans. But take everything you see with a grain of salt—especially if something seems too good to be true. “With all the photo-editing software and apps out there, it’s easy to edit photos, so I caution against putting too much weight in other people’s progress photos that are on the internet,” adds Taub-Dix. That means if looking at other people’s progress photos start to make you doubt your own transformation or feel negative towards your own progress, stop looking.
8. Watch your language.
There’s a lot of talk about whether or not the phrase “cheat day” should be ruled out from our weight-loss vocabularies, but that’s not the only phrase nutritionists caution against using when discussing weight loss. The way we speak about our weight-loss journeys will ultimately affect how we feel about them, says Crandall, so the more positive we can be in our word choices the better. “You could ‘should’ yourself to death, so both in everyday speech and in online channels, I caution against language about what you ‘should’ have done,” she adds. Similarly, she also cautions against blaming phrases like “X made me do it” because they dish off responsibility and avoid ownership.
Even language that demonizes certain foods or actions such as “I know I shouldn’t eat bread,” or “I ate dessert, so I need to work out,” should be avoided, says Gans, noting that they create dangerous crime vs. punishment mentalities. Instead, reframe things as “I try to eat mostly whole-grain breads,” “I ate dessert, and that’s okay,” or “my workouts are a gift, not a punishment.”
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9. Know that LOSEIT doesn’t work for everyone, and that’s OK.
Reddit can be great for some, while not working for others because it’s less individualized than other approaches, says Crandall. If the channel doesn’t work for you, don’t sweat it. Instead, try a nutritionist or dietitian who can help you create a weight-loss plan that is specific for you, she adds. Even if you find the platform to be supportive, don’t expect the community to be your everything, she adds.
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Originally written for WomensHealth.com.