Book on Nourish People misread HAES in both directions. I hear it almost weekly. Half the time someone hears it and assumes it means “health doesn’t matter.” The other half, they hear it and assume it means “every body, in every moment, is in perfect health.” Neither is what it says.
Here’s the plain version. HAES stands for Health at Every Size. It’s a framework that says health behaviors and quality care should be accessible to people in every body, and that weight is not a reliable measure of a person’s worth, their effort, or their health. It doesn’t claim bodies are identical. It doesn’t claim nothing about health varies. It claims that respect, nourishment, and good care don’t need to be earned by changing your size first.
That last sentence is the whole thing, really. It’s the one I’d want you to walk away with if you only read this far.
The reason I work this way is straightforward. I spent a long time as a clinical dietitian: in hospitals, in eating disorder treatment, in outpatient care. I watched a lot of people show up to nutrition appointments expecting the same script they’d been handed for years: get smaller first, then you’ll feel better. Most of them had been trying that for a decade or more. They were exhausted. The plans hadn’t worked. The plans had often made things worse. And underneath all of it was a quiet belief: that they weren’t allowed to take care of themselves until the body cooperated.
A HAES-aligned approach lets the work start now. In the body you’re in. Today.
That means we can actually look at the things that matter. Sleep. Energy through the afternoon. What satisfaction feels like at a meal. How hunger shows up in your day, when it shows up at all. Movement that you don’t dread. Whether food access is steady. What eating actually feels like. None of that has to wait for the scale to move.
What HAES isn’t, while we’re here. It isn’t a claim that every body is in peak health all the time. It isn’t anti-medicine. It isn’t a directive to ignore symptoms, to stop seeing your doctor, or to disengage from your body. It also isn’t a workaround. People sometimes hear “Health at Every Size” and assume it’s permission to stop paying attention. It is the opposite. The whole point is engagement: with what your body needs, with care that fits your actual life, with food that supports you instead of fights you.
It’s also not weight loss in friendlier packaging. If you’ve come across “HAES” being used to sell a smaller body, that isn’t HAES. That’s diet culture wearing a softer sweater.
A reasonable question comes up here, and I want to answer it directly. People sometimes ask: but what if I still want to focus on a health goal? That’s a fair thing to bring. HAES doesn’t refuse health goals. It just changes the starting point. Instead of leading with the body you wish you had, we start with the body you actually have and the day you’re actually living. That tends to make the work more durable, not less serious. Lasting change comes from adding, not restricting. From building trust with your body, not fighting it.
If HAES is new to you, the simplest test I can offer is this. Does the approach you’re being offered still treat you as worthy of care if your body never changes? If the answer is yes, you’re in the right neighborhood. If the answer is no, that’s information too.
The framework isn’t a magic wand. It’s a starting point. Mine, anyway. It’s the soil the rest of the work grows out of. The part that lets us put down the fight and finally pay attention. Bodies are worthy of nourishment, care, and respect at every size. Not conditionally. Not as long as you’re working on it.
Just at every size.