Skinny Happy People
Read now (7 mins) | Reflections on leaving a weight-loss cult/cult-like group
June 11, 2023
I was in a weight loss cult for 13 years. Before the cult I had tried and succeeded in losing 50-100 lbs on 5 occasions through behavior modification (Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, MasterCleanse/Fasting, a nutritionist, and Keto/HIIT workouts). All 5 approaches worked (yay) and all 5 times—like most people—I gained more weight after the diet than I had lost (boo). I knew if I attempted to lose weight again I had to do it differently.
This is why I was so susceptible to joining the cult.
I didn’t know it was a cult or a cult-like, high-control group when I joined. I thought it was a different kind of weight loss program. But in the last few years I’ve learned a lot about groups like this and, for me, I have come to believe it meets the criteria of being a cult: a group that promises to improve your life if you follow its regimen, buy its products and/or obey its leader.
In the cult, improvement (aka weight loss) came like regular diets through behavior modification but that behavior modification came not through will power but “thought modification.”
It was a neat trick.
If I could change my thoughts to match the group leader’s then I would be eating and exercising like her, and therefore I would end up thin like her. That was my goal and in a way it worked—I just had to give up my identity. Easy trade. Right?
One of the key teachings in the cult was about managing your emotions. The cult language used was that we were eating to “buffer” our emotions and we needed to learn to feel and tolerate our emotions so we didn’t need to buffer.
Because I am Autistic, and highly sensory sensitive, I described to the leader how intense my discomfort was and how eating turned off that discomfort. I now know this to be emotional dysregulation. There are lots of great tools for regulation that come naturally to Autistic people like stimming, monotropic focus on a special interest, and pet therapy to name a few. But none of those tools were cult approved.
The only cult approved tool for managing dysregulation was something called “working the model”:
The reason for dysregulation was an unhelpful thought.
The solution to it was changing or reprogramming your thoughts.
You would know you did it right if you didn’t want to eat and we could all see if you were doing that right if you lost weight or stayed thin.
If you did not lose weight or stay thin you were allowed to stay in the cult/group as long as you kept trying (and kept paying).
There was no awareness that emotional dysregulation was different for Autistic people (or people of color, or people with cancer or trauma). There was just the one approved tool for all occasions and your failure to use that tool was 100% in your control. But again, benevolence reigned and as long as you were compliant in your commitment to the tool, failure was welcomed. Self incrimination was, in some way, even encouraged.
I was a believer. Cults provide absolute answers and, while I was diagnosed Autistic as a member and shared my diagnosis, I was told labels were not helpful and that the model works for everyone in all situations, so even if it was “real,” it was irrelevant.
(Think Scientology cult member Tom Cruise shaming Brooke Shields for not being able to think her way out of postpartum depression.)
I was lead to believe - and I wanted to believe - I could disappear my Autism with “thought-work” and by using “The Model.”
I was love bombed and given special access when I was compliant and I was iced out, and removed from activities when I questioned The Model. This is the essence of high-control.
One day, I was with the cult leader on a retreat with about 20 women. At the retreat she made an offer for a year long program which was something like $20,000 and I was on the fence. I didn’t feel like I needed it, but I wanted to stay close to the leader and other women who had access to her (and frankly, who I really liked.) I didn’t leap at the chance to join.
After I got home, I decided I wanted in, so went to the link she had provided and begrudgingly paid for the program. I knew I still had weight to lose and that compliance was the only way so I pulled the trigger. She sensed my hesitation in my delay in taking action.
She reached out almost immediately with a refund. I was too hesitant to sign up. I asked too many questions at the retreat. She didn’t want to drag me along. My participation wasn’t welcome.
For 2 weeks I woke up an hour early to journal and meditate on loving her and forgiving her and being grateful for all the times she had “let” me participate. It’s her group, and she should have whoever she wants in it. “I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”
The cult leader had taught me this culturally appropriated, out of context prayer and I prayed it until there was nothing but love for her in my heart.
I had been brainwashed and I’d willingly done most of the heavy lifting. In withholding access, my commitment to the cause became stronger.
One of the rules of the cult/group was that the leader could not be wrong. The Model could not be flawed. It worked every time.
So while questions were allowed, certain lines of reasoning or hesitation were discouraged. Not knowing the line meant you had to observe who was getting more “treats” from the leader in order to guess the rules. This shared confusion (along with the rules we did know, like how to do a model) created a sense of community, collective values, and shared language that pretty much just shut down any debate. The group (like all cults) was not designed for debate, it was designed for compliance.
In her book Cultish, Amanda Montell talks about how cult-like group leaders rely on expressions called “thought-terminating clichés,” which affirm positivity while shutting down debate. This approach was at the heart and soul of the social contract of membership—positivity and personal responsibility. If I was totally in control of my thoughts and I had the power to change my thoughts, then saying anything negative meant I was being personally irresponsible and deserved any negative outcomes I experienced.
“Group affiliations…make up the scaffolding upon which we build our lives,” Montell writes. What we tend to overlook, she argues, “is that the material with which that scaffolding is built, the very material that fabricates our reality, is language.”
Now on the positive side this was not a cult/group that was going to ever lead to mass suicide or violence or child trafficking. It was just a group of (mostly) ladies trying to lose weight. The number of people who lost weight in the group was probably similar to the number of people losing weight on standard diets.
Study after study shows we have no (natural) successful, permanent weight loss solutions because human bodies are all different and not all designed to be 125 lbs. it turns out.
Fatphobia is rampant everywhere and this cult/group was rooted in that fatphobia which meant there was ongoing external validation to stay a member. Without fatphobia and the popularity of behavior modification diets that consistently fail in massive numbers (like 99% long term fail rates), there would not be such a powerful place for this cult/group.
When I left in early June of 2020, I began to reprogram the fatphobia and the internalized ableism that prevented me from implementing healthy techniques to manage my emotional regulation. (Thanks in large part to the Maintenance Phase podcast.)
For me what that looks like is allowing myself to stim without judgement, starting my day with journaling and sunrise time in nature, sticking to foods and routines that work to keep me regulated, being almost exclusively around people who know and accept that I’m Autistic, and acknowledging that bypassing my sensory sensitivities leads to burnout and suicidal ideation.
It’s not that The Model doesn’t ever work. It does. But it’s only one tool and you have to know how and when it will work for you. I have heard the cult/group has evolved in the years since I left to allow for more flexibility, but I have no direct—and very little indirect—knowledge of what has happened since I left. Many people I love and respect have remained in the cult and I have to believe them when they say being in it makes their life better.
For me, being in that high-control group was wonderful at times. Being in the light of the leader was like a drug. When I was on it, I felt untouchable. When I was out of the light, I would do anything to get back in.
For me, this was toxic and unsustainable. For someone else I can see that it wouldn’t have the same pull. Maybe they could be a recreational user. Maybe?
In her “Sounds Like a Cult” podcast, Montell and her cohost (stand up comedian, Isabela Medina) rate the groups and brands they feature in their podcast as “Live Your Life”, “Watch Your Back”, and “Get the Fuck Out.” They haven’t featured this culty group on their show but they did rate “Diet Culture” as a being on the edge of “Live Your Life” and “Get the Fuck Out” and high-control group leaders like Tony Robbins and Teal Swan as definitely “Get the Fuck Out.”
I know there is a lot of interest these days in cults like the Institute in Basic Life Principles followed by the Duggar family and featured in the documentary Shiny Happy People. IBLP is violent, dangerous, and criminal. The group I was in was not that and I don’t want to make it seem that way.
Cult tactics are everywhere from Starbucks to Soul Cycle, but the difference between being influenced by cult-like tactics and being in a cult is a fine line. There is no physical or sexual abuse in this group and “escaping” was as easy as saying goodbye. This group might not be a cult for everyone (I’m not enough of a cult expert to know that), but I do know for me it was a “Get the Fuck Out.”
Here are some ratings from the ‘Sounds Like A Cult’ show to put it in context.
Live Your Life:
Trader Joe’s - Live Your Life
Dolly Parton - Live Your Life
Watch Your Back:
Momfluencers
Goop
Get The Fuck Out:
Teal Swan
Tony Robbins
Have you broken free from a high-control group and/or diet culture? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
*Background note: Most people only have a vague (often, highly stereotyped) version of autism in their minds and believe that autistic children need (traumatic) ABA therapy to "overcome" their disability and appear "normal." After receiving an autism diagnosis in her thirties, Dr. Angela Lauria realized that she too had been mostly unaware of what it means to be Autistic. Like so many people, she started her journey by first gathering information and resources from the omnipresent (and problematic) Autism Speaks, but eventually moved away from the 'autism community' in favor of the 'Autistic community,' where she found kinship with other Autistic individuals and learned to let go of pathologizing language like 'autism spectrum disorder' and 'Asperger's Syndrome.' This autism blog (and her autism podcast, "The Autistic Culture Podcast") is meant to share her lived-experience insights to support others on a similar journey of diagnosis, understanding, and community. Embrace Autism--differences are not deficits.