Lizzo has decided to post about her 10-day smoothie ‘detox’, devastating fans who say she’s fallen victim to “toxic diet culture”.
The detox – which we’re not going to name here, because what’s the point – promises to “jump-start your weight loss”. It claims it will help you lose anywhere between ten and fifteen points (4.5kg to 6.8kg) in the space of ten days, which any dietitian will tell you is unhealthy and unsustainable.
“So I drank a lot and ate a lot of foods and fucked my stomach up in Mexico, so I decided to do [the cleanse],” Lizzo said in a Reels video posted to Instagram.
“It’s just basically you drink these green smoothies every day.”
She posted videos of herself in activewear every day, but didn’t mention her weight in the video. And although she tagged the juice cleanse company on Instagram, it’s not clear if this was spon con.
That being said – what is clear is that her fans are straight up devastated.
“Seeing you promote diet culture is breaking my heart,” one person wrote.
“You are amazing but this saddens me to my core,” said another.
“Damn you really need a TRIGGER WARNING… because as a fellow Apple body shape girl… this ain’t it,” said a third. “And I got gut health issues too but we ain’t doing no fasts.”
Lizzo is of course free to do whatever she wants with her body – that’s her right.
By the same token, people are free to criticise her for promoting (and potentially profiting) from a detox cleanse. Detoxes don’t work. They’re an endless fad designed to prey on insecurities, while lining the pockets of whoever’s book or program is trendy that week.
They also carry a raft of risks, including dehydration, impaired bowel function, disruption of intestinal flora, metabolic acidosis, and in some cases, coma and death.
It stings particularly for Lizzo fans, who have viewed the singer as a shining beacon of body positivity. (For what it’s worth, Lizzo said she went on the detox as a counter to wanting to “stress eat and do things that were self-harming”.)
Lizzo has had to put up with wide-spread criticism of her body ever since she started getting noticed for her music (and probably long before that).
However, she doesn’t like being labelled as a body positive activist, arguing that it’s become too commercialised and watered-down.
“Now, you look at the hashtag ‘body positive,’ and you see smaller-framed girls, curvier girls,” she told Vogue in September this year.
“Lotta white girls. And I feel no ways about that, because inclusivity is what my message is always about.
“I’m glad that this conversation is being included in the mainstream narrative. What I don’t like is how the people that this term was created for are not benefiting from it. Girls with back fat, girls with bellies that hang, girls with thighs that aren’t separated, that overlap. Girls with stretch marks. You know, girls who are in the 18-plus club.”
