Songwriter Lizzo’s pivot — from championing size-inclusive body positivity to centering health and wellness — marks a changing of the guard in a leading subject in the pop-cultural discourse. She has publicly shifted, redefining what loving your body means when physical health is at stake. Using Lizzo’s own words, she appears to be reinventing the old model of encouraging women to aspire to be healthy, while rejecting the modern trend of accepting your body at any size and pretending that there are no risks or ramifications associated with certain life choices.

As we know, for years, Lizzo stood as a proud emblem of this unapologetic self-love, which included the toxic message of the body positivity movement that regardless of your size, all you need is your own approval. Her breakout 2017 song “Juice” erupted with confidence — “I’m not a snack… I’m the whole d*mn meal” — and her 2020 Glamour magazine interview solidified her refusal to conform to traditional standards, while encouraging her fans to do the same.

Of the movement, Lizzo said, “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. They need to be benefiting from … the mainstream effect of body positivity now. But with everything that goes mainstream, it gets changed. It gets — you know, it gets made acceptable.”

Her weight climb became part of her platform, and critics saw the movement she came to represent as extreme. The American Conservative’s Evie Solheim, who labeled body positivity as a “big fat lie,” argued that the movement rejects the inextricable link between physical and mental fitness.

In another 2020 interview with Vogue, Lizzo rationalized her views by arguing that since obesity exists, it should be normalized, seeking to use her own size as a symbol for that purpose. “I think it’s lazy for me to just say I’m body positive at this point. It’s easy. I would like to be body-normative. I want to normalize my body. And not just be like, ‘Ooh, look at this cool movement. Being fat is body positive.’ No, being fat is normal.”

However, reality soon caught up with the plus-size singer. By mid-2023, Lizzo began speaking about back pain and mobility limitations — real consequences of her previous weight. Entertainment writer Sandra Rose shared what seemed to be a slight shift in her mindset as she started to lose weight:

Lizzo lost over 60 pounds and she’s well on her way to her weight goal of 150 pounds. “I wanted to be ‘big-girl skinny,’” she said. “Every big girl knows what I’m talking about. Big-girl skinny is 250 pounds.”

Her choice of words — “big-girl skinny is 250 pounds” — seemed to frame her health goals in relatable, realistic terms. It signaled a shift from idealizing body size to acknowledging how our bodies react to how we treat them.

Five years later, it appears as though Lizzo’s physical appearance hasn’t been the only transformation she has undergone. Here, recent reflections offer nuance and have allowed her to escape the image that she may have felt pressured to uphold in order to maintain her status as a role model in the body positivity sphere. She admitted to Women’s Health, “Body positivity has nothing to do with staying the same.”

This shift in perspective had her change from normalizing her larger size to listening to her body’s hunger cues, learning that intuitive eating can correct both undernourishment and binge-eating. Fitness was not a betrayal of acceptance — it was an extension of it. This acknowledgment exposed a flaw in previous interpretations: that body positivity means willful permanence.

The results of her physical and mental adjustments started to show as the award-winning artist gave her audience a sneak peek into her lifestyle changes, and the satisfaction she felt by taking charge of her health became increasingly apparent. Today, Lizzo is opening up about the routine and habits that have worked for her. On Instagram, she described her current lifestyle: “I work my ass off, training 3x a week, daily sauna and cardio, adding animal protein back into my diet, hiring a chef who helps me meal prep and keeps track of what I put into my body in a calorie deficit.” She has also cut out sugary drinks and chips and has dedicated time to working on her mental health, using workouts to feel better instead of food.

She pushed back against the insinuation that she used Ozempic: “If I did all of this on Ozempic … I would be just as proud of myself, because this [crap] is hard.” Her journey is being sold as complex and self-directed. Yet, in her own words, it’s a weight-release journey, not weight loss.

Through this lens, Lizzo’s changes aren’t a sellout — they’re an evolution. She’s stretching the meaning of self-love beyond self-image into a comprehensive approach to self-care. No longer is she preaching one unchanging version of her body; she’s embracing the fluidity that comes with different seasons of life, granting herself the flexibility to work on her health when she can and not experience a total reversal back to old habits if she goes off track. She asserts, “It’s okay to release weight. It’s okay to gain weight after you’ve released weight.”

This adaptation aligns with a more mature, sensible vision of body positivity: one that honors size differences while also valuing the benefits of movement, nutrition, and physical well-being. As such, Lizzo’s change in messaging, as well as being an example of what she preaches, could significantly impact public discussion on this topic. She could redefine body positivity into a movement that emulates true personal responsibility without locking women into an unhealthy status quo. Lizzo’s new message could also foster unity on the subject of women’s health and alleviate ideological tensions between the Left and Right. Her story represents a positive middle ground for conservatives who want to uplift health and liberals who want to continue the battle against weight stigma. This could also bolster the true meaning of choice, as Lizzo’s message is that each health journey is about options, not societal expectations or alliances with an activist movement.

Lizzo is demonstrating that it’s essential to keep evolving, to be open to listening to hard truths, and to admit when what you’re doing isn’t working. Her past stance — unabashed, in-your-face confidence — was a good place to start. The challenge now is sustaining that confidence while facing the test by those who relied on her to normalize poor choices to avoid making changes.

Lizzo’s current chapter reminds us that the strongest version of body positivity is one that includes an open mind while not letting modern trends steer you away from reality and truth.