What it Means to be a “Body Positive” Wellness Coach for Dancers in the Age of Ozempic and SkinnyTok
Written by Nicole Sabella
Growing up with diet culture in the ’90s and early ’00s was not for the faint of heart. Add in living, breathing, and dreaming of dance for the entirety of my childhood and teen years, with the looming studio mirrors, leotards, frequent “body talks,” and costume fittings following me at every turn. You could say it was almost inevitable that my relationship to my body was bound to be, well… complicated.
On any given day, consciously and subconsciously, the messages about food, bodies, beauty, and dance seeped into my porous and impressionable young self like a sponge in a rainstorm. There was no resisting it. The ever-present Weight Watchers and Slim Fast commercials. The trips to Jenny Craig as my mom picked up her done-for-you diet meals. The boldly placed “low fat,” “non-fat” text printed on seemingly every food at the grocery store. And I can’t forget The Biggest Loser dominating Tuesday nights on our TV screen.
You better believe I got the message that smaller is better. That our bodies are never “good enough.” And that somehow my worth as a person and a dancer was all tied to how skinny I could force myself to become. Yes, I heard that bugle call loud and clear.
While today's young dancers are likely to be picking up similar messages about their bodies and food choices, there’s a subtext that I believe to be slightly more sinister and infinitely more complex too.
Now we are bombarded with commercials, Instagram ads, and well-placed marketing banners proudly announcing that weight loss is easy. The message is no longer, “With time, effort, restriction, exercise, and some luck you can lose weight.” It’s, “Just take a shot and all your dreams come true.” Possibly within the same commercial sequence, we’ll then see a Dove ad with beautiful bodies of varied shapes, colors, and heights, subliminally suggesting in opposition, “Love your body as it is.”
We have never been here before. It’s bewildering for me, and I’m an adult who literally does this stuff for a living!
So what does it mean to support our young dancers in this new age of body-altering shortcuts existing in tandem with body-positive messaging, when they are likely already receiving the body pressures that are unfortunately synonymous with dance?
Let’s start here…
Why Dancers Are More Vulnerable to Diet Culture
“Engage this muscle. Not that one.” “Use your core.” “That’s why your quads are so big.” “You’re sickled.” “That gesture isn’t correct.” “Thank you, next.”
A dancer may hear any number of these phrases on a given day from the person standing at the front of the room, with very little to no reassurance that would balance the delicate scales of their mental-emotional landscape. When your instrument happens to be your body, feedback is intrinsically more delicate and more difficult to swallow.
Why? Because it is you who’s being corrected, not a canvas you painted, a musical score you composed, or a guitar that can be placed in its case when you’re finished. It’s not outside of the skin you live in. It’s you, and that’s hard.
Additionally, while the life of a dancer can be particularly insular, especially in rigorous settings, dancers are still very much existing within the greater context of present-day diet culture. So, within this insular dance bubble, there’s a profound magnification of what’s already loud and alive within today’s image-obsessed, social media aware atmosphere.
The pressure can be crippling, debilitating, and downright dream-crushing.
I’ll let the statistics tell the story.
A large systematic review and meta-analysis found that approximately 12% of dancers meet diagnostic criteria for an eating disorder. Among ballet dancers, that number rises to about 16%, making ballet the highest-risk dance forms studied. (PubMed)
Yet, formal diagnoses only tell us part of the story.
Research summarized in the essential book Nourishing Dance by Monika Saigal shows that disordered eating behaviors are far more prevalent than diagnosed eating disorders. Depending on age, genre, and level of training:
13–27% of student dancers report ongoing disordered eating behaviors
Up to 50% of professional dancers report a lifetime history of disordered eating
Even with all this information…
I’m Not Anti-Ozempic. I’m Anti Blanket Marketing Without Nuance.
Wanting to change your body, whether influenced by diet culture or dance world body pressures, is, well… normal. I’m not against wanting to change your body. (The dancers I work with often see the body changes they’re looking for over time.) I’m not anti-diet. And believe it or not, I’m not anti-Ozempic.
What I’m against is the constant diet culture propaganda that makes even the most steadfast, strong-minded, body-confident person (yes, all genders are susceptible here) question their body, feel inadequate, and feel heightened pressure to be smaller, at all costs.
Ultimately, taking a weight loss drug is a decision to be made with great care between an individual and their doctor. Within the general population, there are opportune times when this intervention can absolutely be a positive choice. I’m not here to stand in the way of that.
I am here to say that when every other commercial is for a weight loss drug, and within those commercials the discussion lacks greater context around body composition, muscle loss, and gastric irritation, I believe we are being short-sighted.
What is the long term vision here? What effects will this have on your body in 5, 10, 15 years time?
For dancers, this is particularly harmful. Losing muscle equals less endurance, power, and even weaker bones. I think we can all agree that is not a recipe for a transcendent performance at the theatre, or a powerful transmission on video.
I’ll stop here and let you use your imagination about the dangerous places this could lead dancers and the dance community at large.
What Body Positivity Really Looks Like in Nourished Dancer Coaching
With February and Valentine’s Day approaching, and the incessant talk of self-love inside wellness spaces, I tend to offer a more get-real approach. Practicing body positivity doesn’t mean that you always love the image you see in the mirror, or that you never want to change aspects of your shape. I’ve found in my research and with the dancers I coach… that just simply isn’t realistic.
Instead, I will die on the hills of body neutrality and body image resilience. Lindsey and Lexi Kite of More Than a Body have researched this in depth, and much of my work draws from their research.
The core tenets here are:
Giving your body care and respect (even when you’d like it to be different)
Nourishing your body (I studied at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and gained my coaching certification to help the dance community)
Cultivating gratitude for the actions your body takes to support you (not necessarily the way it looks)
Developing self-talk patterns that empower (not punish or diminish)
Essentially, over time and with consistent guided practice, I help the dancers I work with to befriend their bodies. The testimonials tell the story. Yet, their dancing speaks to this at an even louder volume.
In Closing…
I prefer to think of this self-love people talk about as a verb, not a feeling. A series of actions that say, “Body, I care.”
“Here, I crocheted this hat for you because I know your ears get cold in the winter.”
“Here, I saved you a spot at the barre.”
“Here, I packed a snack in your dance bag so you don’t lose focus mid-rehearsal.”
Do you see the love-in-action there?
So while SkinnyTok and the messaging around weight loss drugs like Ozempic become increasingly more prominent, I sit with the knowing that…
No drug can cure the incessant negative self-talk that many dancers suffer from. No amount of restriction can teach you self-compassion. No injection can give you the tools to nourish your body for optimal performance and genuine joy. No medicine can help you cultivate the inner confidence that isn’t dependent on how your reflection looks to you in the mirror.
But the methodology I offer can help. And I’ve seen it do just that, again and again.
If you're navigating this yourself, or guiding dancers through it, you are not alone. There is another way.
And if this resonates, I’d absolutely love to hear your story in the comments below.
I’m always here cheering you on. 🤍
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Meet the Author
Nicole Sabella is a multi-passionate dance professional. She’s a certified wellness and mindset coach, dance educator, speaker, and the founder of The Nourished Dancer.
Nicole toured the world for a decade as a core member of the Mark Morris Dance Group and now brings that depth of experience into her coaching. She specializes in helping dancers release self-doubt and heal their relationship with food and their bodies through methods that support a mind, body, and soul approach.
Nicole founded The Nourished Dancer in 2020 to offer one-on-one coaching and group workshops that empower dancers with practical tools and heightened inspiration to level up their dance lives from the inside out.
