How Did the Regency Upper Class Stay So Thin?

The working class put in hours of physical labor, but the upper classes….didn’t.  How did they stay so Keira-Knightley-thin?  (Because no one can question the historical accuracy of the Keira Knightley casting decision.)  I know there was exercise—horseback riding and walking—all done under layers and layers of fabric.  But then there was rain and snow and cold winds in the winter that would have prevented much of the Regency upper class from getting their 10,000 steps in.  There also wasn’t a lot of access to fruits and vegetables…and a lot of consumption of meat and bread.  Sugar was in short supply, but the rich had the means to acquire it, and it seems like a central activity was drinking tea, eating cake, and offering unsolicited advice.  (Lady Catherine, I mean that in the least judgmental way possible.)  Plus, I’ve watched those Bridgertons spend their evenings at balls downing lemonade by the glass and popping sweets in one bite.  Perhaps there are one or two gaps in the historical accuracy of the Bridgerton series, but the question still stands: How did a class with the means to be sedentary and access to an abundance of food manage to stay trim? 

Waif-like wasn’t sexy.

One answer is that…they didn’t.  The Regency standard of beauty was different from today’s, with paintings depicting plumper thighs, rounder faces, and fuller waists.  The extra curves were an indication of a wealthier, easier lifestyle and so were stylish.

Austen herself often comments that stick thin characters are sickly, not beautiful, so the push for waiflike figures was not as strong.

But there was pressure to be thin.

But my assumption that people were thin without effort—and that obsession about weight is a modern affliction—was wrong.  A fixation on weight and physical fitness dates back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, who believed that a fit body was the sign of a fit mind and an overweight body an unbalanced mind.  And beauty contests for women?  The Ancient Greeks invented them. 

Dieting is a centuries old tradition, and both men and women suffered from bulimia and anorexia long before the diseases were recognized and named.  Austen shows us her version of an unusual diet through Mr. Woodhouse, who sticks to gruel and simple foods, but Mr. Woodhouse wasn’t the only dieter of the day.  In fact, despite the lack of Victoria’s Secret ads, there was plenty of societal pressure to stay thin, much of it similar to what surrounds us today.

There was form fitting clothing.

Women wore corsets, also called stays, designed to support their busts and create a streamlined figure.  Men wore form fitting jackets, tights, and breeches, with looser jackets and pants not becoming popular until the end of the 19^th century.  The tighter fitting clothing, much like today, showcases thin figures and ostracizes people whose bodies don’t conform.

There were celebrity dieters.

Lord Byron, a contemporary of Austen’s, was one of the first celebrity dieters.  Fearful of gaining pounds, he weighed himself excessively and alternated between binge eating and starving himself.  He smoked cigars to stave off hunger pains and wore layers of clothing to sweat away pounds.  The vinegar diet, his own invention, consisted of eating potatoes in vinegar or drinking vinegar and water several times a day to flush out his fat.  His fad diet caught on like a TikTok challenge, with some women dying from vinegar consumption.  A version of this diet—the apple cider vinegar diet—still exists (but this diet generally recommends a much smaller consumption of vinegar). 

Like many celebrity dieters, Byron’s standards were stricter for women than men.  He criticized his wife’s diet, remarking that “a woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and champagne.”  Later, when he ended an affair with a married woman who’d become thin with grief, he called her “a skeleton.”  Oh, Lord Byron.  You may have been one of the first celebrity dieters, but hypocritical standards about women’s weight are so cliché.

There were diet doctors.

George Cheyne, who lived before Austen, was a physician who used to visit with his patients in local taverns to develop a friendship with them.  This was a common practice of the time.  His tavern visits left him unhealthy, so he cut out alcohol and meat and lost a significant amount of weight.  He tried to return to a more moderate version of his former diet, but he again gained weight, so he stuck with his meatless diet for the rest of his life.  He is one the first proponents of the lacto-vegetarian diet.

He wrote a book about his weight loss.  It became popular, and he started to take on rich clients, advising them on his vegetarian diet, and one of the first diet doctors was born.  His success led to more diet doctors for the rich, and it became a thing.  And, wouldn’t you know?  It’s still a thing.

There was fat shaming.

It didn’t take long for people to link diet to Britain’s role as a world power.  People are overweight?  That’s why this country is slipping as a global power!  King George IV (who ruled from 1820-30) was obese, and this was seen as a sign he was an unfit ruler.  (Ahem, Ancient Greece.)  Worse, he enjoyed French and Persian food, and his subjects agreed there would be fewer problems in the nation if everyone ate British food, like roast beef and beer, the way God intended.  (This all sounds eerily familiar the world over, centuries later.)  Being overweight came to be associated with being lazy, irresponsible, and selfish.  This was neither the first nor last instance of fat shaming being ratcheted up to a national level.

So…

How did the Regency upper class stay so thin?  As far as I can tell, it’s in much the same way we do—dieting, exercising, worrying about weight, watching what celebrities eat, wearing some version of Spanx, judging others for their weight, paying people to help us lose weight, and declaring that obesity is destroying our nation.  Is it comforting or disturbing that some things never change?

Austen had such a healthy view on weight, didn’t she?  Don’t be too thin.  A few pounds are okay.  Go for walks and enjoy nature, and you’ll be healthy in mind and body.  Hey, she should have written a book…

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Below are some sites I used to write this:

The Eye of the Beholder: Standards of Regency Beauty

The History of Dieting

Lord Byron: The Celebrity Diet Icon

Revealed: How the Georgians Taught Us to Diet 300 Years Ago

If you liked this post, you might also like this one: Plump is Beautiful: Austen’s Take on the Many Sides of Beauty.