Fitgirlygirl, just to throw this out there, I'm glad you started this thread! It's been an interesting read and really highlights our differences. It's why I love message boards...to see how other people think.
Kaplods, you said:
Quote:
I find it very sad when I hear people say "I am a thin person in a fat body." It seems to me that they're wrapping a lot of their identity in "being not fat."
Thinness must be awfully important to you, if you cannot invision yourself as anything different. Thinness is not important enough to me to be wrapped up in my image of myself. I don't really see myself as fat or thin. Not in any permanent sense.
It's not easy to explain why I feel like a "thin person in a fat body". It's more that mental image I have of myself than anything else. When I close my eyes or dream, I am thin. So I imagine that person is who I am. It's quite a shock to look in the mirror, or worse pictures. Also, I was raised in an extremely judgmental and thin family who think fat is evil and definitely lazy. To be fat in this family is to be sub-par. My mom and I have both put on significant amounts of weight.
Here's a story to highlight how I feel about this. My grandfather recently chastised my mom for not having sent any pictures of herself to his sister. My mom sighed and explained that she just wasn't very proud of her pictures right now. My grandpa said "Oh, I didn't mean any recent pictures of you! Goodness no! I mean I want you to find an old picture and tell her it was taken just last month." THAT'S how shameful it is to be fat in this family.
While I don't hold anyone else up to "thin" standards, I definitely hold myself to them. I know darn well that I am not fat and lazy. There's not a lazy bone in my body. I also know that there isn't a fat person out there who can be called "lazy" because I know just how hard it was to get out of bed at 235 pounds. The effort put into daily tasks is tremendous. But the rest of the world...or at least my family...does not see it that way and I just want to be respected by them.
I guess I'm eternally the 12 year old who just wants to be loved for the person I am within and now I am trying to become that person in everyone's eyes.
I thought everyone felt that way....again, I do love message boards.
This seems to be a pretty common issue when people are above their goal weight but not all the way to their goal weight. I really think it's because people are not used to seeing you at a certain weight. One way that I've chosen to combat it myself is to talk to people about my goals. I've been 135 before and healthy. I've also been 116 and called "Skeletor" by my family. I told people that I have no intention of getting underweight again and that if I tell them that I'm over 135, they should trust me. Everyone has been pretty receptive to that.
Regardless of how hard it is to get out of bed with 100+ extra pounds on you, there are still lazy fat people. There are lazy thin people, too. Being fat isn't a character flaw, but it doesn't make you immune to them, either.
maybe the guy likes big women. I had a guy tell ME once "don't lose your curves!" (which almost caused me heart failure from disbelief). maybe your friend looks at different sized women differently because of that. Bottom line, it's your body. How you feel comfortable looks and healthwise is what's important.
hey, if a young, thin guy is telling you you're not fat, I say don't argue, enjoy the comments, smile and laugh, and continue doing whatever you want to do.
HAHA! I'm in the same boat... My husband is very supportive in me losing weight... but he doesn't want me to lose my boobs, butt, or thighs... lol... I'm gonna look pretty weird with a super tiny waist and super huge everything else lol...
I do the whole "I'm fat" thing too.... I'm not complaining, I'm just stating the obvious lol... but I do have a friend who looks like she weighs a good amount more than me (I don't really think she does.. I think she just carries everything different)... And I have a problem calling her fat even though I see myself as fat and I look smaller than her. I've known her since I was little... and in my mind, I've always see her as just so active ... She's always doing something... that's it's hard to wrap the idea that she's fat around my brain... Maybe that's what's going on? Plus also... people you love... you always see them differently than anybody else will... Most times when you are looking through the eyes of love... you don't see what everyone else sees...
My father would be profoundly annoyed if someone told him he was a person with a hearing disability or some other such PC something. He would correct them and say he was deaf. I am not a person with fat. I am fat. I refuse to bow to the PC BS.
This is an excellent argument why we should not get too easily offended by people's choice of words. Because regardless of whether they say you are a person with fat or you are fat, someone is going to be offended. We don't seriously expect people to somehow *know* who prefers which wording????????
I try not to get upset by people's choice of words towards me (but the one thing I have is a thin-skin, so not always easy).
However, while I would never call anyone else fat, unless they already did, I stand by being allowed to call myself fat, because I am; and hiding it under pretty words doesn't help me; buying into other people's negative stereotypes of a word that is just an adjective helps no-one.
On the deaf thing - a colleague of mine tells people, when asked, that he is Not an impaired hearing person, he is a fully functioning deaf person. I like that! And I like that I'm a fully valid person who is fat, not a fat person waiting for the validation of being thin. Boy, I like this thread!
I think that obesity is going to be a very difficult problem to address as long as it's wrapped up in so much moral judgement. Treatments for substance abuse issues, mental health issues and other "social problems" have tended to be pretty ineffective until the problems lost much of their stigma of evil.
As a probation officer I learned that when people feel they're "broken" they don't tend to see themselves as fixable. When people see themselves as having functioned the best they could (even if it wasn't very well), they tend to be better able to learn from past mistakes. The attitude linked to successful change for most people seems to be "I did the best I could under the circumstances, but now I have the tools to do what I couldn't do before."
In the short-term, guilt is a powerfully positive emotion, but the window of positivity is brief. Saying to yourself, "Crap, I really messed up, I've got to fix this as best I can" is great if it motivates you to take action (and feel good about it).
However, if you stay in guilt mode, it actually makes it harder to take any positive action. Instead of working to repair or compensate for the damage, you spend all of your time punishing yourself for your disgressions, and you start to feel you're a bad person. Once you see yourself as a bad person, it becomes a lot easier to do bad things (after all, it's what bad people do).
I don't think guilt-motivated changes tend to be very successful, because it's very difficult to acheive and maintain the perfect guilt intensity. Too little guilt and there's no reason for change, and too much guilt is paralyzing - the person feels powerless over their "badness."
Different motivations are needed. I think it's one of the reasons I finally have been able to make much more positive changes for a much longer period than ever before. I stopped trying to fix the broken part of myself, and instead focused on making the functioning part perform even better. I built on small successes rather than trying to overhaul my entire person (in essence trying to become a different person overnight).
I had to fix my broken parts There was no avoiding if I wanted them to go away. They weren't that broken after all, just kinda tilted off centre.
I'm finding most when I say i have 20 or 25 more to lose, i get the GASP!! NOO that's too much ha! I take it as a compliment and just chuckle, what else can ya do? It's not worth it to me to get my knicks in a twist over it -- again, people, what can ya do? They say and do stupid things all the time, it's part of our charm i guess Besides, what do you really WANT from all this??? Do you want people to say "yah you're right, you really are still quite fat, you'd better lose a lot more than that" OMG we'd all punch them in the face lol
The first definition of fat in the Webster Dictionary is "notable for having an unusual amount of fat" Because I don't believe that I am "notable" for being fat, I do not call myself fat. Fat is considered a derogatory term to the majority of society in a large part because it is used as a derogatory term by most, and while I do not consider society to be 100% correct in much of its judgement, I still try to follow societal norms to avoid offending others. Saying that it is now okay to use the term "fat" to describe others would mean that by BMI definition, anyone with a BMI over 25 should expect to be called "fat" because it now okay in polite society to use that term. Following that logic, everyone with an IQ under 90 should expect to be called "stupid" because by the IQ scoring, they are below normal intelligence. I am sure that there are some with a low IQ score who would say "Hey, I'm stupid. I own it. Let's remove the stigma." But my guess is that the vast majority of those with low IQs would not appreciate that a small number of their low IQ brethren decided for them that a derogotary word was now acceptable in polite society. "Hey, since I've decided that I'm stupid, and I've embraced my stupidity, I now believe that all with my IQ should be okay with being called stupid, too!"
I understand that the OP did not mean that her friends were arguing about the use of the term "fat", but that is what much of this discussion has devolved into. I don't really know where I was going with this anymore - maybe just saying that many find the term to be intensely offensive, and I'm not sure that it will change anytime soon.
Saying that it is now okay to use the term "fat" to describe others would mean that by BMI definition, anyone with a BMI over 25 should expect to be called "fat" because it now okay in polite society to use that term.
Very well put, I think! "Overweight" and "obese" are more the clinical terms and "fat" is more the derogatory term. It's wonderful that some people would like break down the negative connotations associated with the word "fat" but the vast majority of the world view that word as derogatory. I wonder if we said to our friends "I'm still obese" or "I'm still overweight" we wouldn't get different responses. Although, every time I mentioned to DH that I was still obese I got the "BIM charts aren't accurate" response.
Funny...I personally hate the word obese. I really do. I know it's a clinical term and used in catagorizing people by their BMI, but I hate the way it sounds. I nearly cried when I discovered that I was, in fact, obese.
Fat does sound insulting to some people...to others, not so much. I don't think that this thread is as much about what we refer to OTHER people as but how we refer to ourselves. Which, to me, is entirely our own business. I call myself fat all the time. It's my body. I know a lot of things about it you don't. And if I want to call myself fat...really, in the grand scheme of YOUR life, what difference does it make? I have friends who try to argue with me sometimes when I call myself that, but I've never found myself caught up in a heated argument or discussion over it. I wouldn't participate in such a silly conversation. Just like I wouldn't argue with a friend who said her hair was frizzy if I thought it looked okay. I would express my opinion, but I'm not going to end up getting ticked off if she still thinks it's frizzy...good lord.
I honestly think that people in society have been conditioned to argue with people when they say something "bad" about themselves. Even if the person is just making an observation, we have the compulsion to say, "No, not at all, you're crazy!" I've been guilty of saying this to someone who was complaining about their weight and did, in fact, have a weight problem. Why did I say that? To avoid the argument...to avoid hurting their feelings...to be "nice"? Who knows...but it's a hard habit to break. It would be terribly uncomfortable for me to say, "Well, yeah, a little" or even to suggest a diet or exercise plan.
I wonder if we said to our friends "I'm still obese" or "I'm still overweight" we wouldn't get different responses.
HAHAHA... I've used the "I'm obese" words before... and you should see their faces lol! I am obese... lol... but still, use these words... and people feel the need to argue and yet at the same time it's almost like they feel a little guilty for some reason even though it's not their fault lol....
FitGirlyGirl-OH my GOD. I have these kinds of friends. I'm not very open with people at work or my common group of friends about my borderline diabetes or my 100 pounds weight gain due to the fact that I want to avoid these questions. I have friends who will ask the same questions:
"Do you want a cookie? Why not? You don't like my cookies? You can have just one, come on its just one!"
I hate that. It doesn't stop with one but it starts with none. Thank you. I have also asked my friends to just trust me that I know what I am doing with my body and when I seek advice or input, I will definitely ask. Most will respond with some sort of defensive response but others just say "Okay, I'm just making sure you are okay."
Also, have you gotten this?:
You can't have my cookies? Oh, you're diabetic? Oh you're borderline? What does that mean 'borderline'? A couple weeks later....Should you be having that cookie?
It's infurtiating but to be honest everyone has their own boiling points when it comes to comments about food, exercise and weight. Some people really just cannot pick up on the 'shut up signal'.
I also agree on the 'fat' word. I will call myself what I will because I know how I take my own comments. If someone else has a problem with me calling myself fat then thats really more of their problem with being uncomfortable, not mine. I also don't like the replacement words, ie fluffy, big- boned, cushioned. These are all softer words of 'fat'. I don't see the need in making others around me more comfortable with how I describe myself because I know that I am not putting myself down-also-I don't say 'fat' often enough anyway (unless I am describing my cat.)
BTW-This really isn't meant to sound mean or argumentative.
Also FitGirlyGirl-I have been noticing you around the threads and I think you are doing an amazing job girl! Keep up your spirit because sometimes that is what will drag us out of the mud and back on our feet!
I was perfectly happy to call myself 'obese' while obese according to BMI, and now 'overweight' when overweight according to BMI. I'm honest with myself. That is just what I am, and it's what a doctor would consider the truth. No point sugarcoating it, and if anyone tries to tell me "you're not fat!" when I'm still in the overweight category, I will say "thanks for the compliment, but according to doctors, I still need to lose x kilos to be in a healthy weight range" and leave it at that.
While I agree BMI isn't perfect and isn't always relevant for every one, for me it seems very accurate. When at the lower end of my healthy range I really do look like I'm getting underweight. When in the higher numbers of my healthy range I look like I'm getting a bit too big for my height. So I know it works for me. My partner on the other hand would look emaciated in his 'healthy' range, he's well built and muscled and I think the sort of person for which BMI just doesn't work.
I didn't contribute to this discussion, but I did enjoy reading it - I find that constructive argumentation and healthy discussion are wonderful things. Words are how we construct our meaning, always fluid, always nuanced. Exploring them to increase understanding.
Those who don't enjoy it could perhaps stop reading the thread, but I hope they don't discourage the rest who are engaged in healthy discourse.
It's been an interesting read and really highlights our differences. It's why I love message boards...to see how other people think. 
THAT'S how shameful it is to be fat in this family.
There was no avoiding if I wanted them to go away. They weren't that broken after all, just kinda tilted off centre.
