Are y'all reading the same thing I'm reading? Because I don't hear anything about blame in these posts. She's not blaming things on her weight and her body. She's turned the tables and puts the spotlight on other people, how THEY have a problem with her body. She does not. It's so refreshing to read this, I especially enjoyed the post titled "The divine liberation of calling myself fat" where she writes "
Every time a fat person takes the stairs or the elevator, orders a salad or a sandwich, boards an airplane or a train, there is the opportunity for harsh judgment from someone. My friend wasn’t joking about me, he was joking about the absurdity of judging these tiny moments as an explanation for why I was fat, and the ridiculousness of others’ feeling of entitlement to know why I had the body I had.
It stood in stark relief from the furrowed brows, concerned faces, and “tough love” that so often face so many fat people. And it sharply contrasted with the shame-driven, moralizing culture around fatness that I experienced every day. It put the spotlight squarely on the absurd judgments that people of all sizes make when they see fat people."
After I started Intuitive Eating it took me a long time to integrate the fat acceptance movement into my readings. It happened little by little, mostly by just tweaking my social media a bit. I started following blogs like this one, liked pages such as Fattitude, and started following body-positive instagramers and body positive fashion bloggers, and signed up for intuitive eating and anti-diet podcasts. It has made a real difference in how I perceive women and myself. I'm so much calmer, so much more appreciative of my body, so much more confident in my fashion choices, heck I didn't even realize how many fashion choices I had! Most importantly I'm learning how to live happily and unapologetically inside my own body. It feels so much better to take care of a body that I love rather than fight myself and shame myself all the time.
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Originally Posted by Treasa
I think the author simply has a lot of emotional baggage. And she's decided everything is all about her weight. I would say it's not. And that she has lots of issues that have nothing to do with her weight but simply manifest themselves that way. I would also like to know how fat she actually is. Is she really really fat? Or is she just medically obese but most Americans wouldn't consider her too big? Because if she is really, really fat, then I would argue that her health is not fine no matter what her BP and cholesterol numbers are. And as she ages, she'll feel her weight in her knees, and her hips, and her feet and probably her heart. If she's more than just a little obese her numbers won't stay good as she ages.
I also am not buying the "I really do eat healthy and exercise but God just happened to make me obese" bit. Some people are big because they have some medical condition. She apparently doesn't. I know I'm fat because I had chosen to eat more calories than I was expending for more than a decade. If she wants to own her lifestyle, she should go ahead and own it, i.e. "I may be mildly obese (if that's even true) but I'm healthy enough and am already doing all the dieting and exercise I care to." That's fair. Not knowing exactly how big she is and her not facing her underlying psychological issues makes it hard for me to relate to her.
Finally, I wonder if it's ever occurred to her that the people who love her and tell her that they're worried about her health might actually be, I don't know, worried about her health?
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I think you're missing the point of this whole blog. It doesn't really matter how big she is, there is a level of discrimination that comes at every weight point over skinny. I remember earlier this year when I went to get my bloodwork done and everything came back FINE I almost felt like I didn't deserve to be fine. Like my blood pressure is not supposed to be good or that my cholesterol should be sky high. I shared those thoughts with my doctor and she thought I was silly. She actually did not judge me. I've had an injury in my pelvis that I've been suffering with and going to PT for a while. I finally broke down to the doc and admitted that I felt this injury was my fault and that I was certain that the injury would heal if only I lost weight. She assured me that many people have an injury like this after childbirth and that I shouldn't be blaming my weight for every little thing that pops up.
And you know what? I gave that a lot of thought, a lot a lot a lot of thought. And I opened my eyes and saw that I AM relatively healthy and I DESERVE to be healthy because I DO take care of myself. I DO eat a healthy balanced diet with plenty of fruit and veg and I DO exercise consistently. And look around, there's lots of skinny folks that I know that are suffering with a whole host of illnesses as benign as acne but as serious as kidney stones, anxiety, depression, cancer, diabetes, and digestive problems.
A person can choose to believe that the source of their problems is their weight. But I choose to live my life comfortably inside my own skin. I know there will be people out there that will judge me based on what my body looks like and for a long time I let that judgement influence how I felt about myself and I judged myself the same way. But thanks to blogs like this and the entire body-acceptance movement I've moved on from a lifetime of negativity and self destruction and moving closer to a life of joy and fun.
Articles by "Your Fat Friend" on Medium
I appreciate that this article expressed sentiments myself and many friends have had!
