Fat as Hell…

and not going to take it anymore!

Body Acceptance?

After checking out some of the (frankly, really interesting and sometimes downright great) blogs that are linked here, I’m left wondering about the “it’s okay to be fat” movement. As someone who has spent her whole life overweight, there’s a part of me that very much just wants to say “fuck it! I’m fat. Deal with it.” I’m not talking about simply residing myself to being 300lbs, I’m talking about being able to look in the mirror and not care that I’m overweight. God, what a relief that would be. Plus, there’s a huge part of me that wants nothing more than to give the middle finger to a society that values outer beauty far more than inner.

On the other hand, being fat is a health issue.

I didn’t go to the doctor and decide to change everything about the way I lived because I wanted to look better. This isn’t about vanity for me. It’s not about wanting to be like everyone else or about living up to arbitrary standards set by a society which, in so many ways, isn’t greater than the sum of its parts. Frankly, it’s about not wanting to die before I’m 40. It’s about not wanting to have to take blood pressure medicine for the rest of my life. It’s about not wanting to have to take cholesterol medication for the rest of my life. It’s about wanting to be healthy, not about wanting to be a size 2. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be able to shop for clothing in the sections/stores where “normal” people shop, but if that was all this was about, I’d have taken the plunge to lose this weight a long, long time ago. For me, the wake up call was my health, pure and simple.

That said, I wonder about people who say it is okay to be fat.

Is it okay to accept your body for what it is, warts and all?

Absolutely. No doubt about.

Is it okay to stop comparing yourself to the images of so-called perfection that we are bombarded with by the media?

Of course it is… in fact, I wish everyone would stop buying into the ridiculous notions of beauty that are shoved in our faces day after endless day.

Is it okay to say “I don’t care what anyone thinks about me” and just be who you are regardless of what others whisper when they think you’re not looking?

I’ll tell you, it’s hard, but we all know that it’s more than ok.

And is it okay to say I don’t care if my blood pressure is high, if my arteries are clogged, or if I have a heart attack or stroke before I’m 40 years old?

Obviously, it’s okay to say those things too.

But… it’s also okay to not accept poor health and to want to do something about it.
And it’s also okay to not accept being fat and unhealthy.

I agree strongly with the post I linked to above.
Diets do not work.
In fact, all the things that make all diets doomed to fail from the off, I find, apply to most things in life.
I can only hope that living in a way that is healthy and that includes eating a balanced diet and that includes exercise *does* work.

Maybe for some people, being overweight is okay. Maybe some people can balance extra pounds with a healthy lifestyle, but I can’t. For me, simply accepting being fat is not an option.

January 2, 2008 - Posted by justoofat | health | , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

2 Comments »

  1. Honey, if you had kept reading, you would realize that the idea of fat as unhealthy is a MYTH.

    Here’s a newer post about it: http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/01/most-common-source-of-unsound-health.html

    Junk Food Science is one of my favorite blogs as of late…I’m learning a lot, and it’s not just about emotional well-being. It is truly based in the medical community and SCIENTIFIC FACT about food, weight, etc, and how it relates to health.

    Paul Campos’ books are a great resource as well (starting with “The Obesity Myth”).

    Diets fail because YOUR BODY IS NOT DESIGNED TO BEHAVE THE WAY YOU ARE ASKING IT TO. I starved & binged for nine years but never wavered more than 20 pounds. If science isn’t enough, that anecdote should tell you — our weight is more than just “calories in, calories out.” Unless you want to tell me that you’re the kind of fat person who sits on the couch all day eating donuts.

    Health is obviously a GREAT thing to explore, and exactly what I’m hoping to find. But equating THIN with HEALTHY is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.

    It’s difficult — it seems nearly impossible — to deal with the idea of so many blatant lies in our culture. But our culture is still lying to us about non-whites (2007! and articles about blacks having “lower IQs” than whites are still being published!), still lying to us about women, still lying to us about teh gay. Why wouldn’t it lie to us about fat as well?

    I am not someone who would typically be described as fat (unless you’re comparing me to your typical supermodel), but this BS has got me, too. I spent my adolescense starving myself to death based on the idea that fat=failure. It’s hard, but I’m learning to LET GO — ACCEPT MY BODY FOR WHAT IT IS and what it may become — and LIVE MY LIFE instead of obsessing all the time. The more people that CHOOSE LIFE and CHOOSE HAPPINESS, the less the lies will be believed.

    Unrelated…I’m not stalking you or your blog, you just happen to pop up on my tag surfer at the right time. :)

    Comment by zombie z | January 2, 2008

  2. Haha @ stalking me… don’t worry, I understand how these things work. And, if I’m honest, I really do appreciate you challenging me a bit.

    The funny thing is, in many ways, you really are preaching to the choir here. If there’s anyone who is cynical about what the establishment is feeding us, believe me, you’re talking to her. I’ve no doubt at all that just about everything that the government, the media, the medical establishment, organized religion, (or in fact any entity that becomes beholden to special interested groups/corporations), slings at us as gospel is, actually, just tripe. In my opinion, cynicism is not only healthy, but frankly, a sign of intelligence.

    That said, I’m not just a few pounds overweight and trying like mad to be a size 0. I’m not just 50lbs overweight. I’m 5,3″ and nearly 300 lbs… and while I don’t sit on the couch eating doughnuts all day, I have lived a very unhealthy lifestyle for a very long time… which included large amounts of traveling, no sleep and a diet consisting of almost entirely fast food. Furthermore, I’m not simply trying to lose weight because my doctor said “wow, you need to lose weight.” Had that been the case, I’d have really tried to do so a long, long time ago. I decided to lose weight because a) I don’t want to take medication for my blood pressure and/or cholesterol and b) I was really starting to feel physically bad all the time. My muscles ached, I couldn’t sleep, I was sick all the time, etc. Even the 40+ lbs I have taken off so far has made a difference in all of those things.

    Listen… I *will* spend some time reading the link you suggested and despite my seeming opposition, I have taken what you’ve said to heart. The fact of the matter is, I don’t really care about “being thin.” The older I get, the more I find that happiness in my life is achieved through balance… and I believe that this is no exception. I’ll never have the body type that society holds up as being beautiful and the truth is, I really don’t want that. But that doesn’t mean I should be Jaba the Hut either. I’m just shooting for something in between.

    Anyway… thank you again for talking to me. I really do appreciate your input and I find your cynicism to be refreshing. Do *you* have a blog that I can look at?

    j

    Comment by justoofat | January 3, 2008


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