PIZZA MY MIND

Wecome to FAT GIRL FRIDAY........

Fat.

What does the word mean to you? Is it something you could call yourself without flinching? If you use it to describe others, do you usually do so with the intent to praise, wound, warn, or merely describe?

I have been thinking of late that, “Body acceptance” isn’t really the right term that we should be using. For example, people shouldn’t accept the aches and pains and soreness from their body. The issue is “weight acceptance". People should accept their weight.

My journey into Fat Acceptance, Body Positivity, Weight Acceptance, Body Acceptance, whatever you want to call it, five years ago......is still ongoing. With each new step into acceptance of my worthiness, my thoughts around being Fat are, well, evolving! So let me give you a "Pizza My Mind."

Weight acceptance is fundamentally healthier than trying to reduce weight. There are many more ways of losing weight that make people sick, than there are ways of losing weight that make people healthy. Weight-loss is fundamentally a very bad and unhealthy goal. Weight-loss can even be a symptom of illness. People can lose weight by amputating a body part. People can lose weight by hosting tapeworms in their body. People can lose weight by starving themselves. People can lose weight by throwing up everything they eat. People can lose weight by all kinds of temporary and unhealthy shortcuts that will make them sick in the long run. People can lose weight by all kinds of temporary and unhealthy shortcuts, that make them even fatter in the long run, as their body learns to adjust to whatever they’re doing to it. Weight-loss doesn’t necessarily make people healthier. Furthermore, “normal-weight obesity” and “skinny fat” can be unhealthy too. People who are at a “healthy weight” based on BMI calculations still aren’t necessarily healthy.

If FAT people focus on weight-loss, they might give up regular exercise when they don’t lose weight as a reward for their efforts. Been there, done that, more times then I can count. People who run marathons can still be FAT, <I have always dreamt of running a marathon in my Fat Body>, and all that exercise improves their health and cardiovascular, no matter what their scales and tape measures say. By keeping up with their regular exercise, they’re getting healthier, even if their weight doesn’t change. Weight acceptance can improve their health, if it helps motivate them to keep exercising, even without any weight-loss. Weight acceptance can improve their health, if it helps them put on their workout clothes and get exercise, in spite of the disdainful looks of the judgmental people, who are too narrow-minded to know better. How many people would keep feeding, walking, training, and playing with a dog, that stubbornly insists on always doing bad things, regardless of their attempts to do everything they can to teach the dog better? Definitely NOT ME! Isn't it much easier to find the motivation to take good care of feeding and exercising our bodies, if we can accept and love our bodies for what they do, regardless of the number on the scale? I say YES!!

Before the idea of weight acceptance, slightly overweight people <usually the female ones> would try to starve themselves thin, giving ourselves all kinds of health problems in the process. And if you haven't been privy to the health problems yet......just wait.....they will come. We also weren’t taught terms like “normal weight obesity” or “skinny fat”.

Here is my Fat Girl Friday Summary:

• Healthy habits are necessary for everybody, regardless of weight. Thin people still get health problems associated with obesity.

• Weight acceptance ultimately encourages people to focus on health instead of trying to take unhealthy shortcuts to weight loss, that more often lead to even more weight gain.

• Focus on obesity is shifting towards weight acceptance because “healthy” and “weight” aren’t as closely coupled as people seem to believe they are. The next time you hear someone say that the "Body Acceptance, Weight Acceptance, or the Fat Acceptance Movement is PROMOTING OBESITY", please tell them for me to "Fuck Off"!

These days, my feelings about Fat Acceptance are mixed. As Fat Chick, who has found her way back to being active, who has lost almost 35lbs in the last 9 months, my desire for other people to feel as good as I do, sometime leaves me tempted to go back to my "thin days" and get all evangelical on their ass, about the healing powers of weight-loss. But I don’t, and I never will. Not everybody’s life and health improves with a slimmer waistline, and I no longer want to contribute to a narrative that touts weight-loss as a cure for anything and everything. It is just simply not true! Just because I was struggling a little at two hundred pounds, doesn’t mean that everybody is, and I don’t get to make assumptions about anybody else’s relationship with their own body. We don't get an opinion on anyone's body, their life choices, or their mortality. A while back, I over heard someone say, "she’d rather die than get fat like me." That girl was facing societal pressures, something I understand all to well, that made her feel like her life would be worthless if she gained too much weight. Listen, any movement that seeks to divorce a person’s weight from their worthiness as a person, is a good thing! Nobody should have to feel that being fat would erase all the good things about them, or like they’d be better off dead than FAT. People deserve bodily autonomy, and that includes the right to maintain their body at whatever weight best facilitates their happiness and comfort.

Ironically, the Fat Acceptance movement has helped me lose weight. It got me past the cultural baggage associated with being called "FAT"! Being filled with despair and self-loathing about your body, does nothing to promote healthy choices. Making peace with what other people think about my weight, what I think about my weight, has given me the clarity to see my worth.

My advice for fat people reading this, would be to make your own decisions about what parts of the Weight Acceptance, Fat Acceptance, Body Positivity, and/or the Body Acceptance movement do and do not serve you. Pay attention to your body, and especially your mental health, and figure out what you need.....what you deserve. If you decide that losing weight is the best course of action for you, don’t feel like you’re betraying anybody. You can keep speaking out against the stigma fat people face, while still taking care of yourself. My most recent discovery is, as our self-acceptance increases, so does our motivation to take care of ourselves.

Fat acceptance can be like fire. If you learn a little bit and use it carefully, it can improve your life. If you have too much of it, or don’t exercise caution and common sense, it can quite possibly be a destructive force in your life.

Power comes from accepting who you are, and loving yourself as you deserve to be loved, despite societal norms. You are capable and full of potential now, just as you are.

"Acceptance is, and will always be, more powerful than Weight-loss" - Michelle Banna