This is one of those posts that I feel like the universe was telling me to write.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about fat acceptance, and the prejudice against fat people. It is something I really hate in our society, that it still seems just fine to make fun of people for being fat, in a way that isn’t acceptable against people for race, religion, or sexual orientation. I think the reason that prejudice against people who are fat is still considered “okay” by most people is that society seems to blame fat people for being how they are. They must be lazy, or lack self-control, or some other thing that is totally, absolutely, their fault. However, as a formerly fat person, would I seem like a hypocrite for speaking out against this prejudice? Obviously, I must think it isn’t okay to be fat, right? After all, I worked so hard to change that part of my life.
Here’s the thing…about a month before I started on this journey, I had totally and completely accepted the fact that I was fat. Not that I was absolutely happy about it, but I figured that I would always be fat, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I gave up trying to change that fact, and just decided to be as happy as I could be in my fat body.
Then one day I started having heart palpitations. I’ve told this story before, but that was the experience that changed my life. While the doctors all said it was normal, I figured that a stronger, healthier heart probably wouldn’t have issues like that. I realized that while I might never lose weight, I had to love my body and my life enough to make my heart stronger. I started exercising, not because I hated my body, but because I loved my body and wanted to make it better. The scale didn’t influence whether I kept working out, the fact that little by little my body felt stronger is what kept me going. After a while, I realized that if I really loved my body, I should start thinking about the fuel (food) I was feeding it, and I started eating healthier. I researched healthy eating, and worked hard to separate fact from fad. Every time I took a bite of food, I thought about what good that food was doing for my body. Very occasionally, I would eat something because it was good for my soul (hello dark chocolate mousse!), and I would never eat something that tasted gross just because it was healthy (I love my taste buds too), but most of the time I thought of food as the fuel my body needs to run, and eating healthy food as a way to help it run better.
I couple of days ago, I was chatting with a friend about healthy eating, and she mentioned that she knows what she needs to do to eat healthy, she just can’t do it. And yet, she feeds her daughter healthy food. Today while shopping at Trader Joe’s, I heard the clerk talking to a co-worker about how she feels sick all the time, and she knows it’s the crap she is eating. She said someone asked her about how she could feed that stuff to her kids, and she stated that she would never let her kids eat like that, they eat healthy food. I was the same way, my kids have always eaten healthy, even when I was eating crap. I taught them to listen to their bodies to decide if they were still hungry, even when I was not doing the same. Why do we do this? I think it is because we love our kids enough to teach them to love their bodies. We need to love ourselves and our bodies the same way.
These experiences were all leading me to come to this realization, that it is all about really, truly loving your body. Then this afternoon I saw this amazing video from Caroline Rothstein, Fat is Not a Feeling, where she talks about this exact thing. She says it much more powerfully than I could ever hope to. I have a serious girl crush going on.
Is it easy to overcome years of compulsive eating, emotional eating, self-hate, self-doubt, all the other destructive behaviors and thoughts that got us where we are today? Hell no, I still struggle with it almost every day.
Every time I start to “feel fat” or get afraid that I will gain the weight back, that is when I lose sight of why I am doing this and put my health in jeopardy. If I just continue to love my body, and give it the food and exercise it needs to be healthy, it will continue to be healthy. It really is that simple…and that challenging. Love yourself enough to overcome the challenges and love your body enough to treat it the way it deserves to be treated.
Zumba My Butt Off 