I weigh precisely double what is recommended for my height. I weigh in at nearly 300 pounds. It’s taken me a long time to be able to say that.
Being overweight is not a character flaw. I repeat. There is nothing wrong with me because I’m fat. My life will not begin when I become thin (or thinner). Would I like to be healthier? Yes. But I’m no longer willing to pay the costs of hunger, shame, the food-obsession that comes with dieting, the self-denial that comes with trying to convince yourself that you’ll be “happy” with yourself if only you could stop eating so many carbs. I’m going to be happy with myself now. My health goal is to get back to being able to walk a 5K with Hubby on Saturday mornings, as we used to do alone or with friends. That’s my goal post.
All of the dramatic weight gain in my life took place during medication changes. I’ve gained 50 pounds twice, 75 pounds once, and 10-20 pounds multiple times. Depakote, Depakote anti-depressants of all stripes. The medications weren’t negotiable, and in one case they were ordered by my insurance company even though my psychiatrist pointed out that I was already obese. They didn’t care. The alternative medication was more expensive. 75 pounds later I couldn’t walk a mile, let alone a 5K, and had trouble putting on my own shoes but they finally approved the newer generation medication that is weight-neutral.
But y’know what? It doesn’t matter how I gained the weight. There’s no “fault” to be found. It’s not a crime to be fat. And it’s not a crime to have health concerns correlated with being obese. I absolutely guarantee you that shaming fat people for being fat will not result in lower national health care costs. That’s not the way it works.
I’ve lost plenty of weight, too. And in big increments. 50 pounds at a time, 30. 20 over and over and over. But not enough to keep up with the weight gain. I’ve tried Weight Watchers (multiple times), I’ve used multiple calorie counting apps for my phone, I’ve tried to diet by myself and teaming up with weight loss buddies.
In the end it hasn’t made me one iota happier, or more content, or, in the end, thinner. The self-shaming around re-gaining lost weight far outstrips the initial blush of “success.” I’ve done a lot of research around dieting. It doesn’t work. Our bodies are conditioned to retain weight, not lose it. Commercial weight loss programs do not work long-term. Just about any diet will result in weight loss short-term. Then we gain the weight back and blame ourselves instead of biology. I’m getting off the broken habittrail.
Dieting is basically one great big industry scam playing on societal notions of beauty and the promise that, somehow, thinness correlates with happiness. I have enough experience with mental health to know for certain that I would not be happier if I were thin. That’s not the way happiness works.
You might consider bariatric surgery as an answer for someone my size. In an industry report about the results of the most invasive (and “successful”) form of bariatric surgery, I have a 20% chance of losing so much weight that I would still be classified as obese at the 2 year mark. I have a 50% chance of losing so much weight that I would still be classified as morbidly obese. What’s more the surgery is barbaric.
There’s this notion that fat people can lose weight if they just try hard enough and that every negative repercussion of being overweight is completely within our control and therefore our fault. And of course, that losing weight, unless you’re anorexic, is automatically a good thing. That we should all always want to lose weight. That that desire is inherently normal, and not a construct.
While it’s true that we are responsible for what we eat, that doesn’t begin to explain the complexity of obesity. And while being overweight can negatively impact health, not every overweight body is unhealthy.
Spending your life being unhappy with your body is not something we should support as a society. It’s not good for us as people.
As Regan Chastain from the blog DancesWithFat puts it: let’s remember that fat people have the right to live and thrive in fat bodies without shame, stigma, bullying, or oppression and it doesn’t matter why we’re fat, what the consequences of being fat may or may not be, and if we could – or even want to- become less fat or not fat… The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not size (or health) dependent.
There’s a lot more to life, health and our bodies than what the scale tells us. The following is from Health at Every Size:
What is Health at Every Size?
- Accepting and respecting the diversity of body shapes and sizes
- Recognizing that health and well-being are multi-dimensional and that they include physical, social, spiritual, occupational, emotional, and intellectual aspects
- Promoting all aspects of health and well-being for people of all sizes
- Promoting eating in a manner which balances individual nutritional needs, hunger, satiety, appetite, and pleasure
- Promoting individually appropriate, enjoyable, life-enhancing physical activity, rather than exercise that is focused on a goal of weight loss
‘Nuff said.
Plum Librarian LLC 