Casualties

My heart is heavy today and has been since Saturday when my best friend dropped the bomb that she's getting weight loss surgery. The betrayal, hurt, and anger that I've felt since then is mind boggling. Since becoming involved with fat acceptance I've cut body negative people out of my life. I've surrounded myself with people who are positive and work hard for a wide variety of human and animal rights issues. In other words, good people. Positive people. People who make a difference in the world. So my world was rocked when my best friend, after hiding it from me for months, told me that she was getting cosmetic surgery to become thinner.

My  friend is the captain of her own underpants and she can get cosmetic surgery if she wants to, of course, but I'm captain of my own underpants as well and I have the right to cut out people who compromise my mental or physical well being. Having gone through a decade long eating disorder where I was constantly praised for starving myself, over exercising, and abusing diet pills, I can't watch someone I care about put themselves through a medically induced eating disorder.

I look forward to the day when weight loss surgery is banned as medically unnecessary, dangerous, and bigoted. Weight loss cosmetic surgery represents the extremes that our society will go to to eradicate fat people. For all of the horror that a person feels when they see a very thin person with an ED, it doesn't seem to hold true for fat people with ED's. While I have a lot of personal experience with that, this experience seems to hit closer to home Perhaps because my friend was involved in the fat acceptance community. I thought better of her. Not brainwashed by society's standards.

Internalized fatphobia is a horrible thing.

The bottom line is that we applaud fat people for doing dangerous, irresponsible, unethical, things that put our lives on the line in the name of thinness. But how would the world react if the opposite were true? If thin people literally risked their lives to become fat because they thought it looked prettier? I have a feeling I know the answer.

So, I suppose I've finally experienced a personal casualty in the War On Fat. During my own struggles I came close to losing my life, but this somehow feels so much worse.

"Everyone Has To Start Somewhere"

So recently I found out that some diet pill peddlers were using my bikini photos to sell their crappy products on pinterest (thanks to the fan who emailed me to let me know!). I filled out a copyright infringement form on pinterest and it was taken care of ASAP. yay! Then, only a couple of days later, several more friends alerted me to the fact that a facebook group, Fit for Fertility, were using one of my exercise photos (the one to the left) as a sort of fitness inspiration with the heading "everyone has to start somewhere".

I have several problems with this. Firstly, that my photo was posted without my permission or credit. Secondly, the assumption that this was my first round at the rodeo. I've been going to the gym for years. Thirdly, via the comments and the page description, the assumption that exercise automatically leads to weight loss. I've never lost a single pound going to the gym.

What's funny is part of the page's description was "diets don't work". Well this much is true! But neither does exercise. For most fat people exercise won't make them thin. Just like diets, exercise has a  high failure rate as far as that goes. Now, exercise is good, as I clearly believe. It makes you stronger, healthier, and it gives you an awesome blast of endorphins. But don't count on it for large amounts of weight loss.

Then there's the assumption that I'm just starting. They have no idea how long I've been going to the gym or what my exercise routine is like. But I'm fat so I must just be starting, right? Because if I'd been going to the gym for any length of time I'd be thin by now. Nevermind that they have no idea if I had a higher starting weight (I didn't, my weight has stayed the same).

Things like this come about because of ignorance and prejudice. People make assumptions based on nothing but body size. I shouldn't be your damn fitspiration because I'm fat, I should be your fitspiration because I'm working out. I'm so tired of seeing super thin men and women lauded as the epitome of fitness while fat people are only applauded because they're trying to get super thin. Nevermind that most never will and many have been working out for long periods of time already without weight loss.

While I've filled out a form to get the photo removed from facebook (we'll see if that actually happens. Facebook seems to drop the ball an awful lot), this attitude isn't going away anytime soon. That's why it's up to all of us to fight against these ridiculous notions and stereotypes. I hope I do my part, but I count on all of you as well. Thanks for all your support and love.

Edit: The offending photo has been taken down! Thank you all my lovelies for the help and support. If you wish, you can still send her a message letting her know that what she did was wrong (she didn't take it down, facebook did) and maybe not to steal copyrighted photos next time. ;)

Happy Belated New Year!

So everyone's doing a new year post and I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon. I don't have a lot to say about new year's resolutions because, well, I resolved to quit doing resolutions. So far I've stuck to that. Besides the fact that the vast majority of resolutions are fat hating with losing weight being the number one resolution for 2012 (also notice that only 8% of people achieve their resolution goal. How many do you want to bet achieve weight loss?).  Heck, a third of goals don't make it past January.

But after decades of vowing to lose weight every year and trying to hate myself thin, and after watching everyone around me fail at the same goal, new year's resolutions have left a bad taste in my mouth. That may have been the diet food though. So if losing weight is at the top of you  list, please, for the love of all that's good in the world, throw it the fuck out. Seriously, write it down on a piece of paper, throw it away, burn it, tear it to pieces, scratch it out and feed it to your pet goat. Do anything but make that resolution. You know the science says that 95% of weight loss attempts fail anyway.

My secret? Don't make any resolution at all. If you want to get healthier, do it, and do it in a fun creative way. If you want to stop smoking, do it and do it with an arsenal of support around you because you're gonna need it. If you wan to get out of debt, get better organized, get out walking more, spend more time with your family... just do it. You don't need a resolution. All that does is puts pressure on yourself and makes you feel guilty when you take too long, don't do it, mess up, or otherwise fail in attaining that goal. There's almost no way not to fail.

Instead take it every day at a time. Go on a walk on days you feel like it. Organize one room at a time or, hell, one desk or corner at a time. Make it into a success, a positive, something you accomplished. But whatever you do, don't make it a resolution.

The Moment I knew I Had to Stop Dieting

So the Huffington Post is asking for video submissions for "The Moment I Knew I HAD To Lose Weight." Dr. Deah Shwartz wrote to them about doing a series on "The Moment I Knew I HAD to Stop Dieting. They said if people sent in videos like that they'd do a piece. So here's mine- everyone and anyone can make and submit one. Just email it, with your full name to themomentiknew@huffingtonpost.com.

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome 2012!

costume from last night's masquerade ball 

Happy New Year! Wow, is it 2012 already? 2011 was a special year to me; it was my first full year of body acceptance and fat activism. My first exposure to fat acceptance was in October of 2010 so most of my year was spent hating my body with horribly destructive habits. In 2011 I got to go through it all- making new friends, having to move, parties, holidays.. all being fat and happy the entire time. Wow, how completely liberating! 2011 was a good year for me.

No, I don't have a new year's resolution and I don't plant to. Most resolutions fail (I wonder how much of this failure is because one of the top resolutions is weight loss which, itself, fails 95% of the time?) and most are focused on our flaws and what we need to change about ourselves. More so, though, it sets you up for disappointment if you can't go through with it. I feel confident that I can change and progress and do some awesome things in the coming year without making promises to myself or anyone else . This year, I'm going to try to just be. I get the whole 'new beginnings' metaphor, but really.. any time can be a time for new beginnings and any time can be a time for progress and change.

If you're going to make a resolution, make it to love, respect, and appreciate your body more from now on. And that's a goal that's good all year round. This is a time for diet scams and false weight loss promises- so counter it with some of your own fat activism

Thinner is not better

This time the victim wasn't me, but rather my husband. This past weekend, unfortunately, we had to take a trip to his home town in Pennsylvania to see a sick relative in the hospital (thankfully he's doing at least a little better and was moved out of the ICU into a regular room). While there, of course, we had to see a lot of people- he has a very large family and we had a very busy weekend! While I didn't have to really put up with any weight talk directed at me- he did. It wasn't what you would consider negative.. most people would consider it positive: praise for losing weight.

Now.. he didn't actually lose weight.. at least not as far as we know- his clothes still fit.. at least mostly since he's a bit in between sizes- 36 is too big and 34 is too small. Last time we saw them he either wore a 38 or a 36- I can't quite remember. But either way the difference was either none or very little.. but they couldn't help but tell him how good he looked since he lost weight. His grandmother made sure to assure him that he didn't look bad before, but we all know the implication- thinner is better so losing weight is good. Praising someone for losing weight  automatically makes them feel obligated to maintain that weight or lose more (we want to do what gets us praise- we're just wired that way) and it plants a more sinister message that gaining weight is bad bad bad.  I didn't lose weight.. so of course no one told me how great I looked.

Praise. Everyone wants it.. that little reward center of our brain that just lights up with praise makes us addicted to it. No matter what the behavior, idea, belief, or accomplishment- if someone is praised for it often enough they start to crave it and repeat the behavior in order to get it. Gee, no wonder people are obsessed with losing weight- we're addicted! Psychologists recognize that when this goes too far and we diet too excessively (excessive calorie restriction like anorexia for example) or exercise too much (compulsive exercise disorder) that it's a problem. But it's addiction nonetheless. It's one reason of many that we can't trust human beings to inherently know and do what is right- we're such complex creatures- our brains are impossibly complicated in such a beautiful way and yeah, we're trained animals. It takes a lot to overcome this training which his why so many FA activists talk about what a journey it is to get towards a place of acceptance. It's also why education is so important.

Luckily, even though my hubby isn't big on confrontation and he didn't really tell them why they were wrong to offer praise, he did steer the subject towards something different or outright deny any weight loss. He never said thank you- there was nothing to thank them for... because thinner isn't better.