Just trying to get by

I feel like I've been doing too many photo posts and not nearly enough text posts. That's because I've been extremely busy between bouts of being very tired and very sick. As most of you know, I am gluten intolerant due to thyroid disease and a simple sandwich gifted me a two week migraine, two trips to the ER, one to an urgent care, and many many medications. This is on top of a lot of hectic things happening in my personal life.

What I did want to do was share with you a new community on facebook that I've created: Body Love Through Struggle- a body positive eating disorder resource group. '

As many of you know, I'm recovered from an eating disorder which took up a decade of my life. I occasionally still have triggering thoughts and bad body days and I realized that there were little to no resources for fat people with eating disorders, especially not ones that focused on fat acceptance and body acceptance as a path to recovery and healing.

I've joined and unjoined an awful lot of eating disorder support groups because many were constantly fatphobic, which is understandable given the nature of eating disorders- yet they refused to acknowledge fatphobia in general, let alone internalized or even externalized issues. Many refused to believe that a fat person could even have an eating disorder beyond Binge Eating Disorder, or believed that being fat was an eating disorder itself (again, related to BED). Most advocated "healthy weight gain" which often meant gaining enough weight to still be thin, just not too thin. All in all, many ED communities are very problematic.

On this new group I hope to not only be a resource for people struggling with eating disorders, but also to be able to find and post other good resources for people to follow in order to get the help and support they (we) need.

So, if you feel the desire, please come and join our group or, at the very least, spread the word.

Basic Kindness

Let's revisit this image because it's my favorite image that I've ever helped create. Basic Kindness. What does that even mean? It's a philosophy that I try to live by (as with anyone I sometimes fail). Today I want to talk about basic kindness to yourself. Taking care of your own emotional well being. My last blog post stirred up a lot of turmoil from both internet trolls and people genuinely upset that I wasn't pro WLS or even tolerable of it. Most thought I was a horrible friend for protecting my own emotional well being. Like I'm supposed to come last just because I'm in a friendship.

The fact is that friendships end for a variety of reasons, but I think looking out for your own health is a pretty good one. During the internet troll brigade I was threatened, called sexist slurs as well as your basic fatphobic ones, but the big ones were the ones attacking me for having struggled with an eating disorder. I was called weak for doing something dangerous to become thin while my friend getting weight loss surgery was called brave for doing something dangerous to become thin. See the hypocrisy here from the weight loss community? People get defensive when you disagree with their choices. But regardless of how "weak" I was for having an eating disorder it is something that did happen to me and something that's a lifelong on going process to heal from. In short, diet and weight loss culture can be very triggering. Not only did I deal with an ED, I also dealt with self harm. Again, self loathing can be very triggering and can cause a recurrence or even a hospitalization. Bipolar is not fun or easy to deal with. I think it speaks to something about our culture when mental illness is so stigmatized. Weak for being mentally ill? I suppose people are weak for having lymphoma too? No no, that's one of those okay illnesses that we're allowed to sympathize with.

My point is that if someone were around something that could cause a recurrence of cancer and they wanted to distance themselves, no one would bat an eyelash. When you struggle with a mental illness and want to distance yourself from something that could hurt or even kill you? All bets are off. But just because mental illness or even the need to take care of oneself emotionally and mentally is stigmatized doesn't make it right. You have ever right to take care of yourself. You'd defend yourself from someone physically wouldn't you? So why not defend yourself from someone emotionally and mentally? It's okay,  you have the right to walk away. You have the right to be kind to yourself and to put your well being before anyone else. Yes, losing a friend sucks and I'm sorry that my friend has to go through that, but do you know what sucks worse? Ending up almost dead in a hospital room because I couldn't walk away from toxic people. A friendship shouldn't hurt you, it shouldn't drain you, it shouldn't make you worse off than you were to begin with. That goes for any relationship, by the way. If you're around someone who's toxic and bringing you down then have the courage to walk away (it's okay if you don't though, but know that it's an option).

Take care of yourself and your needs. You're important too. You matter. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

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.

Starvation is not morally superior

Danbwr Photography

Between my bipolar and hypothyroidism my appetite has some pretty funky days. In the past week or so it's manifested as a lot of nausea when eating so I've eaten maybe half a meal a day or so. Yesterday, for instance, I ate half my dinner then pushed it away, unable to even look at it without feeling sick. Today I woke up late, had a therapy appointment, then came home around noon, dealt with some activism business, did some scrapbooking and around 3 or so started realizing that I was finally hungry in a non nauseous way. Yay for me! Right....?

The fact is that part of me didn't want to eat because I just knew if I could keep up this habit of not eating I'd.... I'd what? I've long past given up goals of weight loss. So what did I think not eating would accomplish? I'll tell you what- superiority. Not over anyone else per se, but over myself. My eating self. As sanctimonious as it is, I felt morally superior to the me who ate regular meals. I felt like I was accomplishing something.

Anyone with an eating disorder probably is shaking their head right about now. It's a pretty common feeling- that feeling of accomplishment when you don't eat or purge or exercise until you're ready to drop. But we all know this is complete bullshit right? Because, as much as society wants you to believe this, starvation doesn't make you morally superior to anyone. Not even yourself.

It's easy to feel this way when everyone is telling you that starving yourself is the right way to go. Men, the medical establishment, psudofeminists who preach against diets only if you're thin enough, the diet companies, your family, your friends, the plethora of diet books even on the shelves of whole foods as if they weren't already everywhere else on the fucking planet and.. *takes a deep breath*. Okay, you get the idea. It's a whole lot of ignorance and capitalism coming from a long line of hate. But you've gotta remember that that's what it is... first and foremost it's capitalism. It's about driving profits up up up and this year the diet industry is going to reach 66 billion dollars. That's right, I said BILLION. That's a whole friggin lot spent on trying to make ourselves perfect and presentable and yes, skinny.

We all remember when Kate Moss said, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." Maybe I feel a bit of that when I haven't eaten for a few days. It starts out innocently enough with being too tired to eat or too sick to eat and then it spirals into disordered eating thoughts. Thoughts we've probably all experienced. Thing is that it's completely and utterly false. There are lots of skinny people who absolutely deplore their bodies and lots of fat people who are comfortable in the skin they're in. In other words, skinny doesn't necessarily feel any certain way, especially good, when you're surrounded by body hate and maybe especially if you got skinny through body hate.

Okay, I recognize that at this point I'm rambling but the point is that I ate a damned tomato sandwich and I enjoyed the hell out of it. And I'm far enough in my journey (I originally wrote that as fat enough in my journey.. lolz) that I don't let it bother me much.. even if I'm still struggling with the desire to eat nothing  (which I find feels a lot like other self harm thoughts. Hummm.). I know not everyone out there is as far along and that's fine.. we're all making our journeys one step at a time.

But, just to reiterate my original point (which I've meandered far from), starvation is not morally superior. It doesn't make anyone a better person. So to all the diet preachers and hateful bigots out there, you're not better than we are. Hell, if starvation did indeed make you morally superior then most fat people would be superior to most thin people anyway. have you seen how much we diet? But luckily for you and for us, eating is a positive activity in most cases. It keeps us alive and sustains us, gives us energy throughout the day and provides comfort and damn it tastes great and gives us so much pleasure. Our culture has created an atmosphere in which people are literally so afraid to eat they'd rather hide it or die. Can we please say no more?

So go on! Go have a fucking sandwich- it's delicious and it won't make you worth less.

Happy International No Diet Day

Most of you know by now that I struggled with an eating disorder (EDNOS) for over ten years. The thing that put me in recovery was fat acceptance. Before fat acceptance I suffered through diet after diet. Calorie counting was my thing. All in the name of thinness- a goal I never reached. I've also struggled with hypothyroidism for over a decade and bipolar for about two decades- both of which cause weight gain. I blamed myself for the longest time for being fat. Nevermind that it was clear that my genetics were working against me as every woman in my family is fat. Nevermind that these diseases were working against me. Nevermind that I ate less than anyone I knew, my willpower obviously not being a question. No, it was still all my fault. Because of this self blaming and internalized guilt and hatred I often felt depressed and suicidal.

After I read Lessons From the Fat O Sphere by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby that all fell away. The depression, the suicidal thoughts, the self blame and hatred and guilt. I threw away my scale and stopped counting calories. I followed intuitive eating habits and my diet balanced out. I never gained weight, or lost it either. So I stayed the same size regardless of whether I was dieting or following HAES, but with fat acceptance I was healthier and happier. Nothing can compare to that. All the fat haters out there can't argue against health or happiness. They can't say that being suicidal was better than being mentally stable. Or, if they do, they'll show themselves for the bigots they are. If it's all about health then I'm much healthier now than I ever was before while hating myself.

"International No Diet Day is an annual celebration of body acceptance, including fat acceptance and body shape diversity. This day is also dedicated to promoting a healthy life style with a focus on health at every size and in raising awareness of the potential dangers of dieting and the unlikelihood of success; the Institute of Medicine summarises: "those who complete weight loss programs lose approximately 10 percent of their body weight only to regain two-thirds within a year and almost all of it within five years." The first International No Diet Day was celebrated in the UK in 1992. Feminist groups in other countries around the globe have started to celebrate International No Diet Day" -Wikipedia

In other words, it's a day to celebrate the diversity and uniqueness of every body. A day for people like me to speak up and say that living a healthy happy life is far better than any hateful, harmful diet out there. Since 95% of diets fail and often leave dieters heavier than when they started, it seems like a no brainer to love your body, to feed it and nourish it, to move it, and to respect it. And none of those things mean losing weight. And let's not forget that health is multi dimensional and it's not a moral obligation. 

So happy international no diet day everyone! It's a good day to make a resolution of self love and acceptance. 

Happy Love Your Body Day

Today is NOW foundation's Love Your Body Day. A day to fight back against media representations of women and men, to fight back against body hate of all kinds, and to even, or maybe especially, fight negative thoughts from yourself. The way we see women depicted is often streamlined to fit a very narrow type of beauty ideal that typically includes being super thin, having perfect hair, teeth, and eyes, being white or fair skinned, cis, able bodied, being tall, and having the perfect breasts, ass, hips, etc. It's an unfair, degrading, and harmful scam to make you buy products and sell yourself like they sell these women as if they were objects. And men, more and more, are having a hard time too. We're seeing a rise in eating disorders among young boys for example. Though women are two and a half times more likely to develop an eating disorder, about one million men in the US suffer from some form.

The point is that none of us are immune to body hate. So take a moment out of today to stop trash talking your body and other bodies. No matter what kinds of bodies they are- thin, curvy, gangly, chubby, fat, dis/abled, cis, trans, male, female- all bodies are good bodies. Push aside your self doubts and all of the things you hate about your body and take a second to just appreciate it and all that it does for you. Take a second to just Love Your Body. And please don't forget to visit the NOW foundation's website!

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.

It's okay sweetie- mommy will never let you be fat!

So if you haven't heard, there's a UK mom who's so obsessed with her 8 year old daughter staying thin that she's restricted the child's daily caloric intake to just 700 calories a day- about half of what doctors recommend for a growing child. Her greatest fear, rather than her daughter becoming ill or suffering physically from starvation, is that her daughter will become fat and teased.

I want to focus for a moment, not on how horrible of a parent this woman is for starving her child, but on the reasons she felt the need to do so.

Unfortunately, she is right about the consequences of her child gaining weight. Overweight children are teased so often that we don't even blink an eye anymore. It becomes the norm and our only thought tends to be "well of course they get teased.. they're fat". What I want to point out is that if fat phobia and sizism weren't so incredibly pervasive in our culture already then this isn't something that would have happened. This seems to be a standard case of the cycle of abuse. The mother, weighing 228lbs herself, experienced the horrors of growing up fat. Children who are abused, either at home or by peers are more likely to develop schizophrenia,depression, anxiety disorders, borderline personality and bipolar disorder.  The reality is that for most obese or chubby children they may be doomed to a lifetime of despair simply because of their body size or shape.

So what's a parent with a fat child to do? If you know these risks how do you cope with them? Homeschooling isn't an option for a lot of parents. We go to others for advice- counselors, dietitians and nutritionists, help websites.. and every single one of them says the same thing: reduce your child's calories and help them lose weight. The problem? As we've seen with most studies on weight it's simply not that simple. Reducing calories is basically a starvation diet and studies do show that in obese patients put on limited calories their bodies act as if they're starving (which makes sense if you consider our evolutionary history of needing to store fat as well and as quickly as possible in order to survive) . Starvation diets simply don't work. Even if a patient loses weight in the short term the weight returns within a year for most patients and within five years for the rest except for those who stay on starvation diets permanently- and that's exactly what this mother is doing to her child.

So why is it that all of society tells her to reduce calories to lose weight and then, when she does it, talks about how awful it is? Is it possible that they don't truly believe the poison they're espousing? Do they even realize that they're the ones creating the problems to begin with? Let's face it, if it weren't for the awful and pervasive abuse that fat people suffer this woman likely wouldn't care what her daughter weighed as long as she was healthy. We can't create a thin based culture and then act surprised when we see things like this. So yeah, this mom has set her daughter up for a lifetime of health problems and body issues and psychological damage, but if we're being honest we have to admit how huge of a rule our culture plays in travesties like this.

There are all these articles about children who are obese eating horrible things, but what it doesn't talk about are all of the thin children eating those exact same things- (of all of the obese children eating healthfully) the health of the child will suffer in both cases and it's completely independent of weight. A thin person who eats nothing but junk food isn't more healthy than a fat person who eats nothing but junk food. We need to focus on changing our minds, not changing our bodies and that includes the minds of those around us.

Dear Mom, You Don't Know

I want to address this because it's something that keeps coming back to my mind again and again- and that is that people assume they know your eating habits or exercise habits depending on your weight. This works both for thin people and fat people. I'm going to address it in more of a personal manner though and talk about why it was completely false in my case.

When I still cared about my weight, when I still thought being fat made me worthless and lazy and glutinous, I did everything I could to lose weight (Now I know better). At one point I decided I needed my thyroid checked because it was just ridiculous that eating healthfully and restricting calories, and exercising wasn't working (gee, maybe that's because diets don't work.. but I didn't know that). I confided this to my mother who didn't believe there was anything wrong with me, pointing out that I don't exercise much anymore due to multiple injuries. "What about in high school, mom?", I asked. "I know how you ate in high school." was her reply, obviously implying that my eating habits had to do with my weight. I'll be honest- I was shocked. There's very little my mom knew about my life in high school and my eating habits were definitely not part of her knowledge.

grade 6 shortly before first suicide attempt

Now, I want to be clear that my mom worked very hard and very long trying to support three children after my father skipped out on child support completely so I'm not blaming her for not knowing my eating habits as it's clear why she wouldn't. Either she was working or I was at school, with friends, etc.

So why did she claim she knew how I ate in high school when she rarely was privy to the knowledge? Because she assumed she knew what I ate because I was fat.  What she didn't know if that I hardly ever ate at all and, thus, often had fainting spells (which my now husband can attest to). I never ate breakfast, rarely ate lunch, and when I ate dinner at home I ate side dishes because I became a vegetarian when I was 14 (freshman year) and we didn't cook many vegetarian meals- therefore I was stuck with corn and potatoes most of the time. This starvation diet that I was on may account for me being at my thinnest in high school (a size 15/16 US).And certainly starving myself would be the only way to get back there (if you are even thinking of suggesting that then you are one sick fuck).

In addition to eating very little for about 5 or 6 years I also was incredibly active. I love walking. I really want to emphasize just how much I love it- I would walk everywhere I went in high school and would still do so today if I didn't have an ankle injury which causes severe pain when I walk. I woke up, walked 20 minutes to my best friend's house so that we could ride the bus together, went to school where I had marching band practice every day, rode the bus back to my best friend's house, walked 20 minutes home, did homework/watched TV for a couple of hours then walked back. Then we'd walk to our other friend's house (another 20-30 minutes)  just so that we could walk around the neighborhood more. Not to mention that I had additional marching band practices, games, competitions, etc as well as frequently starting new exercise programs with my friend, Beth.

All of this walking with very little food and, for a couple of years, diet pills every day three times a day, throw in the occasional periods of bulimia and it would amaze anyone that I wasn't very thin. I would simply not eat for days at a time- once for two weeks. When presented with this information most people would say that I'm lying. I find it funny that when a very thin person says they eat non stop, no one disagrees, no one calls them a liar, and no one argues.

There are all sorts of assumptions made about fat people which are shown for being ridiculous when the same things are applied to thin people. "Fat people just eat too much" would mean that thin people eat less- so all of those thin people who eat junk food in high quantities should be morbidly obese by now shouldn't they? "fat people just don't exercise" ignores all of the thin couch potatoes out there snacking on pizza and all of the fat people, like me, who were or are incredibly active.

So I want to emphasize, no mom, you have no idea what I ate in high school. You are just as guilty of making false assumptions as anyone else in society. Think about what my brother ate and you'll realize he ate far more than I did. Next time you decide to make an assumption based on facts that you don't even have, please rethink it.