For the last few years, I’ve been intrigued by the fat acceptance movement. I’d abandoned all attempts at weight loss around the time I turned 30, and I was unsure what to do with myself as a result. When you’ve been fat all your life, losing weight — whether you are actively trying to lose weight, thinking about it, being talked to about it, or feeling ashamed about it because you’ve gained all of it back — takes up a lot of mental space. Up until a few years ago, I’d been trying to lose weight since I was eight. I remember doing the Mayo Clinic Heart Patient diet with my mom when I was 10 or 11. Weight loss has been such an ongoing part of my life that I consider the desire to lose weight to be an integral part of my identity. When I gave up on the prospect of weight loss (mostly because all past weight loss attempts ultimately left me heavier and more ashamed than I’d been before) I was adrift. I started reading about fat acceptance, body positivity, inclusivity, etc., and decided I would just try to live my best life as I was.
In some ways, the fat acceptance movement was good for me. I realized being happy and fat are not mutually exclusive. I realized you can be fat and have a good, caring partner. I don’t feel as insecure and ashamed about my size. I don’t fantasize about being a waif-sized bohemian flower-child anymore(you know the kind I mean: The magazine picture of the girl in a straw hat running through a field of flowers smiling coyly at the camera, her loose flower-patterned tunic flowing in the wind. This girl is so thin she can afford to wear clothing two sizes too big. No one will accuse her of hiding 100 pounds of extra fat under the at tunic). Nowadays, I can see beauty beyond a size 8, and I think this is progress. I let go of the desire to control my food intake; I stopped mentally balancing my calorie checkbook. But my weight crept higher and higher, to the point where a few weeks ago, I was at my heaviest weight ever.
These movements, especially the Health at Every Size movement, encourage intuitive eating and stipulate that individuals can be healthy at any size. I love this idea. I’ve read countless articles and books by body positive writers, and I admire many of them. I think these ideas have done wonders towards acceptance of different kind of bodies. But the thing is, I don’t know what intuitive eating is. After almost 30 years of disordered, highly fraught eating, the concept of intuitive eating is alien to me. It’s not that I’d have to relearn intuitive eating; it’s that I’ve never actually been an intuitive eater. My problem with eating has never been because of physical anger; instead, I’ve used food to deal with negative emotions, namely boredom and restlessness in my case. I love the idea that being thin isn’t my only option anymore. I feel I’m allowed to be fat in a way I wasn’t when I was growing up. But the fact is, I have a problem with food. If we pretended alcohol was my problem instead of food, I probably would’ve had a stint in rehab by now. I haven’t had a normal relationship with food as far back as I can remember, and this has caused me to link my size with a feeling of shame for most of my life.
While I think it’s definitely possible to be healthy at many sizes, I also know that I am not especially healthy at my current size. I am 34, and I have high blood pressure that never came all the way down after developing preeclampsia while I was pregnant. I have elevated cholesterol, and I am prediabetic. I feel uncomfortable tying my shoes or giving my daughter a bath, and I sweat profusely if it is over 70 degrees outside. I’m winded after going up more than one flight of stairs. I love the idea of hiking up mountains, running, and long-distance biking, but in reality, my extra weight makes many activities more arduous than fun. When you are heavy — and I don’t mean 30 or even 50 pounds overweight — I mean morbidly obese — everyday things are just harder, at least in my experience. Yes, I want to burn down patriarchal, unhealthy societal norms — but I also don’t want my life to be harder than it has to, and I don’t want to have a stroke in my 30s or 40s.
Over the last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means for me. I don’t want food and weight loss to be the main focus on my life the way they were for so many years. I really, really don’t. It’s exhausting. But at this moment, my weight — and my relationship with food — is causing me significant health issues. I don’t see these health issues magically fixing themselves through fat acceptance. I know I need to repair my relationship with food and exercise. I came across the term “radical acceptance” a few weeks ago, and it dawned on me that this is something I may have to apply towards my relationship with food and with my weight. Maybe I need to radically accept that I can’t eat whatever I want. That in my particular case, I can’t seem to be able to be both morbidly obese and healthy. That I am going to have to exercise a degree of control and oversight over my food intake. Do I need to accept that because of whatever combination of factors — genetics, personality, environment, society, marketing, etc. — food will be a lifelong (or at least long-term) struggle and I may never be able to have an easy, casual relationship with it? I think I always somehow hoped my food issues would resolve themselves, but maybe I just need to accept that this relationship — between me and food — will always be complicated and complex.
Over the next few blog entries, I want to focus on a few things: Exercise, discipline, binge eating, emotional eating and overeating. I want to lay out what I’m doing and what I plan to do, and what it would mean to me to gain control — or at least more control — over food and my weight.
The Daily Humdrum 