To be FAT
Two years ago, I was morbidly obese and worried about my future. I had a lot of good things in my life: loving husband, great kids, good job and a great network of family and friends.
I was worried about my future because of my health. I was morbidly obese because I sat on my butt too much and didn’t exercise enough and also because I consumed more calories than I needed to given my state of inactivity.
I was not morbidly obese because of any childhood abuse or mental instability. I did not feel defined by my weight, but I did feel limited by it. I wasn’t living my full life because my body kept me from doing so.
Yesterday, I read an article by a woman, Laura Bogart, that was titled, I choose to be fat, and was published at Salon.com.
Have you read it yet? If not, I urge you to do so.
Promoted as a “pro fat” article, it really doesn’t have much to do with being fat. Instead, the author explains why she was fat (“neglected child whose father passed out when his rage was spent, whose mother was petrified to move”). It also talks about how the author spent her life pleasing others rather than putting herself first.
And then she goes on to trash people who have shed weight and found something, commenting, “I’ve no doubt that they really do feel healthier and happier, and honestly (truly) good for them. I just wish that the entirety of their lives weren’t reduced to a single achievement.”
Excuse me? A single achievement? How so?
This is a professional writer who has been published multiple places, and she is reportedly in the middle of writing a book. I suspect this article was written with every attention of causing a buzz for said book.
Further, I will suggest that the writer of this piece should know more than the average person exactly how a piece written on weight-loss isn’t the entire picture. She should know that if someone is interviewed for an article about weight loss that the focus of the article is weight loss and despite that focus there is still more to the person than what is portrayed in the article. She knows how to shape words to get responses from a reader, so she should know that other writers do this as well.
For her to then criticize people because they come across as just about weight loss is suggesting she is ignorant to a level I can’t fathom. She’s a writer, and she knows how rhetoric works in writing. She knows what she is doing, and she is counting on the ignorance of her own readers.
And I hear a lot of hatred in her language about people who lose weight. She talks about people who lose weight being gossiped about and still found to be bitchy. She makes fun of people who explain why they were motivated to lose weight (the one that bothered me the most — her example of the dad who lost weight for his toddler). She also has hatred for thin people. She claims being big kept her from being hurt by thin people; it kept her from socializing with them.
In one place, she notes, “Gaining weight opened me up for heartache in all the expected ways; it also armored me.”
Obesity isn’t armor for me. It was a wall between me and living my life fully.
One thing she wrote really resonated with me though. She wrote, “When you’re obese, you are your body. Every decision you make is viewed through the prism of your weight.”
And although she was talking about how the outside world looks at her, I found it more about how I looked at myself. When I was obese, every decision I made was made through the prism of my weight.
Are these shorts long enough to prevent my thighs from rubbing?Will my hips fit in that chair?Where can I park, so I don’t have to walk so far?Can I fit through that turnstile sideways?How am I going to keep up with my kids?
When I started losing weight, I realized that there were things I had avoided doing without even realizing I was avoiding them because my weight prevented me. It was sometimes very simple things like bending down to pick something up that had rolled under my kitchen table. When I was morbidly obese, I would ignore it if I was alone or ask a child to do it for me if my kids were around. The first time I bent down and picked something up on my own, I realized what I had been doing.
Being obese didn’t keep me from having the normal things in life, but it kept me from fully enjoying them. It came with this negative talk in my head where I constantly berated myself, and I found that voice disappeared (mostly) when I lost the weight.
I believe that sometimes what we think gets projected onto others, and we assume that we know what someone else really thinks. We don’t. For instance, maybe you are walking in the grocery store and someone gives you a dirty look. You immediately interpret it as being because of (insert your personal insecurity here). It might be that the person was just thinking in their own head about something that bothered them, and those thoughts were showing on their expression, and they didn’t even see you.
I’m glad this person is in therapy, and I am glad she is starting to be happy about where she is at in life. It sounds like it is something she truly needs.
But it is wrong for anyone, no matter where your BMI falls, to make assumptions about others. No one is truly defined by their weight; no one is that one-dimensional. And I’m a little sad that in her effort to accept herself, she is finding it necessary to judge others who chose something different. And I suspect that she is doing it more for means of self promotion than to actually add to the conversation about fat prejudice.
Because although I’ve lost 85 pounds, I am not defined by my weight loss, and I wasn’t defined by my weight before. I wasn’t fat to protect me from living. I wasn’t a failure when I was fat, and I am not a success now.
There is only one person that can measure you and find you wanting and that is yourself. You shouldn’t let anyone else have that power, and if you find yourself wanting, do something about it.
Don’t spend your life counting how much others have hurt you or judged you. And to balance the scales a bit, I also highly recommend this article by Tish that expresses outrage about an upcoming reality show where formerly fat people get “revenge” on those that had previously made fun of them. As Tish said, “WTF?”
Two years ago, I was morbidly obese and worried about my future. I had a lot of good things in my life: loving husband, great kids, good job and a great network of family and friends.
I was worried about my future because of my health. I was morbidly obese because I sat on my butt too much and didn’t exercise enough and also because I consumed more calories than I needed to given my state of inactivity.
I was not morbidly obese because of any childhood abuse or mental instability. I did not feel defined by my weight, but I did feel limited by it. I wasn’t living my full life because my body kept me from doing so.
Yesterday, I read an article by a woman, Laura Bogart, that was titled, I choose to be fat, and was published at Salon.com.
Have you read it yet? If not, I urge you to do so.
Promoted as a “pro fat” article, it really doesn’t have much to do with being fat. Instead, the author explains why she was fat (“neglected child whose father passed out when his rage was spent, whose mother was petrified to move”). It also talks about how the author spent her life pleasing others rather than putting herself first.
And then she goes on to trash people who have shed weight and found something, commenting, “I’ve no doubt that they really do feel healthier and happier, and honestly (truly) good for them. I just wish that the entirety of their lives weren’t reduced to a single achievement.”
Excuse me? A single achievement? How so?
This is a professional writer who has been published multiple places, and she is reportedly in the middle of writing a book. I suspect this article was written with every attention of causing a buzz for said book.
Further, I will suggest that the writer of this piece should know more than the average person exactly how a piece written on weight-loss isn’t the entire picture. She should know that if someone is interviewed for an article about weight loss that the focus of the article is weight loss and despite that focus there is still more to the person than what is portrayed in the article. She knows how to shape words to get responses from a reader, so she should know that other writers do this as well.
For her to then criticize people because they come across as just about weight loss is suggesting she is ignorant to a level I can’t fathom. She’s a writer, and she knows how rhetoric works in writing. She knows what she is doing, and she is counting on the ignorance of her own readers.
And I hear a lot of hatred in her language about people who lose weight. She talks about people who lose weight being gossiped about and still found to be bitchy. She makes fun of people who explain why they were motivated to lose weight (the one that bothered me the most — her example of the dad who lost weight for his toddler). She also has hatred for thin people. She claims being big kept her from being hurt by thin people; it kept her from socializing with them.
In one place, she notes, “Gaining weight opened me up for heartache in all the expected ways; it also armored me.”
Obesity isn’t armor for me. It was a wall between me and living my life fully.
One thing she wrote really resonated with me though. She wrote, “When you’re obese, you are your body. Every decision you make is viewed through the prism of your weight.”
And although she was talking about how the outside world looks at her, I found it more about how I looked at myself. When I was obese, every decision I made was made through the prism of my weight.
Are these shorts long enough to prevent my thighs from rubbing?Will my hips fit in that chair?Where can I park, so I don’t have to walk so far?Can I fit through that turnstile sideways?How am I going to keep up with my kids?
When I started losing weight, I realized that there were things I had avoided doing without even realizing I was avoiding them because my weight prevented me. It was sometimes very simple things like bending down to pick something up that had rolled under my kitchen table. When I was morbidly obese, I would ignore it if I was alone or ask a child to do it for me if my kids were around. The first time I bent down and picked something up on my own, I realized what I had been doing.
Being obese didn’t keep me from having the normal things in life, but it kept me from fully enjoying them. It came with this negative talk in my head where I constantly berated myself, and I found that voice disappeared (mostly) when I lost the weight.
I believe that sometimes what we think gets projected onto others, and we assume that we know what someone else really thinks. We don’t. For instance, maybe you are walking in the grocery store and someone gives you a dirty look. You immediately interpret it as being because of (insert your personal insecurity here). It might be that the person was just thinking in their own head about something that bothered them, and those thoughts were showing on their expression, and they didn’t even see you.
I’m glad this person is in therapy, and I am glad she is starting to be happy about where she is at in life. It sounds like it is something she truly needs.
But it is wrong for anyone, no matter where your BMI falls, to make assumptions about others. No one is truly defined by their weight; no one is that one-dimensional. And I’m a little sad that in her effort to accept herself, she is finding it necessary to judge others who chose something different. And I suspect that she is doing it more for means of self promotion than to actually add to the conversation about fat prejudice.
Because although I’ve lost 85 pounds, I am not defined by my weight loss, and I wasn’t defined by my weight before. I wasn’t fat to protect me from living. I wasn’t a failure when I was fat, and I am not a success now.
There is only one person that can measure you and find you wanting and that is yourself. You shouldn’t let anyone else have that power, and if you find yourself wanting, do something about it.
Don’t spend your life counting how much others have hurt you or judged you. And to balance the scales a bit, I also highly recommend this article by Tish that expresses outrage about an upcoming reality show where formerly fat people get “revenge” on those that had previously made fun of them. As Tish said, “WTF?”
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