Insert good post title here
So it seems like a lot of people have been making posts about weight and dieting and shit recently. So I thought I would add my two cents!
I used to struggle with my weight. A lot. Ever since I hit I hit puberty, I have gone through periods of hating myself, wanting to lose weight, trying to forget about it, being unable to forget about it... pretty much the same experience that most girls have in modern North American society.
But I don't struggle with my weight anymore. And it's not because I lost it - I'm as fat as ever (around 235 pounds). It's because I discovered these magical things called fat acceptance and Health At Every Size, and I learned to be happy with my body.
Health At Every Size, at its most basic, is the idea that human beings should eat a balance of foods and get regular exercise. If you do that, and you end up losing weight, that's cool! But if you don't, that's cool too! Because weight loss is not a measure of health. (Obvious example: tuberculosis and tapeworms, among other things, can cause weight loss.) There are other ways to measure your health: blood pressure, blood sugar level, heart rate, cholesterol level, and most importantly, how you feel and how much energy you have. A fat person who is exercising and eating well is healthier than a thin person who eats lots of junk food and sits on the couch all day. And
Incidentally, people don't have to be healthy if they don't want to be. If people want to eat lots of junk food and sit on the couch all day, more power to them. But that's not what I want to do. So I eat my fruits and veggies and cake and bike, walk, and play Dance Dance. And it doesn't matter that I'm not losing weight because of it. Losing weight is not the goal.
And all of this ties into fat acceptance, which is the idea that despite everything society and your mom tell you, there is nothing wrong with being fat. It's not a sign of weakness or failure. It doesn't make you ugly, and it doesn't mean you have no willpower or you can't control yourself. Being fat is like being skinny: some people just are. And that is actually okay.
It's really hard to absorb a message like that when you're surrounded with The Biggest Loser, news coverage of the Obesity Epidemic, fat people in fiction who only exist to be the target of jokes, and the little voice inside that says that this time you really CAN lose the weight and keep it off. But it pays off in the long run. Instead of expending energy hating yourself, you can find exercise you enjoy, eat the food you love and/or the food that is good for you depending on what you need in the moment, and become a much better-adjusted human being. Hey, it's worked for me.
Kate Harding's Shapely Prose is a really good blog dealing with fat acceptance and HAES. You should check it out!
In summary, LET'S ALL LOVE OURSELVES! YAAY!
I used to struggle with my weight. A lot. Ever since I hit I hit puberty, I have gone through periods of hating myself, wanting to lose weight, trying to forget about it, being unable to forget about it... pretty much the same experience that most girls have in modern North American society.
But I don't struggle with my weight anymore. And it's not because I lost it - I'm as fat as ever (around 235 pounds). It's because I discovered these magical things called fat acceptance and Health At Every Size, and I learned to be happy with my body.
Health At Every Size, at its most basic, is the idea that human beings should eat a balance of foods and get regular exercise. If you do that, and you end up losing weight, that's cool! But if you don't, that's cool too! Because weight loss is not a measure of health. (Obvious example: tuberculosis and tapeworms, among other things, can cause weight loss.) There are other ways to measure your health: blood pressure, blood sugar level, heart rate, cholesterol level, and most importantly, how you feel and how much energy you have. A fat person who is exercising and eating well is healthier than a thin person who eats lots of junk food and sits on the couch all day. And
Incidentally, people don't have to be healthy if they don't want to be. If people want to eat lots of junk food and sit on the couch all day, more power to them. But that's not what I want to do. So I eat my fruits and veggies and cake and bike, walk, and play Dance Dance. And it doesn't matter that I'm not losing weight because of it. Losing weight is not the goal.
And all of this ties into fat acceptance, which is the idea that despite everything society and your mom tell you, there is nothing wrong with being fat. It's not a sign of weakness or failure. It doesn't make you ugly, and it doesn't mean you have no willpower or you can't control yourself. Being fat is like being skinny: some people just are. And that is actually okay.
It's really hard to absorb a message like that when you're surrounded with The Biggest Loser, news coverage of the Obesity Epidemic, fat people in fiction who only exist to be the target of jokes, and the little voice inside that says that this time you really CAN lose the weight and keep it off. But it pays off in the long run. Instead of expending energy hating yourself, you can find exercise you enjoy, eat the food you love and/or the food that is good for you depending on what you need in the moment, and become a much better-adjusted human being. Hey, it's worked for me.
Kate Harding's Shapely Prose is a really good blog dealing with fat acceptance and HAES. You should check it out!
In summary, LET'S ALL LOVE OURSELVES! YAAY!