"Outsiders"

One thing I've noticed as I've read many personal blogs is that the vast majority of people consider themselves outsiders, rebels, or as being on the margins of whatever groups they tend to travel in. The interesting thing about this is that they are generally only superficially "outsiders". They say they are so because of style issues (fashion, tattoos, hair coloring, etc.), esoteric hobbies or interests, or attitudes about a specific topic. With so many vocal outsiders, one has to wonder why they feel so isolated in their respective crowds.

Of course, there are also plenty of people whose blogs I read who are fat or super fat who feel they are unique in their body size, but few are actually truly unique in this day and age. Most of them are ostracized and have issues with their esteem as a result of the way that larger society treats them, but they are hardly "outsiders" except to the extent that they view themselves that way (for good reasons which I'm about to get to). While there is no doubt that everyone around them is pointing a finger and saying, "freak" (I've been there, oh yes, have I been there for at least 35 years of my 47 on this planet), most of them are told they are different when they are really not so different. This is a way of elevating the judge at the expense of the judged and doesn't necessarily reflect on a truly odd and unusual nature of the target of such judgment.

This talk about how different one is from ones peers is of interest to me because I've noticed that there are marked similarities among such folks. One is that most of them are sad and mad most of the time. Both the sad and the mad are drawing their emotions from the well of pain that comes from feeling isolated and objectified. The normal response to being constantly bullied is to have such feelings. This is not unique, and is totally understandable. It doesn't matter what aspect of a person's persona or physicality is being targeted to propel the response, the responses would be the same. The truth is that most people are ostracized and in pain, but are not unique at all in either their fatness or their behavior and attitudes. 

At the root of all of this is a struggle not to self-hate as a result of how one is treated. I know this both because I studied psychology and I lived in this space for most of adult life. I've spent more years mad and sad than some people have actually lived. When I started this blog, I was definitely in that space. Being out of it for all of a year or so isn't enough to make me forget what that was like, but it has given me perspective on a lot of things. 

One of those things is that we draw comfort from finding an identity which sets us apart from others in a positive way. Being told you are a freak, ugly and a blight on society day in and day out is huge part of what tears you apart inside and builds in self-loathing. To find self-acceptance, people often re-define themselves as rebels, outsiders, and being anti-establishment. It is taking being objectified and turning it inside out such that it becomes a badge of honor to be fat in a world which seems to be nothing more than a conformity factory that pushes everyone to look like Barbie and Ken dolls.  

This response and effort to re-purpose rejection as something positive is not new. It happened with countercultural movements in the past. In the end, most people end up being re-absorbed back into the mainstream. They do this not because they become accepted, but because the purposeful labeling of self as an outsider is superficial and ultimately unfulfilling. Positioning yourself as a mad person because you feel persecuted will only take you so far in your identity. Eventually, you have to find out who you really are inside, not who you see yourself to be as a reaction to perceived oppressors. 

Why am I even talking about this? The reason is that I think I lived in this identity for a long time and it did not help me. In fact, I think it made it all that much harder to understand myself and love myself. If I see myself as existing in opposition to the world because the world seems to operate against me, that becomes too integrated with my sense of self and affects my actions. I eat in defiance. I go out in public in defiance. I dress in defiance. I project an attitude in defiance. All of this defiance is exhausting and discourages positive change because I see my life as a battle between myself as an outsider and oppressive "insiders" rather than as an individual or self-contained entity.

Early on in this blog, I talk about being conflicted about losing weight because there is a sense that I'm admitting people were right about certain things. They would be right that losing weight would improve my health. They would be right about perceived beauty being more important than character. They would be right that I should conform and fit in. At my core, the largest sense of this particular conflict came from feeling that I was allowing them to "win" when personality is pitted against appearance. I am not my body. I am my soul/personality. Focusing on my body so much and so hard, which is necessary to lose weight, is admitting that my body matters. A lot. As much as "they" say it does. 

The bottom line is that my body does matter a lot, but it matters to me (and my husband). Losing weight wasn't about conforming to society's standards but about stopping so many things which caused me pain both physically and emotionally (and, yes, part of that was constant social censure and not fitting into public spaces). I lost weight because my body mattered to me, not because it mattered to others. Separating this is extremely important after years of being objectified and feeling that I was "surrendering" to the forces that oppressed me. I wasn't. I was surrendering to the reality that my body as it approached 50 was suffering horribly under the strain of my weight. My joints and muscles could not support a body over 200 lbs. well, and absolutely could not support one over 300 without pain and difficulty. 

The irony is that I still feel like an "outsider", but not because of my appearance. I feel like that because of my opinions. There are two large camps out there, fat acceptance and dieting culture. I don't belong to either and feel like I'm a voice in between which does not subscribe to the rhetoric of either side. I've given up entirely on attempting to reason with the people who are clearly in these camps because the responses are generally straw man arguments that respond not to what I'm saying, but what they find easiest to argue with. Being taken at face value on the internet is always difficult, but it is more so with those who operate in an emotionally charged state and are intent on seeing themselves as "rebels". Their natural response is to disagree and to try to shout down anything which resembles opposition to their causes. This happens on both sides. 

The other part of my situation which makes me feel like a continued outsider is my focus on psychology, which is, once more, rejected by both camps (dieters and fat acceptance bloggers) as playing a significant role in dealing with weight and food. Both deny that it has a role in food relationships or weight management issues, albeit for very different reasons. The dieting group insists they suffer no psychological issues that result in overeating and can only conceptualize "psychology" as playing a part when trauma or neuroses are involved. Fat acceptance bloggers similarly refuse to see habituation, routine, or behavior modification as a part of psychology and therefore related to their weight issues, but they do so in the service of denying that they "overeat" at all. This is, unfortunately, the natural consequence of having their behaviors attacked and scrutinized throughout their lives. 

It's rather ironic that this is common ground for two groups who are diametrically opposed. I guess that there is something beautifully symmetrical for me in being the point at which two very different groups can agree, though I can't say that I am in anyway happy about it. Sometimes, you can't escape being an "outsider" whether you want to be one or not. 

Member of a New Club

There's an Eddie Murphy sketch in which he explores the world as a white man in order to see how things work when you're white in a Caucasian-dominated world. The comedy works in two directions, though I imagine most people miss the more subtle second side. First, Murphy makes fun of white people and the way they walk, talk, and dress. Second, he is sending up black perceptions that white people live in a privileged world in which people hand over free cash and goods merely because of skin color. The humor works because there is truth to both sides.

Recently, I had an experience which brought this sketch to mind because I felt as if I had crossed over into the "normal" world and was being treated as a member of a different club. As Murphy made himself white instead of black, I have made myself "normal" instead of "freakishly fat". While I'm still fat, I'm in the range of normal middle-aged spread now and people don't treat me as an object of unbridled disgust and incredulity. Those who never knew me at a higher weight just see me as if this were the way I have always been or if I'd just put on weight as I knock on the door of my 50's.

I had an experience with a client in the past week in which he was telling me about the women in his office which dredged up the memory of that SNL skit. He told me that one of the women reminded him of a boneless ham because her legs were very fat and she had a habit of wearing black fishnet stockings. He went on to talk about a woman who he called a "kabuki actor" because she wore so much make-up it practically blinded him with the white that was reflected. Finally, he talked about a woman who wore no make-up and had long nose hair. In summation, he said that all the married women in his office were beautiful and the unmarried ones were not.

As I sat there listening to him ridicule these women, I had to contain my sense of anger at the way he was objectifying them and judging them based on appearances. I am not in a position to confront him about his behavior as it is simply not appropriate in the work I do. I did not condone it, but simply said that I felt sorry for those women. I also, frankly, felt sorry for him as I'm sure he wasn't aware of just how ugly a side of himself he was displaying by speaking this way and I think his need to speak of these women in this fashion reflected his own insecurities and pain at being rejected romantically. 

During his continued discussion of these women, I wondered if I would have been hearing all of this had I not been much thinner now and perceived as normal, attractive, well-groomed and known to be married. Like Eddie Murphy in his white guy get-up, I felt like a super morbidly obese person in a normal person costume sitting in on an interaction that I would not have been a part of had I not been wearing a "disguise". This is how people talked about people like me when they didn't know that I was one of "those people". 

Before I lost weight, no one even talked about fatness in front of me. They wouldn't mention it because of fear of letting on that they recognized the elephant in the room or offending  me. Now, I'm not fat enough to be viewed as offend-able in this regard so people talk like they would to other "normal" folks. Since I got the part-time job at which this occurred last April, people there have never known me at a much larger size (though they knew me at a larger size than now as I've lost another 35 or so pounds over the 10 months) and don't know what I once was. 

The interesting thing about this experience was not only that I did find that the world is rather different on the non-morbidly-obese side of the fence, but also that the flip-side equation applies as well. That is, Murphy parodied the perception of whites, but also the fantasy benefits they received in the minds of blacks. The "thin fantasy" in which life is magically better and all problems are solved at lower weights is equivalent to the "white privilege" fantasy in the skit in which money and goods are given away freely. There is some truth that there is a different world for smaller, more socially acceptable bodies, but it isn't as great as those who want to lose weight think it is.  

I asked my husband if he felt that this man would have had such a conversation with me had I been at my much higher weight. He said that this client would not have chosen to deal with me at all had I been much fatter. Sadly, I'm sure he's correct, and that's just one of the reasons I decided I had to deal with my relationship with food in the summer of 2009. Much as I can sit and hope that the world will treat very obese people differently, there is still a reality in which people do judge you and reject you whether you feel it is unfair or "wrong" or not. You can change yourself, but you can't change the world. 

If I can't have it, so...

There's a Calvin & Hobbes comic in which Susie, Calvin's neighbor and schoolmate, sees something down by a pond and asks Calvin if he'd like to see it. Not wanting to validate the value of what she has discovered, Calvin indicates derisively that it's not of interest. Susie stalks off and Calvin sneaks to the pond to have a look. Susie catches him and essentially says, "gotcha!"

There have been numerous comics, stories, and performances depicted children in which one essentially says of another's possession, 'I don't want one. It's not so great.' In such cases, it's clear that the speaker thinks that it really is 'so great', but is trying to diminish the value of whatever it is in order to cope with the sense that it is beyond his or her ability to acquire it. A lot of people mistake this for envy, and while there may be an element of that, it is more about finding a way of balancing their despair with what they view as a cold, hard, and limited reality.

No one is immune from this. In the past, I have been guilty of it in ways both big and small. When I didn't fit in the bath tub due to my weight, I used to tell people I didn't like taking baths and that I didn't care about having a deep bath to soak in. I even convinced myself that this was not such a pleasurable experience that I couldn't partake in. Now that I can fit in the tub, I have to admit to myself that it's not only relaxing, but deeply and satisfyingly warming on cold evenings.

One of the most pervasive messages that people spread about something not being of value because they have concluded that they can't have it is having a life partner. They say marriage is nothing more than a loss of freedom, a life in shackles, and endless and unfair compromise and suffering. I never told myself such negative messages, but I did say I didn't aspire to being married. That was, in part, because I grew up having a very bad marriage role-modeled in front of me, but it was also because I thought I would never be wanted by anyone. If I couldn't have it, it wasn't worthwhile for me.

Unfortunately, most people aren't content to say that it's not worthwhile for them because they can't have it. They say that it has no or little value for anyone because they can't have it. I talk a lot about control, and this is something many people have concluded that they can't have in various areas of their lives. And, if they can't gain it, it can't be had by anyone and therefore should neither be sought nor desired.

This message is pervasive in the fat acceptance movement. There is a steady drumbeat of "can't lose weight, don't try." There is a constant trotting out of some dubious statistics about dieting and a 95% failure rate to the tune of many actually gaining more weight. These numbers may or may not be true, but that is a failure of method, not the value of losing weight. However, fat acceptance is populated by people who have tried and failed, tried and failed, and tried and failed. They can't have permanent and effective weight loss, so it has no value (i.e., no positive health effects that cannot be gained by healthy lifestyle without weight loss) and they can't do it so it can't be done by anyone (e.g., the "95% failure rate"). If they can't control their relationship with food and subsequently their weight, no one can, and they don't need to.

Frankly, I don't care what people weigh, but I do care about quality of life and I believe that you can't be happy unless you can move closer to who you want to be. If you can't draw a line between who you are now and who you would like to be in the future and start to make progress along that path, you will not be satisfied with your life. There's a word for people who can't move along and realize their goals. It's called stagnation. You can stamp your feet and insist that you are just great the way you are and that wanting to have more control is neurotic and destructive, but you're only succeeding in fooling yourself (if that). Harnessing chaos (including our own chaotic relationships with every aspect of our lives) and turning it into something organized, creative, and harmonious is what humans do. It is the essence of our nature and it is harder to do it with ourselves than nearly anything else in our lives.

Control is about avoiding stagnation. It's about not being trapped in your own head and body and being unhappy with where you are. It's also about not spending all of your time and energy convincing yourself that you are happy staying right where you are because you feel there is no place else you can go. It doesn't have to be about weight, but often in fat acceptance circles, that is pretty much what it is about. They preach a message of "can't control, don't try, just accept". I don't like that message, not because I care about people being fat (I truly do not), but because I think that the message should be that you can be what you want to be, not simply be told you'll never have enough control to be anything else. That goes for everything, not just weight.

Normalization of Obesity

"Normalizing" has several different meanings and one of them is sociological. You can find many complex meanings, but one of the most simple ones is that it is the process of making something seem natural, logical, and commonplace. The word carries no value judgment about what is being normalized, and the act of doing so should be seen as a logical and expected part of the changes to culture.

That is not to say that "normalizing" is always a positive thing in the minds of everyone who witnesses it. One of the biggest examples of normalization which has been successful and ongoing over the past half century has been the perceptions of homosexuality. In my lifetime, I have seen the normalizing of it by society in action. What was once considered deviant and abhorrent is closing in on being considered normal and mainstream. For those (like myself) who believe that homosexuality is a biological inevitability and that sexuality is not a "choice", this is good news as we view it as the end of an unfair and oppressive environment. For those who have philosophical objections and believe a true choice is being made, this particular type of normalization is upsetting and unacceptable. They feel it is removing restraint from behavior that should be held in abeyance.

Normalization comes as a result of a great many factors. One is technological advances. Another is scientific discovery. Yet another is the evolution in philosophies based on education and integration of new ideas. Very generally speaking, there is a movement in most cultures toward more liberal thinking. That is, this is the direction until there is some shift back toward conservatism based on hardship. Those difficulties can be economic, medical (such as the outbreak of disease), or brought on my aggression (e.g., war).

All normalization is resisted by a certain segment of any society. When those views act in opposition to yours, it is easy to see them as small-minded, irrational, and selfish. When they agree with your views, they seem to be "right-minded". It's hard not to apply value judgments to both sides of the equation when it comes to normalizing of behavior, but it is important to understand and accept that the perspective of others has some validity. Dismissing alternate views out of hand lowers the quality of discourse and encourages rigidity on both sides.

With this in mind, I've been pondering both sides of the equation when it comes to the fat acceptance movement's efforts to normalize widespread occurrence of obesity. As someone who has spent her entire life overweight, and the vast majority of that life over 300 lbs., I know all too well the damage that is done to someone based on body judgment. I strongly believe that punitive attitudes toward fat people only do harm whereas people who fear the normalization of fatness as an endorsement of what they view as a "fat lifestyle" and what they often erroneously conclude is sloth and gluttony believe that social censure will increase the chances that people will not engage in behaviors that result in obesity.

Unfortunately, having lived a fat life, I also know that normalizing (as opposed to accepting, which is a whole other kettle of fish) obese bodies isn't necessarily a good thing on some levels. For one thing, accepting that being fat is expected, normal, and "usual" means that people will not attend to it based on health concerns. Despite all of the HAES propaganda, being obese (as opposed to merely "overweight") will eventually impact your health. You'll find that there are few fat advocates out there over 40, and even fewer over 50, who will latch onto the notion that being obese doesn't mean being unhealthy.

When I was younger, my body dealt a lot better with obesity than it has after 40. I'm now 47, and I have the joints of a person much older than me because of the extra pressure that has been on them for so many years. I'm not sure how anyone can say in good conscience that carrying 50-200 lbs. of extra weight will not take a toll on ones joints eventually. There is also the fact, and fat advocates are in denial about this, that pressure on the glands affects type 2 Diabetes development. Weight gain can bring on this condition and loss can send it into remission. That is not to say that one does not have to be genetically predisposed to develop it, but simply that it is a fact that weight affects development of such a condition.

Because of the health issues associated with obesity, normalization of fatness is a more complex issue than other social issues, trends, and concerns. On the one hand, fatness needs to be accepted because fat prejudice is unjust and highly destructive. I am certain that, had I not been tormented as a chubby child, I never would have grown up to be an extremely obese adult. It was the disapproval which sent me from overweight to class III obesity. Dehumanizing a group of people based on superficial characteristics serves only to create a loop of neurotic behavior which creates conditions that encourage eating disorders, including compulsive eating, overeating, and binge eating. As a psychological and social issue, fatness needs to be normalized and what I mean by that is that it needs to be regarded as a normal state for some people and they should not be treated with prejudice.

On the other hand, however, normalization which discourages people from dealing with their weight when weight will affect health (which is certainly the case for many people who are obese, especially in class 2 or 3 obesity), mobility, or quality of life (especially mentally) isn't such a great idea. While I fervently believe there are some people who were "born to be fat", it is undeniable that more and more people are fat and getting fatter compared to the past. If being fat were a normal human condition brought on by genetic predisposition, we wouldn't see the recent increases in the number of overweight people nor an increase in the amount of weight they gain. I realize that BMI was shifted to statistically move a great many more people into the "overweight" category, but that does not account for the dramatic increase in obese people and especially the super obese (such as I once was).

The issue with normalization and obesity needs to be split between societal and philosophical acceptance on the one hand and medical attention which indicates it is to be viewed as an undesirable condition on the other. In societies in which fatness is seen purely as a bodily issue related to health (there are some, but just not in the West) rather than a moral or character failure, people address their weight the same way that they do other factors which affect health. If someone is anemic, has poor circulation, etc., the measures taken to look after their body given these conditions are not seen as oppressive or unfair. They are simply seen as what is necessary. The same applies to weight in such cultures. I know because I live in such a culture at present. Fatness isn't about morality or character, but about health. While I don't believe that anyone is required to be healthy, I do believe society should encourage people to act in a manner which promotes happiness and the highest possible quality of life. And if you are not healthy, you will not have a good quality of life. Do we want to normalize conditions which decrease quality of life? I don't believe this is good for society on the whole, let alone the individual.

Unfortunately, the prejudice and venom directed at fat people that society is currently indulging in is what encourages more extreme  and broad efforts to normalize obesity. The harder you push people, the harder they will push back. It is similar to the way in which the NRA pushes to keep extreme weaponry legal in order to make sure they can keep their hunting rifles and hand guns.

The answer is simple, but people are reluctant to take it because they have to change their personal slant to a more objective one. Stop judging and abusing people based on their bodies. Stop encouraging the false notion that health and weight are completely different factors for most people. Deal with this like adults without injecting value judgments or personal opinions. As is so often the case, I'm not holding my breath.

Leave Them Alone

I don't read many fat acceptance blogs these days, nor do I read many weight loss ones. There are a few I follow as long as they don't get me too emotionally invested. As time goes by, both sides display such disordered and irrational thinking at times that it starts to feel more like I'm watching contestants in a bizarre reality show rather than witnessing real people operating in real life.

One thing which I know from long experience is that fat advocates hate it when diet zealots and gurus post comments to their blogs trying to "save" them. When the free-thinking fatties don't appreciate this type of intervention, the dietarians (my term) get increasingly hostile with them for not subscribing to their dogma. The fatties just want to be left alone in most cases and spread their message to those who need it. They want to support those who have done nothing but suffer in their attempts to lose weight and need to find a path to acceptance and self-love. All they wish for dietarians to do is to leave them alone and I think this is an eminently reasonable request.

That being said, I think that the door has to swing both ways on this issue and recently I read a blog post by a HAES advocate which shows that is not necessarily so. This person joined an organization for people who wish to lose weight and part of her purpose was to spread her gospel to women who she felt needed it. She described how most of them had been in the group for years and had been unsuccessful. This information is meant to illustrate that they needed what she was going to sneak in and attempt to sell them. She may be right. However, what she is planning to do is wrong.

There is no difference between what the HAES advocate is attempting to do in a well-meaning effort to quiet the psychological suffering of people who have tried to lose weight and failed but continue to try and what diet and weight loss advocates attempt to do to fat advocates. Both sides are convinced they are "right" and that the other side "needs" their message. Both sides are attempting to shoehorn their way into another person's chosen lifestyle in an egotistical attempt to "save them" from themselves. Both are prioritizing their viewpoints and agendas over that of others.

This sort of behavior on either side shows that people need desperately to be right and to coerce, cajole, persuade, or bully others into adopting their lifestyle. Dietarians have been doing it for a long time because they have societal approval at their backs and their sense of righteousness is generally more intense. As the oppressed minority, fatties have been generally more reserved about preaching to a choir that has attended their church voluntarily rather than going out and proselytizing to those who are clearly uninterested in their message.

My advice to both groups, and to everyone in general, is to offer your message to parties who are seeking it. Once you start going around trying to "convert" people who hold opposing views and goals, you have become "the enemy" and lose all credibility.*

*Note that I do not include things like commenting on blogs in opposition to what people are doing or saying in general. There is a difference between disagreeing on method, attitude, and details of what a person is doing and subscribing to an entirely different worldview/lifestyle. For example, telling someone that drinking 6 gallons of water per day when on a diet may not be the best option when you are also interested in losing weight is not the same as saying you shouldn't lose weight and love yourself as you are. I feel compelled to say this because I don't want people setting up a strawman to knock down as an absurdist argument against what I have just said. I'm not saying, "never post a dissenting opinion."

I don't want to want what I want

A very good HAES (health at every size) blogger recently said that we should give ourselves permission to eat whatever we want in the quantity we want to eat it in. This blogger is a nutritionist, and definitely knows more about the science of food than the likes of me. That being said, I'm pretty sure that I know more about the psychology of it than the likes of her.

Strange as it may sound, considering that I'm practicing restriction of my intake in order to lose weight, I agree with her. Only by eating whatever we want in the quantity we want can we place food in its proper and healthy place in our lives. By denying ourselves anything, we enhance its value and become more preoccupied with it. Humans tend to ruminate more on what is missing and at the heart of their desires than those things that they can have any time and in abundance.

My approach, which has seen me nibbling chocolate almost every single day, has always been to not place anything out of bounds for the aforementioned reason. Though this point is not addressed by this truly excellent blogger, I would guess that the place at which we might disagree is where we accept our "wants" as being ones that are conducive to our own happiness and well-being. The problem isn't eating as much as you want of whatever you want, it's "the wants" themselves that need to be dealt with.

All of my life, there have been things I have wanted which I could not have. One of those things was a guy I was in love with for over a decade who did not return my affections. Another was a lot of money. Yet another was a certain type of job. In the first case, had I gotten the guy I wanted, I would not have been happy, in retrospect, our characters would have been like gasoline and fire. I didn't know that I would want the type of man I got, but when he came along, I found that I not only wanted him, but needed him.

In regards to the type of job that I "wanted", I eventually got it. I wanted an office job which allowed me to work quietly and spend a lot of time in the peace of my own mind rather than the type of work which required me to be constantly engaged with other people in face-to-face situations. I found the latter exhausting and just wanted to escape that sort of job. I was so relieved when I got my "dream job", but it turned out that that work lead me down a path which ended in severe depression, loneliness, and substantial weight gain.

My point is that what we want isn't always what we need, nor is it necessarily what makes us happy. At one time, I wanted nothing more than to eat and eat and eat tasty food without having to pay a price in weight gain. I wanted to be one of those magical people who never gains weight despite eating all sorts of high calorie foods. I can't say what my life would be like is I were one of those people, but it's not something I can acquire anyway.

The thing that needs adjusting isn't the amount or type of food that we eat. The shape of the "want" is what needs to be changed. It's no problem now eating whatever I want in whatever quantity I want because I've psychologically changed such that the quantity I want is a bite or two of chocolate once or twice a day. I really don't want more than that, but I used to. Oh, how I used to want so much more!

My approach all along has been working on the shape of the "want" such that my desire scaled back to match what was within boundaries which were conducive to my health, both mental and physical. This was very hard, both physically and psychologically, because both my body and my mind were distorted by years of abuse of food. And, make no mistake, if your eating habits are making you sick (again, either mentally or physically), then you are abusing food. However, if you can work with your wants such that they are molded to promote a happy, healthy, and constructive life, you will be much more satisfied than if you simply accept your desires as they are.

One of the things I have come to realize is that, as Americans, we embrace and even celebrate our out-size desires. We applaud people who are capable of lives of excess without consequence, and gleefully trot out our schaudenfreude when they do so to their detriment. We wish to be them in the first case, and are happy at their downfall because we know it would be ours as well if we catered to our excessive appetites.

The answer to our problems with food does not lie in cramming our lifestyle into slots, holes, pegs, and routines which have a "healthy living" stamp of approval. It's not about eating vegetables, lean meat, and exercising or giving up all of the food which judgmental people have decided are "bad". The solution comes from addressing what we want, because we want too much, too often, and too badly. After dealing with the desires, the rest will sort itself out.

There are all sorts of books telling you what a specific group of people do in order to remain trim. They're full of details which you're supposed to be guided by which will then lead you to some magical state of satisfaction, health and beauty. The problem with those bits of advice is that they aren't what you want. They are what the people who the book is about desire. You can't follow in their footsteps because you want something else.

These differences in "want" are why the French and Japanese aren't fat. They aren't nibbling on a tiny cookie and wishing they could eat the whole bag. They aren't eating a chocolate croissant for breakfast and wishing they could chase it with a big pizza lunch. They're not fighting their desires because they don't have giant outsize desires and conflicted feelings about eating a damn piece of chocolate. Their desires are just different.

The solution is not to follow their specific actions, but to adjust your big, American desires. Stop beating yourself up about what you want and work on wanting differently. That doesn't mean living an ascetic life or never having an ice cream cone again. It does mean finding a good balance between pleasure and nutrition such that you get both in the right amounts for your particular physiology. And, no, it's not easy, because this is about psychology and changing your head is never simple. It is, however, a way to eat whatever you want, whenever you want in whatever quantity you want and still be at peace with your choices.

Rights Denied

Recently, I was pondering how eating disorders are born. Part of the reason for this is my own experience, but another reason was that I saw documentary which showed women who suffered from anorexia and bulimia. Watching these women operate around food, one couldn't help but see that they consistently denied their right to eat, and when they granted themselves the right to enjoy food, they denied themselves the right to be nourished by it and vomited it back up.

I also have been having several days in a row in which I have been incredibly hungry and denying myself the right to feel sated. I finally relented and did something I do occasionally, and just ate. In fact, I ate too much. That is to say that I ate more than necessary to feel sated. I wonder if I did that because of a pent up need to allow myself to do what I wanted to do, rather than simply to be "full" for a change. At any rate, at the end, I didn't beat myself up or anything because that's not what I do. I just get back on the horse the next day and all is fine. Everybody eats a little too much on occasion. I have that right, too, don't I? Well, apparently not... if I'm fat, I don't have the right to eat to maintain my weight, let alone to ever eat beyond my caloric requirements. This would make my thinking pattern not altogether different from that of anorexic women. They also do not feel they should eat more than necessary. They just set the bar very low for what they feel is required.

I was thinking about the pattern that many women (and sometimes men) experience in which they start to question their right to eat. That moment starts with some sort of notion that their body is inadequate and would be less so if they didn't eat. This is a message that goes beyond personal desire to be a different body type. It's something which is reinforced by family, media and society on the whole. If you're fat, you don't have the right to eat certain foods. In fact, they'd rather you simply fasted until you shed all of your unsightly weight. The people who glance with disgust into your shopping cart, the ones who snort with derision when you eat at a fast food place, and those who walk up to you when you're having an ice cream cone and tell you that you really shouldn't be eating that are letting you know in no uncertain terms that you don't have the basic right to eat whatever you want.

For fat people, this curtailing of rights expands through time. You not only don't have the right to eat what other people eat, but you also don't have the right to wear certain types of clothes. You should cover the shamefulness of your bulbous body with dark, billowy fabrics. Cover your batwings and rounded calves. Don't accentuate those chubby ankles, and, for God's sake, don't wear horizontal stripes.

You're also told that you don't have the right to be loved like people who are not fat, and that you only deserve lesser partners. The partners that choose you (because, you know, you certainly have no choice since you're fat and nobody wants you) must be lacking in some way themselves if they would "settle" for a fat partner.

We don't have the right to be lazy. This is something I have had an issue with all of my life. I'm "not allowed" to spend a day lazing around in front of the T.V. I have to prove I'm not your typical "lazy fat ass" by running myself ragged everyday. I only allow myself to rest when ill or injured, and even then I complain the entire time because I don't like being "down". I've completely forgotten how to enjoy doing nothing because I have no right to let go and do nothing.

Frankly, many people would like to deny you the right to even appear  in public. You are so abhorrent to their sensibilities, that they would prefer to deny you autonomy, if only they could. While they can't do it legally, they can shame and ridicule you to the point where you will choose to deny yourself the right to be in public and hide in your home to the extent humanly possible.

The worst part of all of this is that it is all too easy to internalize the idea that as a fat person you don't have the right to enjoy food, be loved, dress attractively, or to be in public. You deny yourself those rights and as you do so, you devalue yourself as a person. You accept that your size renders you sub-human and passively comply with the wishes of those who detest you.

I've been a victim of this all of my life, and sometimes had the strength to act in defiance of such notions, but often have felt beaten down by them. Only recently have I realized what rights I've denied myself because I've found myself in a position to grant them again to myself. I'm still fat, but not hugely so, and I'm starting to feel that I have the right to be seen, eat good food, and be loved. I have the right to eat when I'm hungry. The fact that I have to offer myself special dispensation for that says a lot about how the people around me have shaped my sense of self, and my sense of my rights and value as a human being.

The fact that people would reinforce the notion that I don't deserve these same rights as other human beings based merely on body size makes me angry, but that anger really has no place to go. I know that nothing is going to change and that I am powerless to do anything about the oppressive nature of people's views toward and actions against people who are overweight. The only thing I can do is remember, understand, and never deny myself these rights again.

America, the free to do anything but be fat

I often hear or read comments about the weight of American people. Many non-American bloggers and commenters who have visited the U.S. or met Americans in their home countries talk about how disgusted they are to see all of the wobble bottoms hugging each other in greeting at airports. They mention how massive and unhealthy everyone looks. They express disgust that these people don't "do something about" their weight or look after their health.

One fellow in particular, a professional writer, wrote about how he lived abroad, and during a year-long stay, he effortlessly lost 10 lbs. He said that this loss was due to working long hours of overtime and not having any time to eat. In the same piece, he wrote that he felt irritated with American folks who were overweight (like himself) that he saw walking around this foreign country. He reiterated the oft-stated notion that his disdain for them stemmed from the fact that they didn't "try" to lose weight. Never mind that he wrote by the end of the post that he regained the weight he lost after going back to the U.S. and not having to work 12-hour days.

I'm sure one thing that all fat people find very frustrating is the pat judgment of strangers who decide with a glance that they aren't "trying" or "doing something about" their situation. Many people are "trying" and many are having various levels of success. You can't tell with a glance that someone has been losing weight or living a healthier lifestyle if they are in the process of getting fitter. Here I am, a bit under 245 lbs., down from 380 lbs., and the judgmental jerk who wrote the post in the aforementioned post would dismiss me as another American fatty who couldn't be bothered to improve her lot.

All of this is actually beside the point. The truth of the matter is that fat people don't have to do anything about their bodies. It's nobody's business how they live their lives. They are not obliged in any way to "do something about" their weight or even their health. Just because society is currently in the throes of a zeitgeist which puts a big stamp which has huge red "A-P-P-R-O-V-A-L" letters on it when it comes to fat prejudice doesn't mean everyone has the right to decide how we should live our lives. I choose to lose weight because it's what I need to do for myself. I shouldn't be pressured to do it because others have decided I'm "bad."

The interesting aspect to me about this is that America is supposed to be built on the ideas of personal freedom and individuality, yet these seem to be tossed aside when the topic comes to weight. Rather than respect a person's right to live, look, and eat the way they choose, immense pressure comes to bear on them from all sides. The government wants you to lose weight. Your family and friends want you to. Random strangers definitely want you to.

The thing that makes me angriest about all of the arguments about the "obesity epidemic" is that a plethora of arguments are made to make my problem (being fat) your problem. This ranges from ridiculous (correlation, not causation) studies which suggest becoming fat is contagious to bitter arguments about health costs which are utterly inaccurate. The truth is that fatties save money for society on the whole as they die earlier and therefore do not require as much in the way of long-term care expenses or pension payments. The extent to which people will go to rationalize and validate fat prejudice is impressive, and it's also just a big cover-up for their inability to simply see themselves for what they are, shallow, small-minded, judgmental bigots who judge people based solely on appearance.

"Diets Don't Work"

Quite some time ago, I decided that there were certain aspects to my basic character that I did not like. I didn’t dislike them because other people disapproved of them or felt they were objectionable. Though that would certainly be true, I disliked them because these traits and tendencies tended to decrease my quality of life in very palpable ways.

In particular, I had (and still have to some extent) problems with temper and anxiety. I would become very angry at my husband and harass him for an extended period of time over some small thing that he did or did not do. I would become incensed and ruminate on some social injustice or rude behavior directed my way. My feelings in such cases were a raging forest fire that had to burn itself out through time and, sometimes, explosive catharsis.

In terms of anxiety, I would often fixate on a fear (sometimes a quite reasonable one) and keep myself awake at night obsessing on the worst possible outcome of a situation. I would take the tiniest grain of worry and spin it into a big web of difficulty and stress. Reality rarely matched my tapestry of suffering and difficulty, but I would repeatedly lose sleep and tie myself in knots worrying about something I couldn’t control.

At some point in time, perhaps 15 years ago, perhaps less, I decided that this was not the way I wanted to live my life both in terms of how I felt and how I made my husband feel. As most people are well aware, basic character traits and responses are very, very difficult to change, but I not only wanted to change, but I needed to do so. My misery at my behavior and mental patterns was profound and I initially had no idea where to start to change without suppressing something that seemed uncontrollably fierce and in need of expression.

As I had outbursts and spun worry webs that brought me so close to the brink of insanity that I thought I’d rather be dead than continue to suffer the way I had been, I started to tell myself that I simply had to stop the thought and temper train before it crashed at the end of the line. Each time, I found myself in a state of misery and frustration, I tried to pull myself out of it before I wore myself out. Mainly, this involved a mental process where I told myself that I simply had to “stop”. When I ruminated endlessly on some potentially horrible outcome, I would remind myself of similar situations and the fact that the worst outcome didn’t occur. Indeed, I reminded myself that I rarely experienced any negative result at all. At the early stages of this process, I would tell myself to “stop” (literally) and then my mind would invariably drift back into the fretting groove and I’d have to say “stop” again and again to pull it back out of that groove. Sometimes, I'd be ruminating on the same topic within moments of instructing myself to "stop". The more I did this, the faster the process became. The more I pulled myself out of that process, the less often I fell into that well-worn temper and worry groove.

I think our lifestyle and mental processes are dictated by the equivalent of a well-worn mental (as in neuro-chemcial) pathway, and we only reluctantly pull ourselves away from that path. In many ways, it is the choice to walk down the hill and into the same rut than to walk up the hill where there is a better path. We will always be drawn down into the easy, familiar manner and it’s very hard to make our way out. This applies to all areas of life, including food and lifestyle.

I was reading a blog post recently about the fantasy of being thin, which trots out the idea (again) that “diets don’t work.” The truth is that diets work just fine. The thing that doesn’t work is people making permanent lifestyle changes that allow them to maintain or continue the losses they have experienced during the period when they are "on a diet". Many change too much too quickly, eat in too Spartan a fashion (which is unsustainable and makes them resent their sacrifices), focus on the mechanics over the results (being a “good girl”), or take an “all or nothing approach” which is self-defeating. This is not something that people can really be blamed for (and they really shouldn't be), as I think we naturally gravitate back to the lifestyle that we have always led because that is the familiar groove, and we are often served biologically or psychologically by our choices. We may be able to force ourselves out of that familiar lifestyle rut for a short while, but invariably we drift back to where our mental processes are most comfortable.

The main problem with diet changes is that they are too focused upon the mechanical rather than on the mental or the “big picture” of life. People need to understand their tendencies and how to alter them slowly and through time. Since I had already succeeded in slowly (and with great difficulty) steering myself away from very strongly ingrained life-long destructive thought patterns and impulses, I already had experience with a process of altering my character and behavior on a fairly fundamental level and I have confidence that I will be able to maintain the lifestyle changes I’ve put into practice over the past year indefinitely. I've done this work before, just in a different area.

I also have experience with the inconsistency of this type of process. That is, sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I failed to control my temper and worrying. Sometimes, I fail miserably (though this is very, very rare these days - maybe once or twice a year I'll have a meltdown), but I keep at it and on the whole have succeeded. I am a much calmer and more at peace person than I once was, and it’s not because I simply gave up and accepted myself as a hothead who couldn’t help but worry all of the time. Many people simply play the "Popeye" card ("I y'am what I 'yam") and use it to justify (to themselves, they don't need to do so to anyone else) not changing even when their behavior hurts themselves or those around them.

In many ways, I wonder if many people in the fat acceptance movement have essentially thrown in the towel and given up on themselves. Of course, that is their option, but to tar anyone who hasn’t done so as somehow buying into a social agenda which is critical of all but ideal body weights or a thinness fantasy that punishes fatness is rather unfair. We are not all driven by the same forces when it comes to personal change, and just as a fat person doesn’t have to justify remaining fat, one who chooses to lose weight does not have to justify doing so. I am not losing weight because I think being thin (I actually don't think I'll be "thin", just a lot less fat) will magically transform my life. Frankly, other than my weight, my life is pretty good and doesn't need transformation.

I am losing weight for the same reason that I labored to alter my temper and fretfulness; this is an aspect of my life which is bringing me misery and I'm sick of suffering on multiple levels. And yes, one is social stigma. If fat acceptance advocates want to see that as a point of condemnation for me, they are free to do so. However, I have to live in the real world and get a different job in the future in a world which judges people by weight. Believing that your acceptance of your body at a large size will translate into societal acceptance is just as much "magical thinking" as thinking that being thin will solve all of your problems. No amount of wishing will change the reality that there is widespread prejudice against fat people and we can't change anyone's thinking but our own.

I think those who want to change their relationship with food have to deal with it as a process. Your mind and body want to maintain what was always so, and the only way to change that for good is to curb your impulses and deal with your desires and needs through time. It’s a battle that has to be fought and lost or won again and again. Too many people look at “diets” as a one-off deal. They eat differently, exercise more, and then they are thin and “normal” and can live a "normal" life. For most people who are fat, particularly those like me who have been fat all of their lives, it is never going to stop being a fight against your natural impulses. Eventually, the battles will become fewer and further between, and you will find them easier to win.

"Diets" work the same way medication for chronic conditions do. If you continue to take medication, you can control the symptoms or disease. If you stop, you will become ill and suffer symptoms. If you continue to eat like a person of a certain weight, you will continue to be a person of a certain weight. It isn't easy to alter your life to eat less food than you might prefer by default (just like I may have preferred by default to get angry or worry) every single day of your life, but it does work. Making the change is a mental process that you have to keep at until it becomes closer to second nature. Whether or not you choose to make that change and fight that fight is simply personal, and shouldn't be judged by anyone whether that decision is to remain fat or to lose weight.

Building an Angry Fat World

Recently, I posed a question for the proprietress of the Fatshionista blog about whether or not she would accept an offer to wake up at an "appropriate" weight tomorrow should a magic fairy proffer such an offer. Further, I asked if ones level of true fat acceptance would be mirrored in the reply. Her response was thoughtful and considered, and I appreciated that very much. I think it spoke well to her level of body acceptance and the manner in which she regards others. The commenters, on the other hand, ascribed various motivations to me based on their paranoia and anger.

Among the motivations I was ascribed were that of setting a trap for fat acceptance advocates or creating a "litmus test". Some people clearly assumed that a thin person or a person who was a diet fiend of some sort had asked the question. I guess to some people, the fact that I am losing weight would make me an "enemy" of fat-acceptance (I should state that I accept fat on other people, I just can't accept it on myself for many reasons as I've mentioned in past posts). The truth was that I asked it because it was a notion that occurred to me, and felt it was pretty much simply an interesting idea to kick around. Certainly there are many people who would like to wake up tomorrow at their ideal weight, and I think that you can say "yes, I'd like to be my ideal weight tomorrow" and still be an advocate of bodily acceptance. That being said, it would say something about the extent to which you believe society will adopt fat acceptance if you say "yes". If you say, "no", then perhaps it is a reflection of your (lack of authentic) hopefulness that what you are striving for will come to fruition.

At any rate, I understand why the commenters concluded what they did. I have been in the paranoid fat girl seat more than once. Someone says or does something and I get mad and ascribe it to their intolerance of my weight or their anti-fatness agenda. Of course, sometimes (perhaps even often), that is their motivation. However, I have endeavored to be less defensive and angry as the years have gone by. I try to ignore it, or ascribe some other motive, but I have had less than complete success.

I think a big reason why we need fat acceptance and advocates who want the judging to stop is reflected in the low-key hostility that shone through in the commenters' words. They were defensive and went on the offensive in some cases. People don't become like this in a vacuum. It's the result of being fat and being attacked all of the time in a variety of ways. Anti-fat bigotry, doesn't make us thinner, it just makes us madder.

"No Diet Day"

I read a lot of fat acceptance blogs because I'm on board with body acceptance and people being allowed to live their lives (and deal with the consequences) in any way they choose. That being said, I wish that the fat acceptance advocates would separate their anti-diet agenda from their fat acceptance agenda. It is possible to accept your body as is, but not be against weight loss as an idea. Many people would want to lose weight even without the social stigma attached to being fat because it generally makes movement easier, reduces stress on joints and bones, and improves energy.

Apparently, "no diet day" was several days ago and a lot of the fat acceptance blogs took this as an opportunity to offer up "evidence" and opinions that dieting (as in calorie restriction or food control) is bad for you. There was everything from the idea that dieting will cause cancer and heart disease to the notion that it will make you gain weight. All of these conclusions are correlation and causation errors, but they are pointed at nonetheless as a means of supporting a "pro-fat" agenda. Restricting your eating doesn't cause you to gain weight, but many people do regain the weight they lose and more. That is a correlation, not a causation. Also, being overweight and changing your eating habits to lose weight causes stress which leads to a variety of illnesses like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, but the dieting does not cause these diseases.

At any rate, I didn't observe "no diet day", because I think the idea is silly and frankly I have no urge to abandon my eating plan for a day. I don't need or want permission to overeat by some made-up international holiday. I'm not a diet and exercise zealot by any stretch of the imagination, and I think people's eating habits are their own business and their body size isn't the concern of anyone but themselves. That being said, I think that fat acceptance advocates aren't doing themselves or anyone else any favors by asserting the equivalent of "dieting kills."

Fat Acceptance

In addition to reading a lot of personal blogs and weight loss forums, I also read what I call "fat subversive" blogs. These are written by people who are focusing not on changing themselves to conform to society's wishes, but talk about how society should accept fat people and focus on health rather than appearance. I'll be upfront and say that I don't often agree with about half of what is said, but I agree with the underlying goal of acceptance. People should be allowed to live their lives any way they like without censure, particularly in regards to something as personal as their weight or appearance.

I often find myself a bit torn between two viewpoints on the issue of the fat acceptance movement. No, those viewpoints are not to accept or not to accept. The viewpoints are whether or not most fat people (myself included) would be happier and healthier if people just minded their own business and left them alone. Personally, I think actually getting healthier and losing weight would be easier if I weren't constantly made to feel as if my weight defined my value as a human being. It's the self-loathing and censure that greatly assisted my nearly reaching 400 lbs., after all. However, that's not the issue at hand.

The issue at hand is whether or not I'd be just as happy remaining fat if the world stopped judging and punishing me. How much of our lack of happiness is externally inflicted, and how much is personal misery as a result of the difficulties we endure because of the size of our bodies? As I read fat-acceptance bloggers labor to justify their remaining at their size and proclaim their contentment, I ponder this question. At least two of the more prominent ones suffer from various health problems which may or may not be brought on by weight, but are certainly aggravated by it. (And both of them are charismatic writers and come across as very nice people.) One has a rapid heartbeat when exerting herself in strenuous situations like walking up steps. Another has joint pain issues. Both of them are relatively young, and I know all too well that these problems get worse with age as the strain on your body turns to damage of the overburdened parts. My pain, after all, has kept me close to house-bound (just going to work and doing what I had to do) for over a decade. Losing weight has alleviated a lot of that pain. At around 260-270 lbs. (my best guess of my current weight), I still suffer, but far, far less than around 380 lbs.

There are also issues of flexibility and mobility. At higher weights, it is harder to navigate around your own body parts. Your own flesh gets in your way. You can't move quickly or as easily. I tried doing yoga at my high weight, and it was impossible to achieve many of the positions even for my arms because my flesh was too voluminous to manage. I can also say with confidence that sex, which was very difficult before, is a lot better at my current weight because I can move more easily and my husband has to fight my obtrusive flesh a lot less.

Finally, there are issues with stamina. I have never been a lazy person. In fact, I move around a lot more than most thin people that I know. That being said, I was exhausted and tired nearly every day from all of the movement that I did, not to mention the ravages of the pain I felt. Now, I rarely reach that level of fatigue, and I move even more because it's easier to do so. Moving around a bigger body makes you tired much more rapidly than a smaller one. This is simple logic and is the reason why basal metabolic rates are higher for loftier weights. It takes more fuel to drive the bodily equivalent of an 18-wheeler than a compact car.

So, I do wonder if living in some perfect world of fat acceptance where all furniture were wide enough to accommodate our big behinds and all opportunity doors were equally open to us based on merit and not appearance would mean we'd live fat and contented, or not. I'm not a person who is disposed to vanity, as my handful of readers may have guessed based on my wearing the same clothes after losing somewhat over 100 lbs. I'm not looking to show off a better figure or admire myself in the mirror. I am looking to escape my health and mobility problems, have no difficulty navigating a world designed for thin people, and escape daily abuse based on weight. If you remove the last two, there is still the great incentive of living in less physical misery on a daily basis. That really has nothing to do with how accepting the world is, and it's more than enough to make me unhappy with remaining fat.