On Being Fat
Sep. 23rd, 2009 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maychorianI've thought about posting something about this for awhile, but never made the time. I feel like I need to say it, though. Maybe I feel like I need to explain myself, which is silly. But also, this is part of the story of my life, and you are my friends, so perhaps you'll find it interesting.
Let me tell you something about myself: I'm fat. I haven't exactly kept this a secret--I've posted pics here before, mostly under f-lock, but they're there. (If you're reading this from my account on Facebook, you can find even more.) I'm a big girl. I have been all my life. Most of my family is, too. I come from hefty Germanic stock and mm, boy, we do love our potatoes.
I'll even tell you exactly how fat I am: I weigh about 280 pounds. (Not sure exactly. I don't weigh myself every day. Oh, Lord, don't EVEN get me started on the Wii Fit thing. :P Not gonna do it.) I have weighed 280 for, oh, about ten years now, quite consistently. Despite attempts at dieting and exercise regimens and all that folderol. It's...well, I've kind of come to think that this is just how big I am. So there. Not a secret.
And I'll tell you, I've tried. I've been tormented and insulted and looked down on because of my fat since I was a little girl. Some people treat me like a special ed kid, you know, like, those people, they have stuff to offer the world, but obviously they also have problems, and they should be pitied and treated differently and set aside from everybody else. And just. No. Not me, and not the special ed kids, either, but that's a different rant.
One summer while I was in college I tried going off flour and sugar. And I lost weight. I lost twenty pounds in a month. It felt so nice, and I thought I could keep going. But I was in a car accident (not my fault) and got a sprained lower back out of the deal and had to work with constant pain for freakin' MONTHS, and I started eating ice cream again. Because ice cream is delicious. This is also not a secret.
Went back to 280, stayed there.
I commuted to college and I was not well-organized and didn't really take care of myself, which translated to not eating very much for a couple of years. This was the pattern: on the way out of the door I grabbed a handful of whole wheat bread, two or three slices, and ate it on the way. At school I worked all day and studied and wrote and co-edited the school newspaper and was in student leadership and lots of other things, and I just ignored the hunger pains because I didn't have time to drive to Wendy's (and also didn't want to waste the money, and I don't like hamburgers and fries). On the way home I stopped at Taco Bell and got a bean burrito, because they were cheap and tasty. And that's what I ate, just about every weekday, for months at a time. And I didn't lose weight. Obviously this was unhealthy in a number of ways, but eating that few calories, as fat as I was, the general wisdom would be that I should have lost tons of weight. I didn't.
More recent example: This summer I had a job that involved a lot of walking. I took care of a disabled kid, and he loved being pushed around in his wheelchair. If I stopped, he cried. So I walked, all around the neighborhood, for two, three, four hours a day. Sometimes five or six days a week. That's a lot of walking.
It was really hard at first. My legs hurt and ached for hours after I got home. But I got stronger. I walked faster. I didn't hurt. When I played games at my church's family camp later in the summer, I could run fast enough to keep up with the teenage boys (at least in sprints), because my legs were just that strong, despite the heavy body they were carrying.
But guess what? Didn't lose weight. 280 or thereabouts all the way through.
I don't keep track of my food, because I tried that and it didn't work. But I'm pretty sure I eat the same as any average person. When I get some fast food on the way home from playing D&D with my geeky friends, I generally get less food than the two skinny guys I ride with. Talking about what we like to eat together, it sounds like this is not an anomaly--they eat more than I do. It doesn't matter. They're still skinny and I'm still fat.
So you know what I'm guessing? Over-eating didn't make me fat. It just happened.
Recently I've started hearing about this thing called "fat acceptance." And hoo boy, was I skeptical at first. ACCEPT this thing about me that is ugly and unhealthy and worthy of shame? ACCEPT that I am who I am and that's okay? ACCEPT that all through the isolation and loneliness of my teenage years I was worrying about something that really doesn't matter? Yeah, right. As if.
But well, I've been reading a lot. (That's what I do when I don't understand something.) And they have a point. Here's a few of the links that helped me out:
http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_haes/322.html
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html
http://kateharding.net/faq/
The last one, especially, has a lot of links that will teach you things you probably never knew.
It's still hard. Do I still want to be a thin person? Sure! Thin people don't get judged as lazy or gluttonous based solely on their looks. They can go into most stores and find clothes that will fit. They have a lot more options than I do, including romantically. (That's another rant, too.) If a genie gave me a wish, I might very well ask for something like that, because I'm human, and I'm still having trouble with the whole "accepting myself" thing, despite all I've studied and read, despite knowing that it would be the healthiest thing for me to do in the long run.
But this is how it is. I am a fat person. This is not an insult. I also have curly hair, and big feet, and a scar on my left arm from crashing it through a glass door when I was ten. Except for the last one, I never had any control over these aspects of my appearance. (And hey, I was ten. I didn't do it on purpose.)
Know what else? I like food. Food tastes good. I'm not going to deny myself one of the pleasures in life because of what OTHER PEOPLE THINK. It didn't work in the past and it's not going to work in the future.
Um, here's a picture. Family reunion, last year, I think. I took a Dramamine to avoid carsickness on the way there, and the stuff knocks me right out. I was groggy for the rest of the day--taking it was a bad decision. But the sleep felt nice. So what did my brothers and cousins do? Well, they didn't leave me alone, that's for sure.
Do I like how I look? No. But I'm trying to. I am who I am, and trying to change it will be painful and frustrating and in the long-term it isn't going to work, so this is what I've got. It's not so bad, is it?
And that's all I have to say about that. For now.
Let me tell you something about myself: I'm fat. I haven't exactly kept this a secret--I've posted pics here before, mostly under f-lock, but they're there. (If you're reading this from my account on Facebook, you can find even more.) I'm a big girl. I have been all my life. Most of my family is, too. I come from hefty Germanic stock and mm, boy, we do love our potatoes.
I'll even tell you exactly how fat I am: I weigh about 280 pounds. (Not sure exactly. I don't weigh myself every day. Oh, Lord, don't EVEN get me started on the Wii Fit thing. :P Not gonna do it.) I have weighed 280 for, oh, about ten years now, quite consistently. Despite attempts at dieting and exercise regimens and all that folderol. It's...well, I've kind of come to think that this is just how big I am. So there. Not a secret.
And I'll tell you, I've tried. I've been tormented and insulted and looked down on because of my fat since I was a little girl. Some people treat me like a special ed kid, you know, like, those people, they have stuff to offer the world, but obviously they also have problems, and they should be pitied and treated differently and set aside from everybody else. And just. No. Not me, and not the special ed kids, either, but that's a different rant.
One summer while I was in college I tried going off flour and sugar. And I lost weight. I lost twenty pounds in a month. It felt so nice, and I thought I could keep going. But I was in a car accident (not my fault) and got a sprained lower back out of the deal and had to work with constant pain for freakin' MONTHS, and I started eating ice cream again. Because ice cream is delicious. This is also not a secret.
Went back to 280, stayed there.
I commuted to college and I was not well-organized and didn't really take care of myself, which translated to not eating very much for a couple of years. This was the pattern: on the way out of the door I grabbed a handful of whole wheat bread, two or three slices, and ate it on the way. At school I worked all day and studied and wrote and co-edited the school newspaper and was in student leadership and lots of other things, and I just ignored the hunger pains because I didn't have time to drive to Wendy's (and also didn't want to waste the money, and I don't like hamburgers and fries). On the way home I stopped at Taco Bell and got a bean burrito, because they were cheap and tasty. And that's what I ate, just about every weekday, for months at a time. And I didn't lose weight. Obviously this was unhealthy in a number of ways, but eating that few calories, as fat as I was, the general wisdom would be that I should have lost tons of weight. I didn't.
More recent example: This summer I had a job that involved a lot of walking. I took care of a disabled kid, and he loved being pushed around in his wheelchair. If I stopped, he cried. So I walked, all around the neighborhood, for two, three, four hours a day. Sometimes five or six days a week. That's a lot of walking.
It was really hard at first. My legs hurt and ached for hours after I got home. But I got stronger. I walked faster. I didn't hurt. When I played games at my church's family camp later in the summer, I could run fast enough to keep up with the teenage boys (at least in sprints), because my legs were just that strong, despite the heavy body they were carrying.
But guess what? Didn't lose weight. 280 or thereabouts all the way through.
I don't keep track of my food, because I tried that and it didn't work. But I'm pretty sure I eat the same as any average person. When I get some fast food on the way home from playing D&D with my geeky friends, I generally get less food than the two skinny guys I ride with. Talking about what we like to eat together, it sounds like this is not an anomaly--they eat more than I do. It doesn't matter. They're still skinny and I'm still fat.
So you know what I'm guessing? Over-eating didn't make me fat. It just happened.
Recently I've started hearing about this thing called "fat acceptance." And hoo boy, was I skeptical at first. ACCEPT this thing about me that is ugly and unhealthy and worthy of shame? ACCEPT that I am who I am and that's okay? ACCEPT that all through the isolation and loneliness of my teenage years I was worrying about something that really doesn't matter? Yeah, right. As if.
But well, I've been reading a lot. (That's what I do when I don't understand something.) And they have a point. Here's a few of the links that helped me out:
http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_haes/322.html
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html
http://kateharding.net/faq/
The last one, especially, has a lot of links that will teach you things you probably never knew.
It's still hard. Do I still want to be a thin person? Sure! Thin people don't get judged as lazy or gluttonous based solely on their looks. They can go into most stores and find clothes that will fit. They have a lot more options than I do, including romantically. (That's another rant, too.) If a genie gave me a wish, I might very well ask for something like that, because I'm human, and I'm still having trouble with the whole "accepting myself" thing, despite all I've studied and read, despite knowing that it would be the healthiest thing for me to do in the long run.
But this is how it is. I am a fat person. This is not an insult. I also have curly hair, and big feet, and a scar on my left arm from crashing it through a glass door when I was ten. Except for the last one, I never had any control over these aspects of my appearance. (And hey, I was ten. I didn't do it on purpose.)
Know what else? I like food. Food tastes good. I'm not going to deny myself one of the pleasures in life because of what OTHER PEOPLE THINK. It didn't work in the past and it's not going to work in the future.
Um, here's a picture. Family reunion, last year, I think. I took a Dramamine to avoid carsickness on the way there, and the stuff knocks me right out. I was groggy for the rest of the day--taking it was a bad decision. But the sleep felt nice. So what did my brothers and cousins do? Well, they didn't leave me alone, that's for sure.
Do I like how I look? No. But I'm trying to. I am who I am, and trying to change it will be painful and frustrating and in the long-term it isn't going to work, so this is what I've got. It's not so bad, is it?
And that's all I have to say about that. For now.
