A word about weight.
In the words of the oh so wise Lily Allen, it's hard out here for a bitch.
*Adding an addendum to this post because I feel that I may have failed to communicate that I do not believe anyone’s size is a problem. I am not saying that my own body at a larger size was ever wrong or a problem- what I am sharing here is my personal experience on how I have felt persecuted throughout my life because of my size, and how it feels now as my body changes. How the culture of our society has personally harmed me in many ways, and how my weight kept me from getting medical care I needed for most of my life. My story is actually not that rare - the medical community is one of the most fat phobic places on this earth. That being said, just because someone is fat, it doesn’t mean they are sick. There have always been fat people throughout history. Our body size is unique and beautiful the same way our hair, eye color, laugh, or any other characteristic is.
This is a subject I loathe to spend time writing about, yet it is a hot topic of conversation everywhere I go these days.
I do not think the vast majority of society, which has never been the victim of weight bias, has any level of understanding about the trauma society inflicts on fat people, especially fat women.
We go through our lives every day with comments about our clothes, what we should eat, and what we shouldn’t, how much we are moving, and how much we are not, how much we are doing, and what we aren’t, and rarely does anyone ever stop to think about the gravity that their big mouths and opinions have on us.
I have been fat since I was in my early 20’s. Before that, I was living in an abusive household where the only control I had over my life on most days was what I ate or did not eat.
At 14, I was a 120lb size 5 girl who binged and purged and cut myself for a sense of relief and control over my life, and it was the height of ’90s heroin chic, so even then, I still thought I was fat. To add insult to injury, I was raised by a narcissist who loved to call me names like rubber blubber butt and make fun of the size of my ears since as long as I could remember. A man who was over three hundred pounds with a hard, round belly like a full-term pregnant woman (* adding an addendum here - the only reason I’m speaking on my family members size here is to illustrate how fat phobia can be internalized and inflicted on others even in someone who is considered to be fat themselves) used parts of my body as a point of ridicule among a million other tactics to make me feel small, insecure, and basically to want to escape the hell I lived in, or just disappear altogether.
As I got older, I started to gain more weight, and I began to develop symptoms of chronic pain, fatigue, sensory issues, low immune system, etc. - every medical professional I spoke to for over 20 years told me I was imagining things, I needed to just eat less, work out, think positive, etc.
I had multiple doctors tell me to eat 500 calories or less daily because “my body did not need more than that.” I had two doctors put me on a medically monitored 500-calorie-a-day liquid diet. I was prescribed legal speed. I saw multiple dietitians, went on countless diets, lived on protein shakes for two whole years, and it was like pulling teeth to lose more than ten pounds and to keep weight off once I lost it.
Nowhere was safe (and it still isn’t), everyone I knew or came in contact with had a judgment or an evaluation about me. Everyone had commentary. I once had a family member call me to scold me for eating a piece of a fried appetizer at a family birthday dinner. I had countless “because I love you and I care about you” conversations. I had two rheumatologists tell me that my autoimmune tests were coming back positive because I was fat and that I should just lose the weight. I had two different doctors refuse HRT, even though I had labs that showed my hormones were lower than those of someone post menopause, 20 years older than I was.
I spent 20 years fighting with medical professionals to be heard and taken seriously. Giving up, then beginning again.
When I finally started to make a little headway, it still took me TWO YEARS to get all the specialists I needed to see me, run the tests, believe me, diagnose me, and actually begin to treat me like a human being, and more importantly, treat my actual and real medical conditions.
When I finally began to get the treatment I needed due to my multiple autoimmune and medical conditions, I started to lose weight.
At first, little by little, then as more time went on, more visits to my specialists, more treatment was given, and more weight started to be shed from my body. I was doing nothing different in my life other than getting this treatment. I had already been on a strict meal prep regimen for over 5 years at this point due to food sensitivities, and my daily movement and routine stayed exactly the same.
I had already spent over ten years working on my self-esteem, body image, and self-love, and no matter what I looked like, I was happy with who I was. All I wanted was to feel good, to be healthy, and to have less pain and fatigue, as I’ve dealt with chronic pain and fatigue for so long, I cannot imagine a day without them completely.
But when I started to lose noticeable amounts of weight, I got nervous because after years of persecution for my weight, I knew the praise was coming, and that felt equally as gross. I tried to avoid any conversations about my size. But then the comments came…
First, it was the questions. What was I doing? Followed by the judgment about what I was doing if I answered, which mostly I evaded because frankly, it’s no one’s business. But even so, to be asked at all feels so evasive and weird. No one asks people about anything else. Can you imagine someone (especially those you barely know and rarely talk to) walking up to someone and being like, “Oh my god, your face is not breaking out anymore! What are you doing?” or “Wow, your nose looks so much smaller, did you get a nose job?”
Wouldn’t that be weird?
And then the compliments: “You look skinny,” “You’ve lost a lot of weight, I am so proud of you,” “You look so good!” All statements like these do is reinforce one thing - that the vast majority of society equates your worth and value with the way that you look and the number on the scale, which is disgusting.
To hear my neighbor, with whom I exchange words about once annually, tell me how proud she is of me was infuriating - because she doesn’t even know what she is saying! There is nothing to be proud of; I never did anything wrong. I existed in a body that needed help, in a body that was ignored, in a mind that was stressed, depressed, and repressed.
I had to do the hard work of not only fighting for my right to be treated as a human being and given the medical care I needed for years, but also to repair the trauma that was, is, and will continue to be inflicted on me all because of some weird sociatal, masogynist, white supremacist value system that says when people are thin, or women are pleasing to the male gaze, than they are worthy, then they are valuable.
So why am I airing this out online for all to read? To teach you thin passing or midsize passing people who do not know what you say, and who do not understand that your thought about size has been programmed into your psyche.
Do not talk to anyone ever about the size of their body, period.
What people do to care for their bodies is not your business, regardless of how righteous you think your opinion is.
What someone is eating is none of your business; shut your mouth.
Fat people are living multiple battles that many people will never know or understand. Research the history of fat phobia, diet culture, and the BMI. Then pass it on to your friends.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. (mic drop)
