The hardest decision I’ve ever made

(April 2021 Edit: I no longer post on this blog. For more of my writing, please check my links.)

Trigger Warnings: Eating disorders, WLS (weight loss surgery), Poor Medical Care

Sharing this is hard. Which is weird, since I am, by nature, an oversharer. I share because writing things out helps me process my feelings. I share because I remember when I was 15 and in a eating disorder unit and realized during group therapy, for the first time in my life, that I was not alone in some of the “crazy” thought processes I had. That feeling of someone understanding where I was coming from was priceless. If I can give that back to someone who is struggling, I very, very much want to try.

I hope people will not knee-jerk react to this and will read through my thoughts because I feel there are always many sides to a story and it’s easy to get caught up in our own feelings about someone else’s story, without giving them their safe space and chance to share. It’s a lesson I’ve learned slowly over the past decade or so, but a valuable one. No one is responsible for my feelings but me, and people are allowed to share whatever they want in their own spaces, even when I disagree. If they are respectful I will even try to put aside my personal feelings and not just listen, but hear the other person’s point of view. That is easier said than done, and I am stubborn and thorough in my decision making process. That means my beliefs and opinions are not easily swayed. Which is why, in part, what I’m about to share will shock so many people.

On Tuesday, March 6th 2018 I did something that seems to, on the surface, contradict all I stand for and believe in. I had a procedure called vertical sleeve gastrectomy. During this surgery about 80% of my stomach was amputated. Yes, I said amputated. This is a word that people who have WLS will likely find offensive but it’s also accurate. My stomach was a healthy organ and I chose to have most of it sliced away and removed from small holes in my body (the surgery was laparoscopic).

Why would I do this? I said for years that WLS was off the table for me. My body doesn’t have a great history with surgery. I’ve had complications from all three past surgeries I’ve had. I’ve spent over a decade as a non-dieter, happier and – in many respects – healthier than I’ve ever been. I’ve been working at body positivity, at promoting body acceptance, fat acceptance, body diversity… so why would I join the “dark side” and undergo a risky, possibly deadly and definitely life-altering procedure? The simple answer would be “to be thinner,” but few things in my life are ever simple.

In October 2016 I fell while on vacation. I was leaving a crowded little cafe in Minnesota. There was a rather high step down to the sidewalk I had somehow not really noticed on the way in. A large crowd had gathered by the door and crowds make me anxious for two reasons. First, I just hate people and I get claustrophobic. Secondly, when you’re my size getting through a crowded space is not easy. So given my anxious state I was definitely not paying attention and before I knew it I was on the sidewalk. My poor instinct to try to hold on to the door led to a massive injury to my right bicep. It was suspected I tore it, but there was no way for me to know for sure.

Why? Because in our fucked up culture, despite fat bodies existing (and based on the media hysteria, taking over the planet like some kind of zombie apocalypse), medical accommodations are not made for them. I could not get an MRI to see the extent of the damage. There are those who will say, good. People like you shouldn’t be accomodated, as a response to this statement. To those I say, fuck off. No, seriously. You don’t have the right to tell a fat person they don’t deserve proper medical care because you find their body size whatever negative thing you find it. And you can’t turn it around and say it’s about concern for health when you start from a place that wants to deny fat people the very healthcare they need, the same healthcare given to a thin patient, so don’t even try spinning it into that old “it’s about their health” yarn.

I won’t get into the details of what my life became after that injury, but suffice it to say that it has been a brutal and often humiliating 18 months. I lost so much mobility. It was impossible to treat my injury properly when they could not diagnose it properly. It made me realize that if I ever got cancer (which there is quite a lot of in my family history), or if I was ever in a much more serious accident, I’d be screwed. I would probably die and then, because of how twisted this world is, I’d be blamed for my own death… it would be my fault for being too fat to get proper treatment, and not the fault of a medical community that has failed fat people.

I had already researched WLS for many, many years. First when I was dieting, as another option – the “quick” option. The “easy way out,” is how it was often perceived by myself and fellow Weight Watchers forum members. Let me just tell you, as someone who has since had 3 surgeries (unrelated and not counting this one), surgery is never an “easy” option. I had already come to that conclusion before my gallbladder surgery (which was the first) in 2010 and I certainly didn’t look down on people who had WLS the way I did when I was dieting and doing it the “hard” or “right” way.

If you think WLS (or any surgery) is easy you need a massive reality check. Doubly so if you’re considering doing it yourself.

I’ve been very outspoken against WLS in the past. Some of you reading this will probably think I’ve now become pro-surgery. Nope. But I’m pro-choice, and I think people have the right to make their own decisions for themselves. As far as WLS is concerned, I think it is pushed very quickly on people that don’t have a real need for it. I think a lot of surgeons prey on a marginalized group and offer them false promises and hope of a shiny, thin, healthy life post-surgery. I think the risks are often downplayed and that the benefits are overhyped, especially for a person who isn’t really that big. I think the surgery is often given to people who are not even remotely ready for it psychologically speaking. I think self-pay patients – the ones who don’t need insurance approval – are those at greatest risk of not getting thorough psych evals beforehand, and also the most at risk of being pushed to do something that maybe isn’t such a great idea for them. When you consider these self-pay patients are shelling out anywhere from $8k – 25k, however, it’s hardly surprising doctors will try anything to get them to sign up.

Just like the diet industry, weight loss surgery is a highly profitable industry. It’s business, and business and medicine often make for messy bedfellows. The funny (not in a haha way) part is that weight loss surgeons are often the only doctors willing to be honest about how dieting fails the vast majority of people. Go to any surgeon’s website and you’ll likely see the statistics, often even with citations posted, on the decades of research that have demonstrated this fact. There’s also no denying that WLS works better than conventional dieting… but long term results are still not necessarily stellar, so it’s a huge decision to make and if you go into it expecting or hoping to be thin or to have a “normal” BMI weight there’s a good chance you’ll wind up disappointed.

When I went to the surgeon’s office last summer I was about 517 pounds. My body used to settle around 350 – 375 when I’d diet (this was the point at which I’d “plateau” and stop losing weight). I’m the ideal “candidate” these surgeries were originally intended for, before the obesity epidemic bullshit made people panic and it became evident that doctors could push much, much smaller people than myself into a surgical “solution” for their “obesity” problems. My surgeon has done over 6,000 surgeries. That’s a lot of fucking money, and while I trusted him as a surgeon I disagree with a lot of his viewpoints. I made that very known to him during my consult, and to his credit, he accepted my criticisms and feelings with grace. He was also willing to accept my caveats (like no, I’m never sharing a before or after pic with the office and at some point I may stop viewing my weight, if it becomes problematic for me). When he said a goal of 240 pounds was “reasonable” for me I quite literally laughed in his face. I’ve been over 300 pounds since I was 15. I’m not viewing this through rose colored glasses.

So here are the things you need to know about how I feel about WLS, and specifically my having had it.

1. I don’t think having had WLS will neccessarily make me healthier. In fact, it may very well cause health problems I didn’t have before, so it could maybe help some issues but replace them with new ones. I’m diabetic, but between PCOS and genetics, I likely always will be, and even if WLS seems to “cure” it, that is going to be temporary. I have multiple genetic risks for diabetes (and I can say that with absolute certainty since I’ve done DNA testing) and long term studies have shown that many people who are “cured” of diabetes post-op redevelop it later on in life – and this has been true even in people who maintain their weight loss. My blood pressure is always good, my cholesterol is normal and so there was no need to “fix” any of that going into this.

2. I don’t expect to be thin, nor is that my goal. In fact, even if I got to the weight I gave the surgeon as the weight I’d like to be after having done this, I will still be “morbidly obese” if you use the BMI charts (which, btw, you shouldn’t).

3. You will never hear me talk about how much weight I’ve lost, at least not in a celebratory context. There may be a factual context where I mention it, so I won’t say it will NEVER come up but it won’t be an “omgilostsomanypounds” sort of way. This doesn’t mean that I expect YOU not to share your own weight loss in your own space, whether you’re dieting or have had surgery. But I am not going to comment on it or congratulate it, either for reasons I’ve previously discussed on this blog.

4. You will also never see me post an unflattering “before” picture next to a flattering “after” picture. Just as I won’t give them to my doctor’s office, I won’t share them in my personal space. Any pictures of myself I share I do because I’m having fun in said pictures, whether they be silly selfies, makeup selfies, vacation pics… etc.

5. I really, really don’t want to hear your “compliments” on my weight loss, no matter how well intended they may be. That’s not my goal and I don’t intend to let myself be sidetracked into, what is for me, a negative headspace where I let it become my goal.

6. I still don’t want your diet “tips” or “tricks” or “suggestions.” If I think you have information that might be beneficial to me, I will ask you directly. Otherwise, please consider it unsolicted and unwanted advice and just don’t. I have never deleted someone simply because they had WLS surgery or they are dieting or eating in a certain restrictive way, but I have removed/unfollowed people who cannot seem to talk about ANYTHING else because that’s too much for me to deal with personally, given my ED history. I’ve been that person and I don’t want to go back to that place. It was deeply unhealthy for me and I have to do what’s best for me. You get to control your content in your space, so I’d never, ever ask someone to change what they talk about… but I reserve the right to remove someone from my life if what they talk about is simply too harmful for me – and I respect your need to do the same.

7. I will NEVER tell you that YOU should do this. I won’t ever push anyone towards this surgery. I won’t push anyone towards dieting. I’m more likely to tell you the reasons not to do it, in fact. But only if you asked, of course. Otherwise, it’s just not something I’d ever bring up.

8. I most definitely will not speak of this in safe spaces that have been created for fat people to be themselves without pressure from the outside world.

So what are my goals? Why did I do this? I know people will wonder, and while I don’t owe anyone explanations, I like talking things out. So I’ll share on my terms, in my way.

I’ve already explained the medical shit. Sort of. I explained the logistics of it. What I haven’t really explained are the emotional feelings that came with that injury. Not being able to do some very basic things because of that injury really robbed me of my pride and fueled a sense of helplessness. But it wasn’t just from that fall. In the past 7 1/2 years I’ve had 3 surgeries, two broken bones that kept me off my feet for 8 weeks each time and a number of other minor injuries that, when combined with the others, add up. All of these things resulted in decreased mobility, which resulted in weight gain despite the fact that my eating habits remained the same (and my weight had previously been stable for several years), which then further reduced my mobility.

You never know what your “breaking point” will be, or if you’ll have one. But I did. It came about 18 weeks after my accident, when I realized my bicep was as good as it would get. That was the time my doctor gave me to heal, while I (yet again) restricted my movement. I felt a lot like I did when I stopped dieting in 2007… I was desperate for another way, whatever it was. I took my years of research and began investigating sleeve surgery because it has (so far, at least) demonstrated the lowest complication rates of any of these surgeries. I also picked it because it was (ultimately, after I heal) going to be most compatible with Intuitive Eating. In theory, I eventually will be able to eat pretty much anything I could before, just in amounts that work with my altered physiology. With my history with binge eating disorder this was absolutely critical to me. Deprivation/restriction and I don’t mix well together.

Ironically, had I gone into this process from my dieting days I’d have been in an absolutely horrible place for the consequences of this surgery. Psychologically speaking, it would’ve been devastating for me. It was the 10+ years of eating disorder therapy, working on mindful eating, learning to recognize when I was eating for emotional reasons or boredom that led me to a place where this was an option that wasn’t potentially life threatening from an ED standpoint.

I’m still me. I still stand by all of the statements I’ve made in the past about WLS, or at least the ones I’ve made since I stopped being an asshole and stopped claiming surgery was “an easy way out.” I was not superior to anyone for losing 25 pounds through Weight Watchers, trust me. I may have wanted to believe I was at the time, but I definitely was not. Nor would I have been in any way morally superior because of following X (insert keto, paleo, raw food, vegan, Whole30, Jenny Craig, etc here) diet (or “lifestyle”) plan. I look back at the person I was when I was dieting and I cringe. I was a person who told a dying friend that at least losing 100 pounds because she had scleroderma was a “silver lining,” and I did not understand how she could possibly mean it when she said, trust me, Jess. No one wants to lose weight this way. Because I sure thought I did. I’d have done anything to lose weight and, more importantly, be thin. “Healthy” never entered the equation, though I certainly claimed it did.

When I stopped dieting, people said, but your health! You’re going to die young because of your fat! My response to that? Even IF that’s true (and that’s questionable, as there is much contradictory research/evidence on the matter), I’ll die happier and mentally healthier. That matters more to me.

Well, that still matters more to me. Maybe the surgery means I’m less healthy and maybe not. Only time will tell, and frankly even then I likely won’t really know for sure what has made me healthier (or less healthy). But if it gives me a chance to do more of the things that the extra weight I gained because of health shit over the past 8 years has robbed me of, it will be worth it. If it means the next time I fall I can get an MRI and not have permanent damage and lifelong pain because of an injury I couldn’t get proper treatment for, it will be worth it. If it means I can get treatment should I develop cancer, it’s worth it.

I plan to continue to be a warrior for fat acceptance and for changing the world in which we live so no one feels they are backed into a corner with no other options than surgery. That’s just not a fun place to be, and I know that from experience. No one should have to resort to something so drastic to get adequate healthcare. It’s one thing to make a choice for yourself because you want to for whatever reasons, and quite another to do it because you feel it’s your last resort. So I’ll keep fighting for a world where one doesn’t have to feel that way, but in the meantime I live in this world. This was hardly the only thing that factored into my decision, but it was definitely a major reason I went through with the surgery.

And there you have it… the hardest decision I’ve ever made. Hopefully, in the long run, I don’t regret it, but just as it is for everyone else, it was my decision to make. It’s my body and I get to choose how to take care of it. You don’t have to agree with it. You can try to use it as “proof” a fat person can’t be happy, if you want. But I have been and will continue to be a happy fat person, so I have to burst your bubble there. If you feel it’s a betrayal of what I’ve said I stand for, I’m not sorry because you don’t get to decide for me and because I still stand for all of the same things I have over the past decade. I understand the feeling of betrayal because I’ve been there myself, any time a body positive actress or celeb suddenly has had WLS or signs on with WW or Jenny Craig. But what I’ve realized is that I have no right to that thought process. No one owes me their fat body, anymore than they should expect to be in some way obligated to try to make their bodies thin for the sake of societal beauty standards and ideals. It is just as wrong of me to expect a person to decide to stay fat for me for X reason as it is to want them to become thin for X reason. It’s just as fucked up. Yes, it’s disappointing to hear someone formerly body positive start trashing their bodies or start pimping diet products, but it’s not my choice to make. And we very often don’t know what led them to that decision, either. Regardless, body autonomy is something very precious to me. I respect a person’s right to make decisions for themselves, even when I don’t personally agree with said decisions. Your life, your choices.

It’s honestly really that simple, if only we let it be.

~JK

The People of Walmart

I’m not going to link to the site here, but I’m sure most of you are familiar with the meme The People Of Walmart. Basically, strangers take pictures of other strangers that they find, for some reason, odd or hilarious or whatever… and they post them online and make fun of them. TPOW is hardly the only such site that does this… there are many out there that do it. It happens on reddit, it happens in forums all over the net.

At first glance, it’s pretty easy (in most cases) to tilt your head and go WTF? to some of these pics. Like the infamous one of the woman wearing her nightgown, fur coat and vacuuming her front yard. It’s easy to judge that pic and go… well clearly she’s high. And maybe she was high.

Or maybe she’s mentally ill. Or maybe she has Alzheimer’s. We don’t know because we don’t her. We have no idea what led to her being outside, on what looks like a rainy day, wearing that fur coat and nightgown and vacuuming her yard (or trying to). But whatever the story is, it’s hers.

My grandfather has dementia. We don’t know what the cause of it is, but he often forgets to shave and his hair will be a mess. He used to be the sort of man who never, ever went outside unkempt. He was very neat and put great care into his appearance, at least outside of the house.

When my grandmother needed emergency surgery in November, and the doctors really didn’t know if she’d survive, he had to rush with my mom to the hospital. All he kept saying, while they were waiting in the family room for news, was that he hadn’t shaved. This upset him so much that when she wanted to say goodbye a few weeks down the road, he didn’t want to go because he hadn’t shaved. My mother, as gently as she could, told him it was going to be his last chance to see his wife.

So he went out, unkempt, disheveled…

A friend of mine went to the Walmart pharmacy late at night because her 2 month old had a fever. She was wearing pajamas, flip flops and realized after the fact that her top was inside out (and had spit up on it). Her hair hadn’t been washed in two days because, as a new mom, she just hadn’t gotten the chance to wash it. She told me later she worried about someone taking pics of her while she was in Walmart, since her pajamas were hot pink and had animal print. And it was December in New Jersey and rather cold for flip flops.

As a fat person in a digital age that so greatly enjoys mocking people for no reason other than they’re out in public and dare to look somehow different than other people think they should, I never shop without fear of winding up on some fat shaming site. It’s always in the back of my head. It doesn’t stop me from living my life, but the fact that I have to think about it at all is pretty fucked up, really.

I’m fortunate to live in a place where the majority of people aren’t assholes. No, really… I regularly have teenage boys hold the door for me. That doesn’t happen where I come from, not unless said teenage boy thinks the woman he’s holding the door open for is hot, anyway. And maybe not even then. But certainly no one ever held the door open for me where I grew up on the east coast.

But then hell, I saw a little old woman with a walker struggle to get into a bank in Manhattan that didn’t have automatic doors for 5 fucking minutes. I was prepared to help, but stuck on the other side of the street. People went into the bank, came out of the bank. No one helped her. It broke my heart. When I went and helped her, the look of gratitude in her eyes was just… overwhelming. It literally made me tear up because I could not imagine how anyone could be so oblivious, self-absorbed or cruel as to let this poor woman struggle that way.

So certainly, it wasn’t limited to fat people… which is the point. People here are, in general, just much kinder and nicer than the people where I used to live. So given that, I worry a LITTLE less. But I still worry.

I’ve had strangers (again, back east) come up to me in a store, look at me and give me their diet business cards. This is when I was dieting, btw, and nothing in my cart was even remotely “questionable.” I was once walking home from the deli, where I’d gone to get my husband and myself some ice cream on a hot summer day, after he’d had a rough day at work. The bag I was carrying was a brown paper bag… some asshole stopped at the red light where I was crossing shouted out, “hey fatty… what’s in the bag? Ice cream?”

Yes, because being fat means you can’t have ice cream. Or it means ice cream is all you eat. I’m never sure which one, tbh. But at the time, that comment destroyed me inside. It made me feel so much guilt and shame that I didn’t even eat the ice cream, despite the fact that, again I was dieting and had worked the ice cream into my daily diet allowance.

I was eating a fat free frozen fudge bar before class started on a warm May Saturday, when a classmate I barely knew came over and asked “should you be eating that?” I looked at her and said, “well since it’s 2 Points and I’m on Weight Watchers, yes, I should.” But I wish I’d said, “how the fuck is it any of your business what I’m eating?” Because that’s EXACTLY the sort of reply that question deserved. And today, after years of eating disorder therapy and time to learn to accept myself, that’s more or less the response I’d give. But I only was able to start this therapy after leaving the toxic fat bashing environment I grew up in and moved to Colorado, which ironically despite being repeatedly reported to have the lowest obesity rates also happens to be far more fat friendly. I’m sure people think things, but I’ve only once in almost 10 years of living here had anyone say something, and it was the second week after we moved here. And, not that it excuses it, because it doesn’t, the person in question thought I was out of earshot when he made the snarky comment. It was at the Wendy’s drive through, and the kid who took our payment said, “that dude’s wife was BIG.” But it was after we’d driven up… he just happened to have said it before the other kid had closed the window. Or I’d never have known.

This sort of shit was bad enough when it was limited to what happens in a store with one person coming up to you or shouting shit from a car at you or making the odd rude comment to you at a restaurant or anywhere else. But now? Now we’ve moved into an entire other realm, one where strangers can take your photos while you’re eating, and you never know it. And then they post said photos and judge you for daring to eat while fat. Sometimes the person in the question probably doesn’t even meet the BMI chart standard for “overweight (not that that’s anything other than money-making BS anyway),” but the photographer thinks she does…

Or the person is wearing a tank top in public, and she’s fat so of course she shouldn’t be daring to show her arms. Or he has chocolate in his cart, and he’s fat, so he deserves it, right? Uhm, no. Actually, he doesn’t.

You might think, “oh, this is ridiculous, she’s being dramatic or overly sensitive.” And perhaps I am, to some degree. My rant about this is inspired by two friends that I know love me and wouldn’t want to hurt me sharing pics from The People Of Walmart. But my grandmother just died, I’m in a fibro flare from hell, and every time I see pics like these I imagine how easily it could happen to me… because I’m both fat and disabled, but my disability is one that is an invisible illness. It’s fibromyalgia, and I have a handicapped placard so I can park closer to stores, and in doing so save myself some spoons. I won’t even use a scooter… because I know people will make snap judgments (another thing that does happen to thin people or young people) about why I’m in a scooter. That and, well… I’m kind of afraid I’d drive one into the display at the end of the aisle. But my husband (who is also fat) has multiple sclerosis and he’s had to use one before, too. Once when I was in Walmart, there was a young kid in a scooter… a teenage boy. With his mother and sisters. He was checking out at the aisle behind ours. My husband had his cane. The – also young – cashier we had went on a loud rant about how much it annoys him to see people using scooters who don’t need them. Well, guess what? When we got out to the parking lot that kid was handed his crutches by his mother to get from the scooter to the passenger door, and she then took the scooter back. So this doesn’t happen just to fat people, but having a fat body in a fat phobic, fat hating society certainly puts an extra target on your back to be the butt of someone’s joke.

When it comes to the internet, I think because they’re strangers in a picture we’re seeing it’s so easy to become desensitized to the fact that The People of Walmart are, in fact, PEOPLE. Real people. People who have jobs, feelings, families, children… etc, etc. People for whom your two minute laugh have to live, in some cases, a lifetime of ridicule and shame over something that you really, when it comes right down to it, don’t know anything about.

The man whose ass crack is out of his pants… maybe he’s undergoing chemo and has lost weight. The woman who has on jeans that are too tight (in your opinion). Maybe she’s gained weight and can’t afford to buy new clothes. The woman in the crazy platform shoes who gets a comment about being a stripper running errands might be a single mom who really IS a stripper, and that’s how she supports her kids. Or maybe she’s just a stripper because she wants to be. And guess what? She fucking allowed to be a stripper, and she’s allowed to wear those shoes to Walmart or anywhere else she wants.

Our bodies don’t belong to strangers in stores or online. They belong to us. We get to do with them whatever makes us happy, whether that means dyeing your hair fuchsia, shaving it all off, having 22 tattoos or 32 piercings. Or just something as simple as wearing shorts  This is true whether we’re a random unknown person or even a celebrity, although at least celebrities go into it knowing the cost. It is still fucked up, but it’s an unfortunate part of the job, and in many cases the publicity turns into profit, even if it’s unfair or undesired. For us just doing our regular grocery shopping, there’s no “perk”to being photographed by a stranger and turned into a joke.

This world we live in where it’s become not only okay, but often encouraged, to take photos of strangers for the sole purpose of mockery is shit. I think that any one of us could, for any number of reasons we can’t necessarily conceive of, wind up on one of these sites. Whether it’s because we’re shopping in our pajamas because we’re sick and don’t give a fuck and just wanna get what we need and get out, or because we want chocolate and don’t buy into the BS that a fat person isn’t allowed to eat chocolate, or we have crazy colored hair that someone thinks is “weird” or we have a lot of piercings or we have a tattoo that someone thinks is dumb or we’re mentally ill and have no idea where we are, let alone what we’re wearing… it could happen to any one of us.

You could very easily someday be the person being laughed at. So next time you mock someone try – just try – to put yourself in said person’s shoes. Because while some people manage to take their unintended internet fame (though these cases usually involve people who put themselves or a family member online in the first place, like David After Dentist or Charlie Bit Me) and turn it into something positive, others contemplate suicide or experience serious mental health struggles.

~JK

 

 

Why I don’t comment on your weight loss posts

I wrote this as a facebook post, but decided to turn it into a blog post because it got very long. It’s been a long time, as I don’t tend to write here until I really have something to say… and tonight, I did.

Two of the hardest things about being in eating disorder recovery (for me) are reading/hearing about dieting and negative body talk. Eating disorder recovery is an ongoing process. I think for many of us who have experienced the hell of an ED, it never completely goes away and often requires, to quote Mad Eye Moody, “constant vigilance.” I know for me this is true.

Now, just to clarify up front, you have every right to do with your body whatever you feel you need to do for it… whether or not that is pursuing intentional weight loss. And while I wish you wouldn’t, because it makes me sad for you (it really makes my heart hurt), you also have the right to talk badly about your bodies. That’s true whether or not you are currently dieting, btw. I don’t think self-hatred is conducive to being healthy. I know from personal experience that it’s not for me.

I don’t tend to comment on weight loss or dieting posts, beyond maybe saying something along the lines of “you’ve always been beautiful.” Because that’s true. Beauty isn’t about a number on a scale or the size of your jeans. It’s about who you are as a person. And I’m really sorry if you felt ugly today, or if you feel it every day… and I understand that struggle and that heartbreak. But you’re not ugly. I’m not friends with ugly people. And I don’t comment because I don’t want your sense self-worth to be tied up in how much you weigh, or how you look. It’s not because I don’t care; quite the contrary, it’s because I do.

However, I recognize that my extreme aversion to seeing you talk about your diet is my problem and not yours. So I stay silent. Your body belongs to you, even if you choose to talk about it publicly, even if you’re sharing intimate details about it. You get to decide what to feed it, how to dress it and how to treat it in general. Just as I do with my own body, even when I share intimate details about it publicly.

My journey from a practically life-long diet to a mindful eating or Intuitive Eating approach is an ongoing one. What I put myself through, what my family members (NOT my mom, FYI) put me through… that is something that I will always struggle with because there are some wounds that cut so deep they never quite heal over all the way. For me, this is one of them. Being in a world with a constant obsession about weight and appearances and dieting does not help with that struggle.

Despite the struggle, I am so much happier now. I’m much more mentally healthy, and I believe 100% that without my mental health I have nothing. My physical health is irrelevant if I am as mentally unwell as I was in the throes of my eating disorder. I know some of you will read this and go “but – but – but… your health,” even if you don’t say it… and please don’t, by the way. If you’re truly interested I can point you in the direction of plenty of research that will explain my position on this, but otherwise I am not looking for a debate on the topic with this post. Believe me when I say that as a fat person living in today’s world, there’s rarely a single day without some OMG BUT YOUR HEALTH message, whether personally aimed at me or just aimed at fat people in general. In fact, I get these messages so often I’m fearful of one of the medications that helps me function daily, because in people with cardiac issues, it can cause problems. But I don’t have cardiac issues. I’ve been checked out. My cholesterol is normal. In fact, my triglycerides were always high (common in women with PCOS) and they normalized when I began IE, and stopped being fearful of the calories in healthy fats. So why am I so scared when I have no known medical reasons to be afraid? Because I cannot tell you how many times in an average month I hear that I (or people who look like I do) am going to “drop dead” at any moment of a heart attack. It’s simply not true, but the message is out there for all of us fatties to absorb. And my anxious brain grabs onto things like this in a way that the brain of a person without an anxiety disorder does not. So believe me when I tell you there is absolutely nothing you can tell me about how my fat will supposedly affect my health that I do not already know, that I have not already heard literally thousands of times in the past 31 years. And I’m 39. So yeah. Since I was a little girl. I know. I’ve researched. I’ve formed my own opinions. But it doesn’t mean I am immune to the constant bombardment of OMG FAT IS DEATH messages, either.

Here’s the bottom line… even IF everything bad we’re sold about being fat were true – and it’s so very much not – I’d honestly rather be mentally healthy than struggle to accomplish something I never did in literally decades of trying. The only thing I got for all my years of effort in dieting was fatter and more unhappy. I was so unhealthy and so unhappy, and life is just too fucking short for that degree of unhappiness. That’s my story and my choice, and that’s my right… just as you have the right to your stories and your choices about your bodies.

So if I don’t comment on your weight loss or your diet posts, it’s not because I don’t care about you. It’s because I know I have nothing to say that you want to hear. It’s because it’s too painful for me, and I need to quietly walk away. It’s because, since I care for you, it makes me very sad when you say negative things about yourself. It’s because it triggers a lot of unhappy memories for me. It’s because even now, despite being so much happier, I struggle myself, and I don’t need to see or hear those messages. It’s because of a lot of reasons, but it’s not because of you, and it’s definitely not because I don’t care or because I think you don’t have the right to make those choices for yourself. In fact, it’s because I think you do have that right that I stay silent, and it’s because I do care that I tell you you’ve always been beautiful.

It’s also very much because of me, of what I need. And all I can do is hope you respect my right to make these choices the way I respect your right to make yours.

❤

~JK

The one where I try to find a bathing suit

As I work up the courage to wear something vaguely bathing suit like for the first time in oh… over 2 decades, I appreciate this post from the fabulous Ragen Chastain, which she recently reposted via facebook. I’m also grateful for her follow up post, which can be read here.

It’s not easy for me to admit being intimidated by the idea of putting my fat body into a bathing suit of some sort. Body acceptance isn’t, at least for me, something that just magically happens overnight. It’s a process, and I still have issues to work through. Wearing a swimsuit of some kind in public happens to be one of those issues… and that’s something hard to explain, and a lot of the “concern trolls” or outright haters would point to it as proof that I’m not really happy with myself. But the truth is, I’ve always been my own worst hater. The people out there who think they can offend me by calling me ridiculous names like “hamplanet,” or who try to hurt me by claiming my husband must be gay, repulsed by me or otherwise somehow, in their viewpoint, “broken,” to want to be with me, have no idea that I’ve called myself far, far worse things over the years (they also, incidentally, have no idea how laughable it is to me when they try to attack my marriage… because I’ve never been more sure of anything than I am of my husband’s love for me). I’ve spent plenty of time beating myself down; engaging in an endless cycle of emotional (and sometimes physical) violence towards my body. As sure as I was of the love my husband and I shared, it didn’t mean there weren’t times when I wondered why he loved me, especially in the early days. A lot of therapy and hard work helped me get through that, but I still hated my body. Passionately.

And for what? For how it fucking LOOKED. It did all these unbelievable, amazing things for me. I could walk all over Manhattan. I could take care of a classroom with 14 toddlers, a job where you literally were not allowed to sit unless the children also were sitting (and anyone who’s spent time with a toddler knows “sitting” isn’t one of their favorite past times). and win the praise of parents and fellow staff members. I worked with infants, with constant up and down, lifting, diaper changes, etc, etc. I did all of this while “morbidly obese,” and I did it fabulously. My body allowed me to do it… and I was never grateful. I was never appreciative.

In no small part, my road to body acceptance was paved with an eight-years-in-the-making diagnosis of fibromyalgia (and yes, more therapy). In other words, I didn’t really begin to appreciate what my body had done for me until my body could no longer do those things. And at first, like the doctors and plenty of “concerned” friends and family members, I bought into the idea that my illness was just a symptom of my fat. It took eight incredibly frustrating years, a sleep study that proved I wasn’t suffering from sleep apnea (I wish I could’ve wiped the smirk off the face of the ENT back in Manhattan who assured me I did, because fat + snores has to = sleep apnea, despite a deviated septum), but rather a sleep disorder known to plague fibromyalgia patients, along with a lot of various tests (11 vials of blood in one session and an MRI) to finally realize what was actually wrong.

I don’t hate my body now. And I regret all the wasted years when I could’ve been doing more with it, when I was healthy enough to do more, but too fearful or too certain I had to wait until I was X number of pounds thinner before I dared try that particular thing. Now, even if something happened like some fairy godmother waved a wand and made me magically thin, it wouldn’t matter. I still have fibromyalgia. I still live with the fatigue, the brain fog, the constant feeling of battling a low grade flu… and those are the good days. On the bad days? Taking a shower makes me cry. Hating my body for how it looks? Seems pretty stupid to me now, considering what it’s going through every day. Considering the endless battles it faces. Considering I hated it for that one vain reason for so many damn years before I got sick, and what did that all that self hatred ever do for me? I can assure you, not one damn positive thing.

So, yes… I disagree with those who see my reticence to put on a swimsuit in public as “proof” I hate myself. I point to it as proof that I, like millions upon millions of others, have been brainwashed by a $60 billion dollar a year diet industry (not to mention the entertainment industry, the media in general, the beauty industry…etc), into thinking my body type isn’t attractive and, even worse, is downright repulsive. I’ve come a very, very long way in appreciating it as it is, right now, today. I’ve become far more comfortable in my skin than I ever imagined possible while still *gasp* fat. Part of that is because I realized that if I didn’t learn how to love myself right now, I’d always find something to hate. I could be that dream size (whatever it was at the particular period in my life) and find reasons to be unhappy… like so many women do, even women who perfectly fit into the stereotypical beauty paradigm.

I was tired of hating myself, and I don’t now. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to battle all those years of “I’m too fat to wear a bathing suit in public,” either. Beyond that, there’s a certain degree of personal comfort with exposing so much skin… it’s been so long, after all. It makes me feel raw, naked and unbelievably vulnerable.

So why do it? Why even bother, right? For years, I wouldn’t have dreamed of going public in a swimsuit. For years I couldn’t see a reason to endure the emotional angst that I’d heap upon myself, nevermind what others might think. And even when I got to a point where I could fairly honestly say, “fuck what others think, Jessica… this ain’t about their opinions,” I still had my own personal demons to battle. So why now?

Circle back to one evil, vicious word. Fibromyalgia. I have fibromyalgia. I have pain every.single.fucking.day. And anyone who lives with this illness knows damn well that it doesn’t tend to get better. One of the biggest challenges we face is trying to not lose the ability to move entirely… because when you’re left exhausted, shaking and in tears simply from showering, it’s pretty damn hard to even begin to consider anymore advanced exercise. When something as simple as using a treadmill leads to a major injury because your muscles are so tight they pull your knee cap out of place and cause a tear in your meniscus, it’s pretty hard to imagine wasting money on a gym membership, let alone doing something more advanced.

Over and over I’ve been told “water therapy.” I loved swimming as a kid. In fact, I lived in the pool in my grandparents’ yard for about 8 hours of every summer day that wasn’t rainy (and even some that were) when I was growing up. Yet, despite loving the water, I’ve avoided the “water therapy” idea for a few years now, partly because my local pool is known for being kept rather cold and because I have concerns over whether that will make my already tight muscles even tighter… but also, if I’m honest, because that meant putting on a swimsuit in a public place. Worse, the pool is located in the same complex as the local high school. I’d been working towards being a teacher, with the hopes of teaching at said high school. It shouldn’t matter how I look, but it does. I had legit concerns that putting on a swimsuit at that pool would risk my ability to be hired there in the future. Perhaps ironically, my illness progressed to the point where I realized I’m not going to be able to work full-time outside of the house, so that reason was eliminated. Which left me forced to accept my real, biggest fear about the entire thing.

Wearing a bathing suit – of some sort – in public. Not because I give a rat’s ass what anyone else thinks. But because I’m still battling my own inner demons. And that realization sucks.

But I’m human. I’m allowed to have these feelings, and these doubts or anxieties. If I choose to not do it, I’m allowed that choice, too. But then I let all those messages about not being worthy of wearing something revealing win. I let the diet industry win. I let the haters win. When it was a matter of swimming for pleasure, well… that was bad enough. But this is different. This is about my health, about my future. This is about wanting to be able to go on trips and walk around without hurting myself from my muscles being so damn tight.

This is about not letting fibromyalgia gain anymore ground.

So, I have to fight my own fears. I have to face them. I have to figure out what I can find to wear to be as comfortable as possible while doing this. I have the support of an amazing husband, who will go with me for moral support, even though he has no desire to swim (he was never a big fan of the water). I have a physical therapist that, despite some… differences of opinion… is willing to go to the public pool with me to show me the exercises I should do. I have a pool that, admittedly might prove to be too cold, but it’s only 30 min away (that’s close in my part of the world), and it’s really inexpensive to go to. I have everything I need, except the swimwear.

I think I finally even have the guts to find that swimwear… and to go, and give it a try. Because while it would suck to lose the $150 bucks or so it will cost me to buy said swimwear if that pool is too cold, what’s at stake here is far greater. What I’m risking losing instead is too big to ignore.

This is about my health, my body and my needs. And if my fat, wet, swimsuit body offends someone? Oh, well. They have the right to avert their eyes. And as for my own personal fears? Well, as Captain Janeway said, “you know as well as I do that fear only exists for one purpose: to be conquered.”

~JK

Fat shamed by medical professionals

(sadly, the service I recorded this with has a limited lifespan for files, so the audio blog is no longer available.)

 

I have an experience this week, and it took me back to the first time I remember being fat shamed by a “medical professional.” Maybe it had happened before, but if so I don’t recall it. I did this as a voice blog, and you can listen to the recording using the link below.

WARNING: I curse some and I talk about uhm… feminine stuff at the very end. So this is really NSFW and likely contains TMI.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: I talk very bluntly, openly and candidly about a variety of eating disorders, and of course, obviously fat shaming.

Listen here.

~JK

It’s not a “lifestyle” choice

So today, I saw this:

It’s possible, though probably unlikely, that it was directed at me. I say possible because a lot of people misunderstand what it means to promote fat acceptance, or Health At Every Size or Intuitive Eating. I say unlikely because anyone who thinks this about me has a fundamental misunderstanding of who I am and what I stand for, yet I know that my message is one that is easily misunderstood or misconstrued, too. Some people assume that promoting “fat acceptance” means I am anti-thin people. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m for body acceptance in general. That being said, there is a reality in our society that thin bodies are considered healthy, desirable bodies and that fat bodies are considered ugly, unhealthy bodies. This is just a simple fact. So, it is absolutely true that I tend to be more proactive about promoting images, articles, websites, etc. that focus on viewing fat bodies in a more positive light.

I am the proud owner of a body that happens to be fat. I’m not proud of my body because its fat. I’m proud of my body because it’s my body. It’s the only one I have. It’s broken, in many ways that have nothing to do with it being fat, but it’s still the only body I have. Like your body, or anyone else’s body, my body is amazing. It does all the remarkable, incredible things bodies do. Admittedly, mine has some… quirks (like an autoimmune disease). But, still. I’m here because of my body. Like your body, my body is beautiful.

But I’ve been told my entire life my body is ugly. I’ve been force fed the message repeatedly that my fat body isn’t good enough, isn’t worthy of love, isn’t amazing and isn’t sexy. I’ve been given the same message millions of girls all over the world have been given. Thin bodies are the only acceptable bodies. Thin bodies are the only healthy bodies. Thin bodies are the only attractive bodies. For years and years, like so many other girls, teens and women, I fed into that myth. I believed my body to be ugly and unacceptable. I did everything in my power to try to make it not be what it was… to make it not be a fat body. Each attempt at being thinner made me a bit thinner, for a little while. Ultimately, though, even when I did everything “right,” the weight would come back. Sometimes it would bring friends with it, which was just salt poured into the wound that was failure. Except this is actually a studied phenomenon and it doesn’t even relate to genetics. Dieting is probably partly to blame for the so-called obesity epidemic. Worse, dieting contributes to the development of eating disorders, and that was very much the case for me. I was put on my first diet at the age of 8. I spent the next 2+ decades yo-yo dieting.

My fat body is not a lifestyle choice. I didn’t choose to be fat anymore than the thin person chooses to be thin. Some of us are able to manipulate our bodies into being what they aren’t, from a weight perspective. If not long term, at least short term, many of us can either lose or gain weight to try to be the size we want to be, or the size we’re told we should be, but for the vast majority of us, this change is not permanent. Have you ever wondered why celebrities who gain weight for movie roles are able to lose it so easily? Or if they lose weight (and muscle mass), they’re back to their more typical weight/body type quickly? It’s because these are generally people who are starting from somewhere near their body’s set point.

I couldn’t even begin to guess what my body’s set point actually is, and I’m not even sure my body knows at this time. I spent way too many years yo-yo dieting, losing 25 pounds, gaining 30… overexercising, restricting food intake, binge eating. On top of that, I have Hashimoto’s Disease, PCOS and fibromyalgia. I’ve had 3 surgeries in just over 3 years. My body has been through hell and back, and my ability to exercise was impacted by that. It’s sad, really. When I was able to exercise, and did so regularly, I hated it passionately. I hated it despite the fact that it made me feel good mentally, that it helped me sleep better, that I was proud of myself for being brave enough to exercise in a gym in notoriously fat-phobic NYC (in a very pretentious area, nonetheless). Why? I hated it because I was doing it to lose weight. It was supposed to make me thinner. It never did, but I kept doing it right up until the fibromyalgia caused my first exercise related injury and I was forced to stop. I wish I hadn’t wasted time making it about weight loss. I wish I’d realized then that, even without losing a single pound, exercise would make me healthier. I wish my focus had actually been on health, but despite what I’d have insisted to be the case at the time, it had little to nothing to do with being healthier, and nearly everything to do with being more socially acceptable. Which is sort of odd for me because I’ve always been a rebel and I’ve never much cared what people thought about me. However, where my weight was concerned, a lot of my issues came from my family. I know this is true for a lot of people who have struggled with their weight, or even with just their perceived body image. It’s sad that families don’t recognize the critical role they play in the building of our confidence, or that, even worse, in some cases, they simply don’t give a damn.

The point is this… my body size isn’t a “lifestyle choice.” Not dieting, and trying to adopt a Health At Every Size approach? Now, that IS a lifestyle choice. It’s one that has revolutionized my life, and one I don’t regret for even a minute. And if that message was directed at me, I have to laugh at the “get help,” because I did get help. I worked with an eating disorder therapist on adopting an Intuitive Eating based approach to life for eighteen months. I did a phone session with one of the co-authors of the book. Help is how I got here, and I am so incredibly grateful for it because to think of what I’d still be doing to myself otherwise? That’s horrible. It was hell. That endless roller coaster of dieting. The emotional turmoil. The self-hatred it so frequently inspired. The competition amongst other dieting friends, or for a while, even my husband. Not for me. No thanks.

Does that mean you shouldn’t diet? Of course not. You get to make your own choices, just as I have. You have to find your own path to happiness and inner peace.

As for thin-shaming, it’s never okay. It’s not anymore okay than fat-shaming. I do want to make a point, though. This may not be something easily understood, and I’m sure it will be controversial, but as a fat person who once bought into the whole “real women have curves” mentality, I want to try to explain why. When you grow up being told over and over your body type is ugly, you can become desperate to latch onto any seemingly positive message that is directed at your body type. When I used to like such things on facebook, or wherever, I didn’t realize the flip side of that message. I honestly didn’t realize that the message was one that put down a different body type. I only saw it from the “holy shit, that’s a fat chick in a bikini and she looks happy and awesome” perspective. It didn’t dawn on me, ironically until I began my IE journey with the eating disorder specialist, that by liking images like that I was actually implying women who didn’t look like me were somehow less than. I never meant to do that, and I ultimately realized I was guilty of doing what had been done to me. Someone who is new to the process of accepting their body may be in that same boat. They may not realize that something they think is body positive is really only promoting a positive message for one type of body, not an inclusive message. Of course, the alternative is also possible. It may be that the person actually feels that way. I’m not one to dictate how anyone should feel, or what another person should find appealing or attractive. We’re all entitled to our own feelings and opinions. However, we’re not entitled to be assholes about them. That’s when it crosses the line from a feeling, belief or opinion and becomes bullying, oppression or bigotry. That’s not okay.

So many of us have our own battles with how we look, or how we feel we are perceived by others. I have naturally petite relatives who are given stupid advice like “oh, you’re so thin… maybe you should eat more.” And of course, most of my life I’ve been asked, even by complete strangers, “do you really need to eat that?” My body is not yours to police, just as yours is not mine to police. You get to eat what you want. I get to eat what I want. End of story. But please, to those of you reading this who are thin, ask yourselves this question… have you ever heard a little girl say she wants to grow up to be fat? My guess is you haven’t. People have said they’d rather lose limbs than be fat, or give up their marriages or a year of their lives. The vast majority would rather give up $1,000 than gain 20 pounds. In fact, there have been studies to demonstrate that little girls as young as 3 years-old prefer thin over fat. So what is my point? My point is this… no one has the right to shame you for being thin. Ever. It’s wrong, it sucks and it’s just as bad as shaming a fat person. However, it’s very likely that the person thin-shaming is envious – maybe not even consciously – of a body she can’t have herself. Whereas, I am pretty damn sure that not one person who has every body shamed me wanted to be my size. This is part of why my focus tends to be on promoting body positive things related to fat people… but it doesn’t mean, for even one minute, that I think it’s okay to thin shame. It doesn’t mean I won’t call thin shaming out if I see it. I have and I will.

Why is this worth mentioning? Well, because I’d like to live in a world where no body is shamed, because we don’t look at each other and think, gee, I wish I looked like that instead of like this. I wish we lived in a world where it was as okay to have a thigh gap as it is not have one. Or vice versa. I want to live in a world where people wouldn’t dream, for even one minute, of giving up a marriage rather than being fat, or of choosing to be blind or lose limbs over having a body type that is that vilified and hated by so many. I’d like to live in a world where someone who loses weight isn’t automatically presumed to be sick, or a drug addict… or dieting. I’d like our world to be one where we don’t feel the need to say to someone, “oh hey, you look great… you’ve lost weight,” implying that the person didn’t look great to begin with, or assuming that the weight loss was intentional, and not the result of emotional trauma (like the death of a loved one, or a divorce) or a horrible illness (like cancer). We don’t live in that world, and I am not idealistic enough to believe it will ever be quite that perfect or simple, but I am a fighter and I will do all that I can to help make that world a reality. Some things, no matter how unlikely, are worth fighting for… and to me, this is one of those things.

~JK

Oh, Special K…

So, the people at Special K think you’re stupid. Or at least, they are hoping you are. They are running multiple campaigns to imply that they believe in body acceptance and not body shaming. I had wanted to believe, at first, that maybe they were changing their ways. But… they aren’t.

Here’s the first in a series of campaigns they’re doing.

Red flag in the video? “We believe it’s a barrier to managing their weight.” Ah. Okay. So, right off the bat, though they are saying “fat talk” is harmful, they are also clearly still stating we need to “manage” our weight.

Then there is this one.

“Not seeing the number is so freeing,” says one woman in that video. I agree with her, to be honest. But the problem is… Special K is very, very much still using these campaigns to promote weight loss and dieting. So, I guess it’s okay to not see the number on the scale or your pants, just so long as that number is also shrinking? Or being “managed?” What does “managed” even mean to Special K?

Then they, disappointingly, managed to recruit Tyra Banks. Tyra has admitted she doesn’t “believe in diets,” and has been very body positive. So, I’m not sure why she’s signing up with a campaign so full of shameless mixed messages and manipulation.

The final nail in the proverbial coffin is this New Year’s resolution inspired print ad, which I scanned after finding it in the January/February edition of Cooking Light (a magazine I will not be renewing my subscription to, but that’s a story for another post).

At first glance, I was like… whoa! That’s actually not a bad ad for them. But, then I began to digest the mixed messages, and realized. Not only is this the same old dieting BS I’ve come to expect from Special K, it’s manipulative, dishonest and probably more harmful than their usual run-of-the-mill ads for it. The concept that you can focus on a “word” and not a “number” seems great! The word “JOY” on the scale seems positive, but then I saw the lower left corner, and the “What will you gain when you lose?” tagline.

“Most anything is possible when you focus on the positive.” That sounds good, right? But here’s the problem. This entire campaign, while very cleverly conceived, is insidiously manipulative. You’re telling women to accept their bodies and not shame them but also clearly saying they need to “manage” them, and making it obvious that the goal here is still weight loss. It’s disappointing, but hardly surprising to me, given the history of this brand.

You are, of course, allowed to diet. If that’s what you want to do, if that’s what you feel is best for your body… by all means go for it. We get to make our own choices. I am personally anti-dieting because there is nothing to support that long term weight loss of any statistical significance is possible for the vast majority of people. I prefer to follow the Health At Every Size and Intuitive Eating approaches. I worked with an eating disorder therapist for over 18 months on IE specifically, and in the past few months I have been working to incorporate a more focused HAES approach, too.

I feel that even if everything the media and $60 billion dollar a year dieting industry want me to believe about the “dangers” of being fat are true, there’s nothing to suggest I can be anything other than fat. That includes over 20 years of dieting vigorously, during which I repeatedly lost and gained weight (always gaining more than I lost). For more information, check out Ragen Chastain’s excellent post on this subject. Scroll to the bottom if you’re only interested in links to various studies and articles that support these claims.

Special K wants you to believe they have your best interests at heart, but the reality is they have their best interests (and bank accounts) at heart. I personally find it disappointing because I actually love (some of) their products, but I just can’t support a company that is sending such horribly mixed messages to consumers. The ultimate goal with these campaigns is to get you to sign up for a “Special K plan” which recommends replacing two meals a day with 2 of their products a day to “lose up to 6 pounds in two weeks!” While the plans appear to be free to sign up for, obviously they still profit because you’re buying their cereals, snack bars, water, protein shakes, etc.

However, all of this is my perspective. Yours may differ, and that’s cool. If you want to do a Special K diet plan, I’ll respect your right to do just that (or any diet), as long as you grant me that same courtesy. FYI: Saying you’re “just concerned” about my “health” is not respecting my my right to not diet. I’m fully aware I am fat and that various medical professionals who don’t know me (and have never examined me), the dieting industry and the mass media would have me believe I am a ticking time bomb. I’m very much aware of the fact that I’m “morbidly obese” on the (ridiculously used) BMI charts (and I have been since I was probably 13). I likely know more about nutrition than most so-called “normal” people. For one thing, I spent seven weeks in an eating disorder hospital when I was 15, and worked extensively with dietitians, not only during that time, but later in my life. My personal physician – who has worked with me for 7+ years now – supports fully my efforts at IE and HAES. So, you’re just going to have to trust me to make my own decisions about my health, based on what I feel is best for me, not only physically but emotionally. There are a multitude of reasons why my weight loss attempts failed repeatedly, aside from the most obvious one of long-term weight loss fails for the vast majority of people. I have two medical conditions that make weight loss even harder for me than it is for the average person. On top of that, I have fibromyalgia and live with chronic, daily, constant pain. Exercise is not only excruciating, it’s actually harmed me. I’m currently working on finding a form of exercise I can do, because I miss being more active.

The bottom line is this… you get to decide how you want to pursue health, or IF you want to. You don’t have to, and neither do I. I actually do want to be healthier. But trying to force my body to be what it isn’t has never made it healthier, and it creates emotional unhealthiness for me. Regardless of whether or not you are pro-dieting, if the mixed messages in the Special K ads irritate you, let them know about it here.

~JK

Body acceptance is about every body

Though there are some people who might like to deny it, most of us realize that in a world convinced being thin means being healthy and attractive, being fat is rather difficult. There are absolutely advantages – societal and political – to being thin. Just look at how Chris Christie, the governor of NJ, has been treated by the media because he’s fat. We also know that doctors will make rash judgments about patients’ health based on their weight. That, in fact, happened to Chris Christie with a physician he’d never even met. Medical students have been shown to hold unconscious biases against fat patients. There is a lot of hype about the “costs” of being fat on society, but what is too frequently considered is that a. stress is known to cause all sorts of medical conditions, including death, and b. medical care for overweight and obese patients is often substandard because of biases. And these biases work in reverse, too. Patients of fat doctors often hold the same sort of biases thin doctors have about fat patients. The reality is, being fat can cost you job opportunities, make your health insurance go up if your employer decides you’re non-cooperative with their “healthy workplace” programs, and may even compromise the quality of your mental health care! All this, solely based on HOW YOU LOOK. All this without any knowledge of your lifestyle, your overall health or you as a person.

This is not okay. This is not right. It reminds me of how, as a child, when we drove through minority neighborhoods my grandmother was always saying “hurry, lock the doors,” or “roll up the windows.”

Judging a person based on being fat is bigotry, pure and simple… and it’s dangerous. I almost died when an ER doctor decided my back pain wasn’t caused by the gallstones he KNEW I had, but rather by my weight. The next gallstone got stuck in my bile duct, and I wound up with pancreatitis. I was jaundiced. The whites of my eyes were bright yellow. I was too sick to give a rat’s ass if I died. When I was 15, I spent 7 weeks as an inpatient in an eating disorder clinic. I got out, and resumed therapy with the social worker I’d long despised. On my very first visit after being released, she said to me, and I quote, “so… when will we see some of the weight drop off you?” I was horribly humiliated and deeply and profoundly upset. Susan had always acted like she didn’t like me. I saw her with various family members I’d lived with over the course of several years, and no matter what the situation was – even when my father was debating putting me in foster care so his wife would stay – she never was on my side. It was always my fault. Now, in retrospect, I understand it better. She was a fat hater. I also really don’t think she liked kids much, but that’s another story. Once, in NYC, when I had strep throat I went to the doctor. I had to listen to a 10 minute spiel about how I should have weight loss surgery… from a doctor who had a referral business card handy. Can you say “referral fees?” I asked him how my strep throat was weight related and he shut up.

These are not things that happen to thin people. I was, for a few short years, thin. I can tell you right now that I never once knew I was thin. I thought and felt fat the entire time. Feeling fat and being fat are very, very different things.

There’s a Kacey Musgraves song called Follow Your Arrow. The following is part of the first verse of the song.

If you can’t lose the weight
Then you’re just fat
But if you lose too much
Then you’re on crack
You’re damned if you do
And you’re damned if you don’t
So you might as well just do
Whatever you want

This song immediately resonated with me. It’s incredibly true that, no matter what we do, there will people who have something nasty, spiteful and childish to say about it. Let’s think about celebrities for a minute. When they are fat, there’s lots of body shaming, unflattering, unedited pics taken of them. When they are thin, especially if they get what is deemed to be “too thin,” it’s all about… does she have a drug problem? Is it an eating disorder? Celebrities are, in my opinion, a bad overall example because they are prone to put their bodies through a lot. Whether it’s intentional weight gain (or loss) for movie roles, or substance abuse, or just what must be incredible stress living such high profile lifestyles, they hardly compare to us “normal” people. However, since we’re a world obsessed with celebs, they are frequently written about in print and online, and it’s easy to see the double standard. One minute so-and-so looks great because she “lost the baby weight” or “slimmed down” or “got toned.” The next minute the very same so-and-so is in the news and it’s “oh, is that a baby bump or is she gaining weight?” Even actresses who come out against body shaming and say they are happy with their curves often wind up back pedaling from that stance, and lose weight and it becomes a story of “I decided I needed to get healthy.” Which is 100% fine, if it’s true. People have the right to get healthy, not get healthy, try to lose weight or gain it… it’s a personal choice. But the key words are “personal” and “choice,” and when it seems as if everyone is in your business and putting pressure on you to do something, it no longer feels personal or like you have much choice.

I know a lot of people who are naturally thin. I went to high school with a girl who had hyperthyroidism. Ali was very, very thin. It wasn’t possible for her to gain weight. She tried. She didn’t hate her body, but she hated the medical condition. She was constantly freezing and constantly starving. She’d eat thousands and thousands of calories a day. She also had an incredibly unbalanced, and bragged about how being able to eat anything was the only “perk” of her condition. She ate a ton of fast food and junk food, and rarely ate actual, balanced meals. Her medical condition meant she was going to be very thin no matter what or how she ate. She’d tell us how her butt would hurt because it had no padding, and she laughed about it, but she also meant it. Overall, she was really comfortable in her own skin and people being mean didn’t bother her. She’d just shrug it off. Then a rumor was started that she was a heroin addict. Her mother (like mine) was a junkie, so this was a very, very painful subject area for her. It was also around the time the “heroin chic” look was taking off on runways, which didn’t help. This behavior is every bit as bad as fat shaming. It’s stereotyping someone’s body – and the person’s health and lifestyle choices – based solely on how they look. Discrimination is discrimination, and it comes in more flavors than Baskin’ Robbin’s ice cream.

Still, I don’t pretend I know what it’s like to have someone go, “oh, you really need to eat more.” Trust me, that’s never happened to me. I suspect that the reverse is true, however, and that most thin people haven’t had total strangers come up to them and say, “should you really be eating that?” If a thin person eats a brownie and drinks a Diet Coke, they are judged to be making balanced, healthy choices… it’s “eating sweets in moderation.” If a fat person does this, people laugh and go, “yeah, that’s how to lose weight,” never considering that maybe the person just prefers the taste of diet soda. Or that the person is on some type of diet plan and would rather use their calories on a brownie than a can of regular soda. Or that the person could give two shits about losing weight, and *gasp* that that’s allowed. There are absolutely differences between how a thin person is treated versus how a fat person is treated.

That being said, neither busybody is right. Going up to someone you don’t know and giving them unsolicited nutrition advice is absolutely and completely inappropriate. Who are you to judge what someone else should be eating? Who are you to decide what my body needs right now, or ever? I think I’m the best judge of what my body needs, and even if I am not, it’s still not up to you to police my food choices. That goes for the person who tells the thin person to eat more, too. A thin person gets to make his or her own choices, just as us fat people do. Would you like it if someone went up to you and said “hey, should you be doing X?” Probably not in most situations, and almost certainly not when it comes to food choices. So STFU. Mind your own business. Decide what’s right for your body, and let thin and fat people decide what is right for their bodies, too. I used to be guilty of this type of thinking (I never, ever said it to anyone, but I thought it), and I suspect that came from my time spent in the eating disorder hospital. I think that gave me the inaccurate notion that most people who are very thin, especially women, were suffering from an eating disorder. What I failed to realize, though, was that even if the person did have an eating disorder, it wasn’t my place to judge. I should’ve know better, having lived with one myself… and now I do. But the truth is, I suspect the real cause for judgment came from a place of jealousy.

I had a lot of friends in high school who believed they were fat. There were several who were all in the 5’4″ – 5’6″ height range and who weighed between 130 – 150 pounds. Not one of them was actually fat, even using the idiotic BMI charts, but at 5’7″ and 300 pounds, I sure was. I had to listen to these girls talk about how fat they were all the time. It made me really insecure at the time, but in retrospect, it just makes me sad. Unfortunately, I also listened to them bash people – including so-called friends of theirs – who were much smaller. There were girls we knew who were all over 5’1″ and 100 pounds (or less). Most of those girls were just naturally petite. Only one had an eating disorder (that we knew of), but even with her they’d make jokes. They were being “mean girls,” but it was born out of envy and petty jealousy. All of us knew they’d willingly give up teeth to be thin like the girls they made fun of, and the sad reality is, they mocked them because of that jealousy. I seriously doubt that anyone thin who makes fun of a fat person is secretly thinking, “damn, what I’d give to have her fat rolls.” I didn’t join the thin bashing, but I am ashamed of the teenage girl I was for not trying to stop it, either.

Being fat is a painful reality, especially in a world so damn convinced that people can change anything if only they try hard enough. Whether fat people are judged by naturally thin people who are utterly clueless as to how our lives play out, or whether we’re judged by former fat people who’ve lost weight (and maintained it long term), it sucks. I don’t care if you did something. It doesn’t mean I, or anyone else, automatically can. I wrote a novel. I don’t presume “anyone can” just because I did. I don’t think Michael Phelps would tell someone “if you just try hard enough, you can win all the medals like I did.” We’re all unique individuals, and our physiologies are as unique as our personalities. Don’t presume that someone can do something simply because you did, or because you’ve read articles or saw a news report that makes you think they can. Trust me… most fat people I know wouldn’t chose to live with such extreme persecution. Most fat people I know tried like hell, often for years, to not be fat. Many of them are still trying. I chose to stop because it was an unhealthy way for me to live. Just as it is their choice to continue trying to lose weight, it’s my choice to decide to focus instead on making changes that I can sustain. I have no business judging someone for wanting to lose weight, and that person has no business judging me for choosing to stop pursuing weight loss. You know what will make you happy, just as I know what makes me happy. But we’re judgmental by nature. It happens, and we all slip into the patterns. I’d argue that being able to accurately judge, both situations and people, is an important evolutionary tool. It’s what we do with that judgment that matters. Do you let it color your behavior? Or do you tell yourself you’re being unfair, that you don’t know the person’s backstory, or that no matter what you might THINK, it a. doesn’t mean it’s true, b. doesn’t mean it’s your business and c. sure as fuck doesn’t mean you need to say something nasty, snarky or even something you might think is well-meaning if it’s unsolicited advice.

This is true when you see a person you deem to be too fat, and it’s just as true when you see one you deem to be too thin.

My high school friend with the hyperthyroidism is an excellent example of how rushing to conclusions based on a person’s appearance is unfair and not going to give you accurate information. Ali tried everything to gain weight because she was actually so thin she was physically uncomfortable. Despite having fairly good self-esteem, and despite being a really, genuinely happy person, her thinness caused her problems she would’ve preferred to avoid, and not just the nasty comments from other people, but actual physical problems. The hyperthyroidism she lived with made her life very difficult.

I actually have the exact opposite problem of Ali. I have Hashimoto’s Disease, which is an autoimmune form of hypothyroidism. Just as her condition made it impossible for her to gain weight due to a hyper-fast metabolism, mine makes my metabolism sluggish. I also have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is another endocrine disorder that affects metabolism, among other things, and it was when the PCOS symptoms first started when I was going through puberty that I first began to experience rapid weight gain. I didn’t lose weight when I was 25, doing all the “right things” and healthy other than having these conditions. It’s even harder now that I can’t exercise properly due to the  fibromyalgia that went undiagnosed for so many years. It’s easy to sit back and judge someone when you know nothing about the person. People said Ali had an eating disorder, or was a junkie. People say I’m just lazy or making excuses or not trying hard enough. In either of our situations, it’s flat out wrong to express judgments. You don’t know what it’s like to live in someone else’s body, and you never can.

I write primarily about fat acceptance because there has been a “war” declared on people who look like me. There are no “wars” on thin people… but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still discrimination, and it doesn’t make hating thin people or judging them or presuming anyone thin will hate you because you’re not okay. We shouldn’t presume health by looking at a person, whether that’s good health or bad health. Your health is your business and no one else’s, unless you choose to invite someone into your life and choices. I also don’t write a lot about thin shaming because it’s not something I’ve ever experienced firsthand. Ironically, even when my BMI said I was underweight, I was told I was fat because I was so much taller and heavier than my classmates, and I still carried weight in my belly. So, I can’t relate to it, and I try to steer clear of things I can’t speak about on a personal level. But it’s something that comes up a lot, and it’s something I’ve been guilty of, at the very least, not trying to stop in the past (and I’ve had plenty of unspoken skinny-shaming thoughts, too).

Body acceptance is about accepting every body… not just thin ones and not just fat ones.  We only get one body in our lifetimes, and life is far too short to spend so much time hating it.  It’s about loving the body you have right now, today. It’s about not judging someone for how fat or how thin or even how “hot” you think they are. It’s about universal acceptance. Stop making judgments, and honestly I even mean judgments you think are positive. I try not to look at any pictures and think “oh, what a great body she has” now. It’s not easy, since, as I mentioned, we’re so conditioned to think this way, but it’s worth doing because you know what? Every body is great. Even my completely fucked up broken one. It’s MY body and I love it. I’m not asking you to love it. I’m simply asking for the same courtesy and respect (I hope) you’d want given to your body.

~JK

The dangers of “thinspiration”

If you google “thinspiration” you’ll be linked to dozens of pages… tumblr, Pinterest, blogs… it’s mind boggling. Whether or not people want to admit it, the research is pretty clear that diets will ultimately fail for 95% of people. You can read more about that on my favorite website, Dances With Fat. This post is a good one as far as diet “success” rates go, but just search Ragen’s blog. She is a brilliant researcher, and she has a wealth of information about this topic. For a lucky minuscule minority, long term weight loss is possible. For most of us, short term weight loss will happen as a result of any diet, “lifestyle change” or even just the simple adaptation of healthier habits, such as eating more whole foods, veggies, fruits, etc and exercising regularly. But even with the maintenance of those healthier habits, most of us will inevitably regain the weight. Since so many are only adapting those habits for the sake of weight loss, the habits are often abandoned once the weight loss part fails.

“Thinspiration” is a concept I once bought into heavily (no pun intended). There are many variants on this idea. Some people look to those who’ve lost a lot of weight, and who have posted before and after pictures. Others just find any thin person and use pics of that person as “thinspiration.” There are so many problems with this type of behavior that I almost don’t know where to begin.

First off, comparing your body to anyone else’s is a dangerous game. There are a lot of companies out there counting on you to do just this, in hopes you’ll buy their products to make your hair look like X movie star’s hair, or your lashes like X model’s lashes. This goes even more so for the diet industry. Just think of all the celebrity spokespeople we see… Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Hudson, Sarah Ferguson, Sara Rue (who famously lost weight after being a rare successful plus-sized actress, and went on to be a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig). Never mind the fine print that cautions us that “results are not typical,” most of us have had moments of desperately wanting to that success to be our own. But our bodies are incredibly unique, and our genetic makeup is so varied. There is a real truth that few want to recognize, which is that body type is largely genetic. Some people can fight that, at least for a while. Most of us can’t, not long term. There are also things we’ll never be able to change, without surgery. My grandmother, mother and I all have identical body types. Short limbs, long torsos, big boobs, flat butts, no real waists and we’re prone to weight gain in the stomach. Nothing I do could change these things, unless I wanted butt implants or boob reduction surgery. Even if I’d ever managed to lose every last pound, I was never going to have the tight, taut flat stomach because despite the many fitness videos that try to claim otherwise, most fitness experts agree that spot reduction is not possible. I was thin once upon a time. I was told repeatedly by everyone, including my own family, that I was fat… but I wasn’t. I did, however, still have a belly. It was never flat, even when I was 5’2″ and 98 pounds, as in this picture.

Just as you can’t know anything about a fat person simply by looking at her, other than the fact that they are fat, we don’t know anything about a thin person just by looking at her except that she’s thin. Society has badgered us into thinking this is the only acceptable way to look, and even worse has convinced us that this is the only way to be healthy, but it’s just not that cut and dry. We don’t know how or why that person is thin. Maybe she’s just naturally thin, and fortunate to be in the most desired societal weight range. Maybe she’s battling an eating disorder. Maybe she has a chronic illness. Maybe she’s engaging in unhealthy lifestyle choices to maintain weight loss. There are so many “maybes” it makes my head spin. The point is… idealizing a body type is just as dangerous as demonizing a body type. You simply cannot know, just by looking at anyone, that they are healthy. You just can’t.

The next problem with “thinspiration” comes when using before and after pics. You are buying into the idea that many people promote themselves when they are successful at doing anything. I call this the “if I can do it, anyone can!” myth. It’s such a nice idea, and it often comes from a place of good intentions, but it’s simply not true. If anyone could do anything someone else has done, we’d have a lot more gold medal Olympians. We’d have far more people who have climbed Everest. Hell, why stop at Everest… anyone who wanted to could climb all the Seven Summits. People like Lance Armstrong wouldn’t have to resort to doping to win because they could just ride on the “someone else did it, so can I!” train instead. Just because someone else has successfully lost weight does not mean you can, and it’s incredibly damaging to one’s self esteem to buy into that… because if you’re not in that 5% of long term weight loss success stories, you feel like a failure. I know. I was that person. I bought the hype. I actually think one of the worst things we do to children is tell them they can be whatever they want to be when they grow up. I understand the rationale behind it, but it’s just not true. We can’t ALL be astronauts. We can’t ALL be lawyers. We can’t ALL be thin.

If you want to try to lose weight, that is absolutely your right. You have every right to pursue whatever goals you want in life. Don’t let me, or anyone else stop you from trying, as long as it’s what YOU truly want. But please… do not look at other people as “thinspiration.” Your journey is your own. Your successes – which won’t necessarily come in the form of weight loss – are also your own. I’d never dream of telling someone not to try to lose weight. It’s your body and your choice to make, and ultimately if looking at pictures of thin people somehow inspires you, well then okay. Just as long as you’re realistic about it, so as not to set yourself up for disappointment and the sense of having failed. When you consider the facts, you’re a totally normal person, not a failure, if dieting doesn’t give you the long term weight loss you desire.

Whatever your goals are, whether it’s to lose weight, or to adopt the healthy habits that are part of Health At Every Size or to make no changes at all, I encourage you to look in the mirror tonight and say “I’m worthy of love from myself and those around me.” Every body is worthy… regardless of shape or size.

~JK

Stop Weighting…

I’ve been thinking about this post for a long time now. I’ve wanted to write it for a few weeks. Ironically, it hasn’t been written because I’ve been feeling too damn awful to focus on much of anything lately.

When I was 15, I had this idea about my 10 year high school reunion. Mind you, I was a freshman in high school at the time. I was going to be skinny. I was going to dye my hair blonde and let it grow really long. I was going to look so not like my 15 year-old self that people went “who is that!?!” I was going to enjoy the hell out of watching them all have their jaws drop.

Once I was thin, I’d find true love. I’d get married, have a couple of babies (without gaining any weight, of course). I’d be a famous Broadway actress. When I watch Glee, I can so relate to Rachel because that was my dream. Living in NYC, going to a performing arts college, and working towards getting on Broadway. Of course, I had to be thin, first.

“Once I lose the weight, I’ll do…” was my mantra. I spent so much time fantasizing about losing weight. I tried all the diets, though at 15, I was in the throes of my eating disorder. In fact, I’d spend over seven weeks hospitalized for it that year. The therapy at the eating disorder hospital was helpful, but only to a point… partly because I spent so much time envying the anorexic girls. Yep. You heard right… the most deadly mental illness to have, and I envied them. It’s funny in a very sad way, actually. Everyone looked at my weight and acted like, at 15, I was a ticking time bomb. But I know at least two of the girls I was in that hospital with died before they were 40, and it wasn’t because they were overweight. It was the anoerxia’s toll on their hearts. But I digress. Unfortunately, there were really no other girls like me in that program. Even the girls who were bulimic to start, and maybe 20 – 30 pounds “overweight (as defined by BMI charts, not me)” to start had tilted towards the “too thin to be healthy” side of things. The entire time I was there, there were two older women who battled bulimia and were what would be deemed “overweight,” but not one person was even close to my size. It made all my self-conscious issues a lot worse. There was also a heavy emphasis on me losing weight. My one friend, who was anorexic and at 5’6″ weighed 86 pounds, joked with me. We wished we could swap bodies for a while. I gained weight just looking at it, and she could lose weight easily. If only we could swap…

Fast forward a decade. I had found my true love, and GASP… I didn’t have to get skinny to do it. I wasn’t a Broadway actress, but I was living in NYC, on the Upper East Side, nonetheless. I was going to school, had chosen a major I loved. Life was good. We went to museums, we’d walk around the city. We did street fairs in the summer, and spent a long weekend in the Adirondacks each fall. We had a great dog, a beautiful apartment. Hell, we had a doorman. I grew up in poverty, the child of an addict… my life had changed so much, and it was so sweet and good. Except… I was still fat. And I was still trying desperately not to be fat. I tried all the trendy diets, and always wound up going back to Weight Watchers. I’d lose 25 pounds, and then it was like I hit a brick wall. I spent so much time thinking about what I didn’t have (a thin, socially acceptable body) I didn’t ever completely appreciate all that I did have.

At 26, I joined a gym. It took an enormous amount of guts for me to join a gym in my neighborhood where a size 8 was “fat.” But I did it. I went 3 – 4 times a week on average. Some weeks I went even more. It felt good. I didn’t know it yet, but I already had fibromyalgia. The symptoms were mild, and the main issue at that time was sleep disturbances. I associated it with the thyroid condition I discovered I had that year (and that, my friends, is why my weight loss journeys were so fraught). I followed WW’s plan. In the beginning, the gym was an awesome thing for me. I’d end it with a small drink from Jamba Juice… it was a ritual I enjoyed, even though it was hard. I couldn’t do anything but some weight training and the treadmill because everything else caused me pain. Which, of course, I blamed on being too fat. Turns out, that was the fibro. At any rate, the exercise boosted my mood, and in the first few weeks I loved it. Then I stopped losing weight. Again. The weighers and leaders at the WW meetings clearly didn’t believe me. I was cheating somehow, or not really working out. I tried all the “tricks.” I ate my extra workout earned Points. I didn’t eat them. I tried the Wendie Plan, where you eat under your Points some days and over on others (still balancing out to the actual total number for those days). I did everything right. Why wasn’t I losing weight? Didn’t my body know I had things to do??? Things I couldn’t do until I was thin???

I began to hate the gym. Oh, I still went. But instead of it being fun, instead of feeling exhilarated after the exercise, it became one more way I was a failure. Clearly, I wasn’t doing it “right.” I didn’t give up, though. I just hated every single minute of it. Even my post-workout Jamba Juice lost its sweetness. I became obsessive about the gym, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t losing weight. Yet again, I barely managed to hit 25 pounds lost (I remember this so well because the 25 pound mark earns a special “award” at WW). Then I hit the wall. I’d gain weight doing “everything right.” Or I just wouldn’t lose. It would go on for a few weeks, and then my resolve would crack and I’d wind up bingeing. Ironically, I often lost a tiny bit of weight the weeks I binged. But I hated myself. I felt weak, and like a failure. I remembered my 15 year-old self when I was in the hospital envying the “willpower” of my anorexic friends (that “willpower,” btw, was a topic the bulimic girls and I used to discuss frequently). I felt like I just lacked willpower. The WW weighers and leaders must be right. Clearly, I was doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, I kept putting off things I wanted to do because they’d be easier, or because I wouldn’t look stupid (aka fat) doing them once I lost weight. After about 6 or 7 months of regular gym visits, I hurt my knee. I blamed it, of course, on my weight. So did my doctor, who, by NYC standards was fairly fat friendly (and that’s why I saw her). The physical therapist, however, who was not American (and I suspect therefore less predisposed to the “it’s your fat” argument), told me the problem was that the muscle in my thigh was so tight, it actually pulled the knee cap, causing an injury. I didn’t know it yet, and wouldn’t for five more years, but I’d just had my first fibromyalgia related injury. To this day, there are times when my thigh muscles (particularly the left one) get so tight they pull the knee cap. This meant no more gym. I could only do the treadmill, and suddenly that was taken away from me, too.

Fast forward another decade. I’m now 37. I dieted repeatedly until 2007, when, after having moved away from NYC (and away from so much fat hating), something in me finally “broke,” and I just knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I spent 18 months working with an eating disorder therapist on Intuitive Eating. It made so much sense. I stopped getting weighed. My weight stabilized. I didn’t really lose much weight, but I stopped the endless cycle of “lose 25, gain 35.” I felt so much better emotionally. I discovered I hated half the foods I binged on. I also hated half the foods I’d forced myself to eat when on Weight Watchers.

I stopped waiting to do things, but… unfortunately, I stopped waiting too late. The fibromyalgia had taken a strong hold on my body, and so many of the dreams I had were crushed. Not by being too fat, but by being too sick. When we first moved to Colorado, I had a dream of climbing a 14er (that’s a mountain over 14,000 feet). It turns out my body doesn’t do well over an elevation of 11k, so that dream would likely never have been realized anyway (and elevation sickness is irrelevant of physical fitness, for those uninitiated with life at high elevations). But I had the dream, and I tried to “train” for it, and realized… it would be too damn painful. I couldn’t do it. It’s not a matter of “suck it up.” It would mean risking injuries.

Today I am in the worst shape of my life. It has little to do with being fat, and much to do with being sick. It is endlessly frustrating to want to do things, to try to do things and to have it hurt so much I shake, and wind up near (or actually in) tears. I think back to the 26 year-old me… to the 15 year-old me… and I want to shake myself. I want to scream…

STOP WEIGHTING.

My body was strong. It did amazing things, and I beat it up over the ONE thing it didn’t want to do… lose weight. I wasted years of health on a fantasy of being thin.

So here is my message to all of you. Regardless of whether or not you still want to actively pursue weight loss, something that is a very personal choice, STOP WAITING TO LIVE. If you have a dream, go for it. Start trying today. You might lose the weight and find you can’t do it for some other reason. You might not lose the weight, and miss your chances… like me. I could’ve done so many things I was waiting to do, and now I’ll never get to do them because of the fibromyalgia. Even if I were to somehow magically lose weight today, my pain is not related to my weight. It wouldn’t make much, if any, difference.

I lost my chance. Don’t make my mistake. Stop weighting. Stop thinking of the things your body can’t do, or the things you think it shouldn’t do (like wearing a bathing suit). Go out there and celebrate all the things your body CAN do!

There are other dreams I have now, ones unrelated to my weight. I just hope the fibromyalgia will let me realize those dreams. I won’t stop fighting, though. I know all too well what happens when you don’t fight to make a dream reality. So, I keep trying. Whether or not I ever get there is irrelevant, really. At least I’ve stopped waiting to try. Finally.

~Jessica