I’m going to post a couple links to sources for the next couple days to hopefully start a conversation in this space! These will fall in the area of Fat Studies and there’s some norms you should be aware of:
- “fat” is taken as a neutral descriptor, think of it as reclaiming the word.
- “obese” arbitrarily medicalises fatness and Others fat people
I’m a cis man and I have (had) body image issues (in the past)
https://humanparts.medium.com/my-journey-toward-radical-body-positivity-3412796df8ff
I’m queer and fat
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yeefpijtl4s7orv/Flaunting Fat – Sex with the Lights On.pdf?dl=0
I’m queer and not fat
https://www.bitchmedia.org/post/fat-liberation-is-totally-queer
The others don’t apply to me and/or I only have the energy/time to read one source
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/
:sankara-salute:
👉 Part 2 is up
👉 Part 3 is up
my scoliosis is a big factor in me wanting to maintain a lighter weight, so i feel you. my girlfriend tries to be nice and disagree with me when i say things like “i’ve put on some weight”, but the truth is that it literally physically hurts me when i cultivate too much mass
yeah, it’s one thing to say we need to quit being mean to fat people (we do) but it’s a bit frustrating sometimes having people tell me it’s okay that i’ve put on weight when for me it’s not okay. i literally could have made state records with my endurance, but running fucks me up, and even more when i’m out of shape
Agree completely. I had an epiphany during these Covid times about what I needed from my diet, which was simply to eat less and eat differently/vegan. Over the years, this has been framed to me as “restriction” or “disordered,” but that’s not true. I eat things that I want to eat, but less of them. I had to look at myself and be honest about the fact that I just don’t need to eat that many calories. I’m short and, at the moment, not overly active.
I also noticed how easy it was to be fed by people at work; pre-Covid, people would bring in snacks or there would be pizza or cake or cookies for whatever reason. Now it’s not happening due to social distancing, and I feel a lot better without having to think about it at all. I don’t have to resist the offers of food, and I don’t have to argue with myself. I just go home and have the stuff I really want. Kind of dreading the return to form, to be honest.
There’s a piece I can link about how many FA people try to lose weight and keep it a secret because they feel guilty about it. I would recommend you look into body neutrality, which is talked about elsewhere in this post https://hexbear.net/post/83994/comment/910868
I think that Huffington Post article has some good points about how obesity should be addressed on a personal level and how the American medical system will never be able to actually address this issue. But I don’t think they approach the weight/health problem very well. They mention that weight isn’t inherently tied to health because 1/3 to 3/4 of obese patients may show no signs of high cholesterol or insulin resistance. However, obesity is like smoking in that you could take a cross section of smokers and find that a large portion of them are healthy. The real issue is that being obese or smoking are drastically increasing the odds of negative medical outcomes in the future.
I’ll post some sources about BMI tomorrow, however I direct you to this study which shows that it’s not as simple as fat = bad https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/health/study-suggests-lower-death-risk-for-the-overweight.html
Oh I agree that you can’t say fat=bad I was referring more to higher levels of obesity, which as that NYtimes article says is a large risk. The issue with that NYtimes article though is that the study isn’t really drawing a meaningful conclusion. Saying mortality rate is the end all be all is very misleading. I’m hoping that’s just an issue with the pop science reporting of the times and not the actual study, because the link to the actual study is dead.
But it IS a medical issue for many people. Of course people can chose what they want to do with their bodies and disparaging them doesn’t work. However many people are trying to “overcorrect” by pretending that abnormal weight is actually good for you or that nothing you ever try will help you deal with it and I really don’t think it is helpful at all. My cousin has struggled with obesity for a long time, at some point he had to be operated because it was damaging his body. He is doing better than back then now but it’s really not that great, and his learning difficulties plus a mostly unhelpful family in that regard are making it harder. I don’t think this kind of approach is necessarily helpful.
I’ve been fat basically all my life.
Around kindergarten or so my parents realized that it wasn’t baby fat any more and that maybe, just maybe me opening the pantry lock on multiple occasions and using a chair to reach the peanut butter jar and shove as much of it into my mouth without a drink until I got caught might be a warning sign. But rather than investigate for any nutrient deficiencies or mental issues their autistic child was going through they decided to start putting me on trend diets. I’m assuming they felt a pang of guilt making a small child go on adult diets, so they would also go on the same diets. Instead of motivating me it would just make me feel worthless whenever the diets worked on them but not me. I remember a few months where they would have me pack a can of slimfast for lunch and then by the time I got home I’d be starving and scarf down whatever was in the pantry. The diets would change about every year or so, and so I ended up having weight fluctuations while my overall weight increased. I remember my mom crying one day about my weight being 150 pounds before I even reached middle school and then yelling “YOU WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT, DON’T YOU?” and telling her that her and dad were the ones who wanted me to lose weight. They’d guilt me about being fat every chance they got. The only thing that worked in my childhood wasn’t diets but being forced to go to a gym and lift weights for half a year. Muscle really does help burn weight. But then I hit high school and because grades always come first we all forgot about the gym and the weight bounced back. Eventually I was able to drive my own car in high school and that’s when my weight fucking skyrocketed.
So I’m an adult now and I’ve realized that I have both a physical and mental need to over eat. I’ve used food as a coping mechanism since I was a toddler, and that only increased as I continued to push down my autistic self and replace it with someone that can pass as just a little odd. I know that I need therapy, but I also know that I need to keep my finances in check and that therapy might end up being as expensive as a second car even with health insurance because I live in the fucking U.S.A. and with covid I can’t even work overtime to put extra money into savings. I feel like I’m so close to getting professional help and yet part of me always pulls my arm back and says “Next year might be even worse financially, yet you already know what it’s like to be fat. You’re still young, you can gamble on your health a little longer. Bad finances could fuck over your credit score and ability to rent for years to come.” Like FUCK, why do I have to pick???
Guess I’ll just continue to cope until I can afford professional help.
:amerikkka: :amerikkka: :amerikkka:
:heart-sickle: I’m sorry the conditions of this absolute hellscape of a country are such that you aren’t able to get care for things you’ve basically been struggling with for your entire life. Parenting is incredibly difficult and it’s uniquely frustrating to get to adulthood and realize that some of the things your parents did out of a desire to help improve your life actually end up having the opposite effect. Hopefully you’ll end up being able to get care soon but in the meantime this community is more than willing to provide as much help/care/advice/support as possible.
I know this is the opposite of a weight loss thread, but it sounds like you’re interested in getting fit.
I had a really hard time staying fit since the gyms closed, and I don’t have a weight kit at home so I’ve been using a pull up bar (probably won’t work for you) push ups, and a bucket that I can put sand in to to adjust its weight.
I used to be overweight but managed to ditch it, so if you want to talk pm me or something.
