Exercise again
I was talking to my mum on the phone earlier about taking up running. I would love to be able to run. I’m thinking of saving up and buying the ‘spensive shoes and the ‘spensive bra so that I can give it a go. But I know I’m unfit and heavy, so I’ll have to build up really, really slowly or my legs will be fucked.
I told her a friend of mine had suggested running for thirty seconds, walking for a minute, running for thirty seconds and so on. She hooted with laughter. As if! You’d feel like such a fool! Everyone would look! I mean we shouldn’t be as self-conscious as we are, but there are limits!
No, Mum. There aren’t. And I guess I’m not as self-conscious as you are, so don’t lump me into that “we”.
I read about this at The Rotund
If the allegations are true, just about the last thing this woman heard before she died was a joke about her weight.
She wasn’t even all that much fatter than me, just a stone and a bit. Two hours deliberating how to move her? Move her like you’d move anyone! 17.5 stone is not an impossible weight, for Chrissakes. My partner can get my feet off the ground on his own, though he’d put his back out if he tried to carry me any distance. I’ve been lifted over railings by burly security guys. An ambulance crew could get me in a freaking wheelchair or onto a gurney without breaking a sweat.
I feel sick.
Plastic
Okay, this whole article is horrifying, and almost exclusively in ways that don’t have any impact at all on obesity. You should read it anyway. But keep reading till you’re just over halfway down.
“As if the potential for cancer and mutation weren’t enough, Dr. vom Saal states in one of his studies that “prenatal exposure to very low doses of BPA increases the rate of postnatal growth in mice and rats.” In other words, BPA made rodents fat. Their insulin output surged wildly and then crashed into a state of resistance—the virtual definition of diabetes. They produced bigger fat cells, and more of them. A recent scientific paper Dr. vom Saal coauthored contains this chilling sentence: “These findings suggest that developmental exposure to BPA is contributing to the obesity epidemic that has occurred during the last two decades in the developed world, associated with the dramatic increase in the amount of plastic being produced each year.” Given this, it is perhaps not entirely coincidental that America’s staggering rise in diabetes—a 735 percent increase since 1935—follows the same arc.”
Relevant? Helpful? Can we really put the obesity ‘epidemic’ down to anything more than more junk food and less movement? I’m not sure. I mean, you could argue that as we buy and eat more processed crap, we make and throw away more plastic. Whaddya think?
I tend to shy away from speculation on the various causes of obesity, because the cause of my obesity shouldn’t matter to anyone but me and perhaps my doctor. But when things like this turn up, well, it does make me stop and think. It’s for the same reason that I sit up and pay attention to all these figures about how many dieters regain everything they lost plus extra. What if I never lose this weight?
I fully intend to become much healthier than I am now. Part of that will involve becoming much more physically active. Another part will involve eating much better, providing my body with everything it needs and taking away some of the things that are actively bad for it. As a side effect of my becoming healthier, I may well become thinner. But I might not, or I might not keep the weight off. I’m told that once my body has been this fat, it will keep trying to stay this fat in case of famines and whatnot. And I am never going to live on a particularly low-calorie diet. I love pies too much and I’m not willing to cut my pie intake down that far. Or hell, I might just be fat because of plastic and not pies at all. What if I never, ever fit back into the size 12 Levis that are still in my parents’ attic somewhere?
I’ll need more body acceptance than I’ve mustered so far, that’s for sure. How easy it is to think you’re loving your body, when you’re really figuring that it’ll just about do for now. Size 20 forever. Weird thought.
(I realise this went off on quite a tangent. Oop.)
Gym cojones*
If you’re fat too, you probably know what it’s like to worry about going to the gym/pool/for a run because of what people might think of your body. Hell, if you’re average or underweight you probably still know what it’s like. So every once in a while I take to whining about this fear, and my friends flock round to reassure me.
What they tell me most often is, “If anything, people will be thinking good things! Because you’re making the effort to get in shape!”
I never snarl, because I don’t want to be an ungrateful bitch when my friends are trying to be helpful (note well, if any of you are reading, I still love you). But the idea of people mentally patting me on my fat back just for going to the gym is ten times worse than the idea of some idiotic gym bunny sneering at me. Wouldn’t you rather be hated than patronised?
Overt fat hatred I can ignore on a day to day basis, because I know it’s bullshit. What I cannot bear is for people to chip away my pride and power with kindness and false respect. Sure, they respect me for trying to get in shape. Hooray for me, I’ve finally made the right decision, I’m on the true path now, I’m getting fitter and burning fat. Because of course I couldn’t have been happy with my fat. I couldn’t have been deciding to spend that gym membership money on delicious food instead. I couldn’t have decided I didn’t give a damn about muscle tone. I couldn’t actually be fit already and have muscles of frigging steel under this squidgy layer. Whoever heard of such things?
Respect me because I am a human being with the ability to make my own damn decisions, including the decision to be fat. You do not know me or my motivations. Don’t you dare make assumptions about my exercise habits and strength of will. And, y’know, perhaps I have been wanting to get fitter for a while and have only just scraped together the motivation to begin. It’s a possibility, among many. But I sure as hell don’t want you to be proud of me, unspeakably patronising stranger on the next treadmill along. If I feel I’ve achieved something, I’ll share it with my friends and family, who know me, what I want and what I find difficult. Everyone else can mind their own goddamn business.
*I am not expecting anyone else to find this title funny.
Mah belleh is not a moral issue
I’m relatively new to this whole body acceptance thing. I’ve been reading around, nodding along, getting excited that all these people think and talk about what I’ve been slowly figuring out over the last few years. (So now I’m starting a body acceptance blog of my very own. Hi.)
Much of what I’ve read is stuff I’ve already thought about, just never articulated. But there’s one realisation that has completely blown my mind.
Fat is not a moral issue. What’s more, health is not a moral issue.
I have heard many people argue that fat is not necessarily an indicator of poor health, and that lots of people cannot help being fat. Both true, and both important for us to recognise. It would be great if, for example, more GPs could see past a patient’s weight and explore other possible causes of health problems before making a final diagnosis. And none of us want people to instantly assume that we are lazy or have no self-control. But by placing so much emphasis on these arguments, the body acceptance movement is shooting itself in the foot. We do not have to accept their premises. They say “fat is fundamentally bad”. Why on earth are we saying “fat is fundamentally bad UNLESS you are healthy/cannot help being fat/insert caveat here”? Fat is not bad, or good. It is neutral. Fat just is.
I spent a while there feeling dreadful about myself because of these arguments. Because deep down I know that I am not fat because of genetics or a whacked-out metabolism, and that for me this excess weight is a health problem. I didn’t have an excuse. I wasn’t a Worthy Fat Person. I couldn’t justify my fat. Actually, I now recognise that I have had eating disorders plural since I was a teenager, but that probably doesn’t count as a good excuse anyway – and besides, I would still be chubby even if I hadn’t been starving, purging and (mostly) bingeing all these years. I adore food. It is my favourite sensual pleasure. Better than sex (though that’s a pretty close second). I love to cook, to create something wonderful with the palette of flavours at my disposal. And I loathe many forms of physical exercise. Nope, I was never going to be trim, just as I’m never going to be an organised neat freak. It’s just not me.
What I failed to realise for so long is that I don’t have to justify my fat to the world, any more than I have to justify the fact that I hang all my clothes neatly on the floor or can never, ever find my student ID on the morning of an exam. Sure, I’d be a little better off if I were slimmer. I’d have more choice of clothes shops, so my style would be closer to what I really want it to be. I’d be able to do more physically, running without giving my knees and ankles more impact than they can handle, that sort of thing. I’d be less at risk of various long-term health problems. But, pray tell, what the bloody buggering hell does that have to do with anyone else?
I was arguing with someone once, a long time ago, who snidely told me that “most of us don’t want to be a 16 stone person”. What I failed to articulate at the time is that it doesn’t matter a good goddamn what anyone else wants, because I am not them. My fat doesn’t make you fat. It’s not catching. And I don’t have any kind of obligation to be like you, or to be someone you would like to fuck, or to be aesthetically pleasing to you. So until I ask for your opinion on my size, your opinion on my size is supremely unimportant.
