My Body, My Business

My computer at work has MSN.com as the homepage when I sign onto the internet.  I brought my internet up today and as I was about to type the address of the page I wanted to go to at the top, a headline further down caught my eye.  I clicked on it, and got this:

LeAnn Rimes was totally proud offended the other night at dinner in Chicago when another diner stopped by her table to suggest she put some food in her mouth. "How dare someone come to me at a table w/ the boys and tell me I need to eat something," LeAnn tweeted. "What is wrong with people!? As I'm stuffing my face … have another drink and maybe take a class in manners!

Cheers!" Weirdly, no bikini photos accompanied LeAnn's "everyone-thinks-I'm-too-skinny" story du jour. (DailyMail)

 

 

I know that the majority of my posts in this blog are about how obese people are treated by the world in general, but this is really the opposite side of the same coin.  We, as a people, need to STOP judging others on their body shape / size, whether we think that they are too large or too small.  No one has the right to walk up to someone else and pass judgement on how they look or what they eat.  This ranks up there with the rudeness of taking a package of snack cakes out of a large person's shopping cart while telling them that they don't need that kind of food.

 

Here's the deal, folks:

 

My body is my business, and nobody else's.

 

That's right.  Whether I'm morbidly obese, or super-skinny, the decisions that I make regarding my body and what goes into it are not fodder for public consumption. 

 

I will admit that if my husband were to say, "I'm worried about your health.  How can we work together to be healthier?" I would probably pay attention to that.  (Though it would be amusing in some ways as he has high blood pressure and cholesterol, and mine both fall into the category of "The nurse checks a second time every time because those numbers CAN'T be right for someone so fat!  They are too normal!")    But to have a total stranger decide without knowing me or my life that they know what is best for me is offensive.

 

I do have my health problems, though, including diabetes and arthritis.  And I am continually working to find ways to feel better physically. That said, if someone were to come up to me in a restaurant in front of my non-existent children and tell me that what I was eating was wrong, I would probably not set the best example for my children in terms of public behaviour with my response.  My reply would start with, "It really is none of your business." and go downhill from there.

 

Look, folks, let's try something, shall we?  How about we make an effort to stop judging people by their size.  Fat folks, stop thinking, "Eat a pork chop." when you see someone who is uber-slender.  You don't know why they are that way.  Maybe they have a super-fast metabolism.  Maybe they just finished treatment for cancer and haven't been able to keep food down.  Maybe they just don't eat a lot and are comfortable with that.  It really isn't your concern if they're healthy and happy with how their life is going.

 

Skinny folks, stop thinking, "Put down the potato chips and take a walk." when you see someone who is fat.  You also do not know what their circumstances are.  Maybe they have a very slow metabolism.  Maybe they have arthritis or an injury that keeps them from being able to move as much as they might like.  Maybe they're on a medication that causes weight gain.  Maybe they just really like good food (or even bad food!).  Again, it really isn't your concern if they are healthy and happy with how their life is going.

 

"But Lys, how can they possibly be healthy if they are...(fill in the blank here)??"

 

Repeat after me:

 

I can't tell if someone is healthy just by looking at their body size.

 

That's right, folks!  YOU DON'T KNOW!  Fat does not equal unhealthy.  Skinny does not equal healthy.  There are a LOT of variables that go into determining if someone is healthy or not.  There are fat people who have better health indicators than most slender folks, and there are slender folks who have better indicators than other slender folks.  And you know what?  There are even really, really skinny folks who have better indicators than the "healthy-looking" slender folks.

 

My body is my business.  Your body is your business.  How about we just cut each other some slack and realize that the decisions we each make regarding our own bodies are just that...our own decisions.  There really are more important things to be worrying about in the world than whether the person at the next table is eating what you think they should eat, such as teaching our children enough courtesy that they don't walk up to a stranger in a restaurant and start telling them what they should be eating.  So stop worrying about it and focus on your own meal.  You'll enjoy it more, believe me, and you won't have to hear me tell you exactly what I think of your lack of manners.  It will be better all around.

 

 

Fat Fashion (?)

I am a person who appreciates comfortable clothes.  I'm not a haute couture kind of gal, though I enjoy watching the occasional fashion show just to see what they're trying to convince women to wear as the latest thing.  The reality is, though, that personally I'm happier in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt than just about anything else.  But when the occasion requires that I dress more fashionably than that, I try to make the effort to do so.

Unfortunately, it is pretty hard to get clothes in my size that aren't either just skinny people's clothes cut out of a lot more cloth or polyester grandma pants and muumuus.  To add to the problem, I am what is known as "a pear", which means that my upper body is about 2 sizes smaller than my lower body.  Let me tell you THAT makes it interesting when trying to buy a dress!  When the shoulders fit, it won't even go down over my hips and when the hips fit, it is practically falling off my shoulders.  Since I am not a pop culture persona (yet...but if enough people eventually follow this blog, who knows what could happen! *grin*), I really don't want to be giving the world the excitement of a wardrobe malfunction.  Thus I do a lot of separates, so that I can buy things in the appropriate sizes.

I am about to embark upon a clothes purchasing bout as I have pants that are so old that the elastic isn't stretchy any more, shirts that have holes worn through them, and have managed to get some kind of stain on nearly every item that I own.  Most of these come with interesting stories, my favorite being the combination of joint compound and three different colors of paint that have permanently discolored a formerly white shirt because I was up to my elbows in the mixture making "stones" for a friend's haunted house.  But stories or not, I need to have clothing that is presentable and able to be worn in public without me wanting to start explaining WHY the stains on my shirt are so cool.

This means, of course, that I am about to get both depressed and angry as I search for something that will fit me, before resorting to purchasing some things from the Roamans and Lane Bryant catalogs, like I always do.  Before I do so, however, I would like to say a few things to the so-called designers who come up with Fat Superhero clothing:

• Not all Fat Superheroes are big breasted.  I know that it is a thing, that comic books always show female superheroes with size ZZ boobies perkily peeking out of some form of no-real-support bustier thingamajig, but the reality is that, like most women, we come in assorted shapes and sizes.  There ARE fat Superheroes who wear A and B cups.  It would be nice if we could find bras too.
• It would also be nice if we could find shirts that didn't assume that if our hips are big, then our breasts are big too.  Personally, I welcomed the whole 'babydoll shirt' style, because it meant that I could FINALLY get tops that fit my breasts AND my hips!
• Taking a design created for a smaller size and simply adding material does not guarantee a flattering garment.  Yeah, it works for some, but not all.  The designer who figures out that they can actually design clothes specifically for Fat Superheroes is going to become rich.  We want flattering clothes too, and when someone finally starts marketing clothing that fits our proportions and isn't just small clothes made big, we will take ourselves and our many, many dollars to them, and we will be pretty darned loyal to them as long as they continue to put out quality product.  Remember, fashion world, there are more of us than there are of the supermodel sizes!
• I would like to find the person who decided that Fat Superheroes want every top to have short sleeves or to be sleeveless and beat them into a state of physical insensibility that matches their apparent state of mental insensibility.  Sure, I wear tank tops and t-shirts, but I really prefer a 3/4 length sleeve because otherwise my water wings catch the wind every time that it blows and I end up doing a Mary Poppins impression until the wind gives out and I land on some unsuspecting stranger's lawn with a thump!  So please, give us some options with sleeves, too?  Especially on formalwear!  There are some beautiful dresses out there, but I really find it difficult to clutch a shawl around my shoulders for the entirety of my friend's wedding buffet.  The little tassels tend to dunk themselves into the meatballs and sauce on a regular basis.
• Lastly, please remember when you make your jeans, that just because I'm Fat, that doesn't mean I don't have a waist.  I can't tell you the number of pairs of jeans I've owned where the hips fit, and then an entire bolt of material had to be gathered around my waist with my belt, or I had to take scissors, needle, and thread to them to put darts in so that my pants actually stayed up.  I'm not one of those gangsta wannabes who runs around with my underwear showing on purpose (though I have some darned cute undies, thank you very much!).  Would it be too much to ask that my jeans have a waist that fits and hips that are roomy enough for me to sit without wincing?

So, those of you clothing manufacturers who deign to carry larger sizes, do yourselves a favor and start asking your customers what they really want out of their clothes.  After you do that, GIVE them what they're asking for.  I suspect that you will be pleasantly surprised at the outcome.

Oh, and by the way, those of you who make clothing for our taller sisters, you may want to do the same thing.  I suspect that a lot of the things that bother my fellow fatties and myself also bother the tall gals.

Lastly,  stop charging me ten times the price for my clothes.  I know that there's extra material, but really, the amount of material you're using in my clothing does NOT justify the price difference between what I'm buying and what someone who wears a size 10 is buying.  And the price difference certainly isn't due to extra design and development costs!  Just give me quality clothes that fit me well at a reasonable price, and I'll be yours forever.

As for right now, I think I'm just going to get two new pair of jeans, and a polo in every color that Roamans offers them in.  Oh, and possibly that cute little lingerie set.  My hubby deserves a little treat.  *grin*

Further Thoughts

The weather in Dallas, Texas has been extreme over the past month to say the least.  We are currently on our 38th straight day of 100+ degrees.  For those with a curiousity about this sort of thing, the record currently stands at 42 days.  I'm betting that we blow the record out of the water.

"But Lys...?"  I hear you say, "What does that have to do with being a Fat Superhero?"

Well, let me tell you, normally it wouldn't but the past four weekends have seen me out in this heat from 7 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the earliest and until 6 p.m. at the latest working on location for a short film that a number of my friends are making.  (Gratuitous plug:  check out our website at http://www.towerofturtles.org and our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Lightbringer-Saga/208325359188759 ) 

"Lys?  I'm still confused."

I know, trust me, there is a connection between all of these threads. 

As we have been outside, running around in the woods, hiking up and down concrete staircases, and climbing hills to get the perfect shot, I realized that while I am making great progress in loving myself for who I am, I am not happy with the state of my health right now.  And THAT is really what "Health at Every Size" is about.  Are you happy with your health, no matter what size you are?

I know that a lot of people's first impressions of HaES seems to assume that the people who follow that line of thought are just fatties trying to justify being fat so that they can continue to sit on the couch, eat Cheetos, and not have to move.  That's not right, though.  Health at Every Size is about health (thus it being the first word in the title!).  Everyone in the world has the right to the best health possible for them.  It doesn't matter what they LOOK like, what matters is how they FEEL.  And that is the main difference for me when it comes to HaES versus some aspects of the Fat Acceptance movement. 

I don't care if I'm fat, I don't care if I'm slender, what I care about is how do I feel?  Can run around the woods, hike up and down concrete staircases, and climb hills and do so without those activities sucking the joy of whatever it is that I'm running / hiking / climbing for.  Unfortunately, for me, the last month has proven that I cannot do those things without feeling horrible.  I don't like the pains in my joints, the huffing and puffing, and always being the last person to get anywhere because my body can't handle the strain. 

"So, Lys, how do you take care of that without falling into the dieting traps laid out by Big Business and The Weight Loss Industry?"

That, my friends, is a good question! 

The key is movement.  If you want to be able to move well, you have to start moving.  Ironic, isn't it?  My eating habits are actually pretty healthy.  I know that there will be people who think I'm lying when I say that, who think that there is no way that I could be so fat if I ate as well as I claim to eat, but that's their problem, not mine.  It comforts them to think that I have to be eating well in public and then scarfing down five gallons of ice cream in the dark living room after my husband has gone to bed.  It comforts them because they don't do that, so that means they'll never get fat.  It isn't about ME, it is about them and their fears, so I don't listen to them.

But as I was saying, my eating habits are pretty healthy, really.  We do a lot of vegetables and fruit, whole grains, and lean proteins.  We've even cut back portion sizes on meats, though my husband tends to gripe about that a bit.  I'm not saying that there isn't room in our menu for ice cream or chocolate, but they take the form of small bites rather than huge bowls now.

That leaves movement.  That is my avenue for getting my joints to stop hating me, for getting my lung capacity back up to a decent level, and for being able to enjoy my time with my friends rather than making apologies for being so slow.

I'm honestly still a little stymied about this, really.  It is hard to find movement that I enjoy and will do on a consistent basis.  I do enjoy yoga, so I will be starting to use my yoga DVD again, but I'm not sure what else to do.  So, now I begin a new quest:  to find something I like to do and will do on a regular basis.  I expect that there will be some working with our practice swords, and some form of dancing.  If nothing else, it will be fun to explore the options!

So, my dear VURD!  Talk to me!  What kind of movement do you enjoy the most and why?  It doesn't have to be something officially classed as "exercise", like the treadmill or elliptical (though if it is, that's fine too!).  Share with me, and everyone else.  What gets your heart pumping and puts a smile on your face?  I really do want to know!

What Health at Every Size means to me

After my previous posts I had someone say to me something along the lines of, "My brain tells me that a smaller size is part of being healthier."  Now before anyone takes umbrage, she didn't mean it in a negative way or a mean way.  That's not how this particular lady works.  I read it as her puzzling things out in her mind regarding the things that I've been talking about.

That's the thing, really.  We have all been told for so long that fat is unfit, that it has become reflex for us to think of a smaller size equalling a fitter body.  But it doesn't necessarily happen that the two go hand in hand with each other.  Even people who have experienced being fit and being larger than society approves of still can have the mindset because the Establishment has told them for so long that they STILL weren't fit due to their size that even though they have empirical evidence to the contrary, they doubt themselves.  Isn't that saying something about our world, that people who have LIVED an experience can doubt it because they have been told the opposite for so long?

Now, I'm not saying that if you lose weight that's a bad thing.  Your body will know what the right weight for you is, and that right weight may even change from time to time depending on circumstances.  The important thing isn't what size you are, it is that you feel good at that size.  Mentally you should feel at the top of your game, emotionally you should love yourself, and physically you should feel like you can do anything that you want to do.  If you want to play sports, then you are healthy when you can do so and enjoy it.  If you want to dance, then you are healthy when you can get out there and cut a rug while having fun doing so!  If you want to sing, you are healthy when you can do so with the breath support you need to hit the proper notes and hold them as long as you should.  THESE are valid indicators of health, not some number on a scale or a measuring tape!

Unfortunately, that is not what The Establishment wants us to know.  The Establishment (also known as the Diet Industry) wants us to hate ourselves.  I know, there are some of you saying, "Oh jeez, there goes Melodramatic Lys again." but that's not it at all.  Think about it, it is very logical.  If we love ourselves as we are, if we view potential changes to our bodies as the natural outcome of listening to those self-same bodies and doing what comes right and naturally to us, then what reason would there be for the existence of The Establishment?  None whatsoever, and they know it.  That is why they promote things like "The War on Obesity" and self-hatred.  They do so in order to propogate their own existence, and to make a profit from all of those people who have learned to hate themselves via the messages of fat-hate that bombard us every day.

For instance, did you know that that the World Health Organization pushed for the BMI standards for "normal" weight to be lowered to 25?  Did you also know that this was based on the work of the International Obesity Task Force?  Lastly, do you know who funded the IOTF?  Surprise, surprise, it was funded by the makers of Xenical and Meridia, two of the most popular weight loss drugs.

Let that sink in for a moment.  The health policy of the United States of America regarding size and weight was decided by the makers of weight loss drugs.  What does this tell you?  That is up to you to decide.  I can only let you know what it tells me, which is that our health is just another chip in the money game, a tool in the corporate game of power, and that true health doesn't matter at all if it doesn't bring profit to someone's pocket.

So, here we are, with our national health policies being determined by the people who have the most to make from us hating ourselves, and with our body chemistry being screwed up by the latest weight loss fads and fitness trends.  Oh, and we're still fat because most people who lose large amounts of weight do NOT keep it off (see resources listed below).

Thus we come to what Health at Every Size means to me.  It is really quite simple, to me it means that no matter what we look like, no matter how much we weigh, we can be healthy.  If we stop running so hard that we don't hear ourselves, we can re-locate that part of ourselves that wants to be fit.  We can have that dish of ice cream as long as we pay attention to it and truly enjoy it, and as long as we stop eating it when we realize that it doesn't taste as good as it did when we started.  Over time, as we listen and eat what we're really wanting, we'll find ourselves wanting a strawberry rather than a piece of strawberry candy.  Don't get me wrong, I don't see my desire for chocolate disappearing into the mists never to return a la Frodo and Gandalf, but I DO see it becoming more manageable even as I learn how to do this H@ES thing.  I am already finding myself having one or two squares of chocolate, then re-wrapping the bar and putting it away as opposed to eating half a big bag of M&M's.

Start listening, REALLY listening to what your body wants.  It will make a difference.  Start being healthy in mind and heart by loving yourself as you are.  Start eating when you're hungry and stopping when you don't physically want any more.  Start moving when your body says to move, and start getting enough rest that it is capable of wanting to move.

You'll feel better.  You'll be healthy, no matter what size you are.  And, The Establishment forbid, you'll be happier.

Resources:

Miller, W.C., How effective are traditional dietary and exercise interventions for weight loss? 

Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 1999.  31 (8): p. 1129-1134.

Mann, T., et al., Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer.  American Psychologist, 2007.  62(3): p. 220-33.

Taking Back The Word "Fat"

The title of my blog is "Confessions of a Fat Superhero".  I chose this name deliberately because I believe that everyone is a superhero in their own way and because I have decided to take back the word "fat".

For a long time "fat" was simply a descriptive word. In reference to human beings it simply meant that a person had more flesh on their bodies than the average.  It was not a good thing, nor a bad thing, it just was a way of describing someone much the same way that you would say "short" or "tall", "blonde" or "brunette".  There were even cultures where being fat was a good thing as it denoted wealth and implied that the person who was fat was rich enough in resources to be able to do more than just survive on basic sustenance.  It was considered a good thing.

In modern America, however, the word fat carries so many negative implications with it that using it is considered to be almost taboo unless you are deliberately trying to insult someone.  Young children who are too innocent to have absorbed the idea that being fat is bad often will blurt out things like, "Mommy, why is that lady so fat?" only to be shushed and told by their mortified parents that you aren't supposed to say things like that.

Why not?

I AM fat.  Children are curious, and if they want to know how I got this way, then I have no problem stopping and talking to them.  I hope that if I do so, they will have the seed of understanding planted and will not develop the body-shaming attitude that is so prevalent in our society.  I hope that a child understands whey I say, "When people eat food, their bodies turn it into energy.  Sometimes we eat more than our body needs, and it gets turned into fat until we need it and then it gets turned back into energy.  Some people's bodies use energy much better than others, like how your family's truck uses more gas to do the same things than your family's car.  So two people can eat the same amount of food and one person's body will use the energy so well that they get fat because a lot of it gets stored, and the other person will be skinny because their body uses it all up and doesn't store any of it.".

I hope that the same child  holds that idea in the back of their head so that when they hear people tell someone who is fat that they just need to get off their butts and exercise, they know that isn't always the case.

It is really ironic that in a time and place where we claim to be proud of diversity in all of its forms, fat is a four-letter word.  It carries an implication of sloth, laziness, and gluttony.  People look at someone who is fat and immediately make a number of assumptions based on their body size, and very rarely are those assumptions positive ones.  The first thing that leaps to mind tends to be that the fat person is lazy and that the fat itself is an outward indicator of an internal personality flaw.  The chain of logic then leads to the conclusion that this personality flaw is something to not only be ashamed of, but something that needs to be fixed.  Finally, in a brilliant flare of circular reasoning, the line of thought ends with the idea that the reason the horrible personality flaw has not been fixed is that the fat person is too lazy to do so.

Wow.  Isn't that amazing?  And this flashes through people's minds so quickly that most probably don't even realize that they are thinking it.

Today, however, I hereby take back the word FAT for myself.  I refuse to feel ashamed of it any more.  I refuse to feel ashamed of MYSELF any more.  Yes, I am fat.  No, I am not any more flawed than anyone else in this world.  Yes, I love good food.  Yes, I indulge in it.  But I refuse to apologize for that.  We should indulge in good food, and when we are full we should stop.  We should listen to our body and move when it feels like moving, rest when it feels like resting, and eat when it feels like eating.

I refuse to bow to the people who eye my grocery cart and give me a disapproving look when they see the pint of top quality ice cream in there.  It is not my problem that they are so determined to support their assumption of my flaws that they look past the ten different kinds of fresh vegetables and five different fresh fruits that the pint is sitting on just so that they can judge me for indulging in that item.  I will try not to judge them for having filled most of their cart from the processed foods aisles and the fact that the only vegetable that is present in their take for the day is a bag of frozen french fries.

I refuse to give any ground to the people who watch me walk on a treadmill or lift weights at the gym, swing a sword at faire, or do any number of other physical activities and who do so with disgust in their eyes.  People want fat folks to lose the weight, but would prefer that it happen out of sight of the pretty people, please.  Well, suck it up, cupcake, because I'm not going anywhere.  I am going to do what I enjoy and every time I do it I will get a little better at it and be able to do it longer before I have to stop and rest.  If that happens to shave some inches off my body, I won't object but if it doesn't that is fine too.  My body will know what it needs, and if it decides that it wants to be smaller then it will.

Fat people need to be done with allowing a multi-billion dollar industry control how they see themselves.  Because if we don't stop letting the weight-loss industry turn fat into a dirty word for us, then we will never be able to look at ourselves in the mirror with anything but loathing and self-hatred.  Those emotions may support change for a time, but in the end negativity only begets more negativity.  You have to love yourself as you are.  Changing your looks may change how other people perceive you, but will never truly change how you perceive yourself, and you will spend your life living in fear that you will get fat once more.  Living in fear is as bad as living in self-hate. 

So, my fellow fatties, take back the word.  Stop letting it be used as a whip against you, to keep you shuffling off to buy the next weight-loss fad in the hopes that THIS one will be the fix that fixes everything that is wrong in your life.  Those so-called fixes are only messing up your body's ability to speak to you, and your ability to listen to it and truly know what it is telling you.  As one of you, I can tell you the most important thing that your body is saying, and that thing is, "Love thyself."

Find the ability to truly love yourself, and the rest will happen.  You will stop abusing the body that takes such good care of you, and you can re-introduce yourself to it and begin a whole new relationship with it.  Maybe you'll lose weight, and maybe you won't, but in the end if you feel healthier and happier, if you can do the things that you love and continue to enjoy them without feeling apologetic for your own existence, THAT is the true success.  Be fat, be skinny, be tall, be short, be blonde, be brunette, be you.  Be happy.  Be victorious and we'll be victorious together.

My Own Worst Enemy

I suppose that I should start by introducing myself. My name is Lys, and I'm fat. I know that most people don't introduce themselves that way, but if we were meeting face to face you would already know that I'm fat. Since this is an online venue, the only way you would know that I'm fat is either by me saying so, or if I have a particularly fat photo up on my account.

So there we go. I'm fat. I've been fat for most of my life, really. I can't remember a time when I wasn't fat. My first diet started when I was about eight or ten years old. How many of you remember the Grapefruit Diet? It was a real taste-bud tingler, let me tell you! It consisted of half of an unsweetened grapefruit and a piece of dry whole wheat toast for breakfast, half of a can of plain tuna with some cottage cheese and a salad and melba toast for lunch, then a small portion of protein and a salad for dinner. Oh, and the salads were eaten either plain or with nonfat dressing (which was NASTY back then, by the way).

I know! How could I NOT still be eating that every day? It's so DELICIOUS!

All right, all right, I don't believe me either. But there you go. I started my illustrious dieting career at the tender age of 8 or so, and I haven't looked back (positively) since. I've tried them all, you know. I've been to Weight Watchers, Diet Workshops, and Nutrisystem. I've done E-diets, Fitday.com, The Daily Plate, and WW Online. I, ladies and gentlemen, have had gastric bypass! That's right! I was sliced open like a Thanksgiving turkey and had my insides manipulated in unnatural ways JUST SO THAT I COULD LOSE WEIGHT!

Of course, the last was successful in a medical sense. I have lost over 100+ pounds and kept them off for over 5 years. Technically that is a success. Though I am still over 240 pounds from my "ideal" weight, my diabetes has returned with a vengeance, my arthritis has started getting worse again, and I still have sleep apnea. But it was a success!

Anyway, for most of my life I have been convinced that it basically boils down to the fact that I'm a weak-willed, useless, drain on society, failure. Obviously I could lose the weight if I really tried, I mean, that's what everyone says, right? So it must be me. It doesn't matter that I tried as hard as I could, I obviously had to be lying about what I was eating or how much I was moving. "Eat less, move more!" is such a simple thing to say.

But I wasn't lying about how much I was eating. I wasn't lying about how much I was moving. When I tracked my calories, I was actually eating less than many of my slender friends. Quite frankly, the years of yo-yo dieting had destroyed every weight-regulating system in my body, and my body didn't trust me any more.

I finally realized that I am fat, and that I likely would stay that way forever.

Then, about a year or so ago, I started to get a glimmering of an idea. It was pretty nebulous at first, but it came down to realizing that maybe I just needed to start eating what my body said that it wanted, and that I just needed to start moving in ways that I enjoy rather than forcing myself to go to the gym and walk miles to nowhere on a treadmill. Maybe I needed to start really LISTENING to my body and letting it do its job?

This seemed a bit simplistic to me at first. I mean, wasn't that what got me into this mess? Listening to my body say "I want chocolate" and "Let's skip the gym and sleep another hour and a half instead." was how I got here to begin with, right? But that's because my body had given up, and was taking the path of least resistance. And just as I started crystallizing this train of thought, I found out about a book called "Health At Every Size" by Linda Bacon, PhD.

I started reading her book, and everything I'd been thinking was right there, in black and white in front of me! Not only that, she had SCIENCE backing up those lines of thought, that reasoning, the idea that our bodies know what to do if we just get out of the way and let them! We can love ourselves AS WE ARE, and in doing so, we open the door to a healthier lifestyle because our bodies tell us to eat good, whole foods and to get up and dance around the living room when a song we like comes on. We just stopped listening to our bodies, and so our bodies stopped trying to make us listen, and started trying to do what we wanted even though it was totally messed up.

What a revelation!

And so now, here I am. I'm still fat, still finding myself saying cruel things to myself on a regular basis, but I'm now trying to change that. I am trying to listen to my body, trying to learn to love myself the way that I am right now, rolls and all. As my life continues, and my ability to love myself increases along with my ability to actually hear what my body is telling me, it is entirely possible that more weight will come off. It is also entirely possible that it won't. But whether it does or doesn't, as long as my life gets healthier, my body finds its proper settings again, and I can dance, sing, swordfight or do anything else that I want to do without getting out of breath after 30 seconds, then it really doesn't matter.

This is the journey that I'm starting tonight. I have no doubt that there will be rocky moments and that people will be cruel. I have no doubt that there will be times when I am crueler to myself than anyone else. But you're welcome to come along for the ride as we find out what life is like when someone learns to be healthy at whatever size they happen to be, and when they finally learn to love themselves for who they are.

Post Rapture Sympathies

So The Rapture didn't happen yesterday, much to the surprise of no one that I know. Unfortunately, though, there were some folks who really believed that it was going to occur. And as the light dawns on the day after I have to say that I feel honest sympathy and pity for them. There are going to be some people who are having very serious crises of faith, and that is never an easy thing.

I've heard some people say, "Well, they shouldn't have listened to one man. They shouldn't have let him dupe them, they should have read their Bible themselves and they would have known better."

It's easy to say that, to be sanctimonious and smug, but that doesn't make that kind of attitude any more right than those who are sanctimonious and smug when an earthquake hits Japan (remember the girl whose YouTube video said that the earthquake was because she had started praying and it was God's judgement on the heathens?) or when a disease runs rampant through gay society (the school board member who said that he's happy that the gays run around and give each other AIDS and die).

I understand that faith is a personal thing. I really do. Considering that my faith is rarely expressed in a public setting (I talk about the theories and belief sets, but I rarely attend any form of public service.), I totally get how faith is so very dependent on who and what we are. But that is really my point in a way. We don't know what is going on in these people's lives, or why they feel that they need a more tangible shepherd than the one in the Bible, but they do. It is totally understandable to me, really. Some people need a more obvious presence in their lives for a while, until they find the path that leads them to have the strength to develop their own solid foundation. Sadly, some never find that strength in this life and it may take many lives for it to develop.

But speaking of the here and now, there will always be some people who need a physical touch on their shoulder, a voice that they can hear outside of the heart, and someone that is more real to them than a person who lived 2,000 years ago. I don't think that this makes them less of a person. I don't believe that such a stage in development is a strange thing. We all go through it in one form or another, whether it is a case of following our parents' religion until we learn enough to make our own decision, or having a crisis of faith that leads us to explore theologies and thoughts that we'd never realized existed before.

The people who went to extremes about The Rapture's supposed occurrence yesterday needed to believe something. Yes, some of them needed to believe that they were better than others, but I really do think that most of them just have something in their lives that makes them desperately want confirmation of a good end for themselves, they need the hope that despite everything they are good people and will not have to suffer eternally for doing what they have done in their lives. They're scared. They are scared of what happens after we die, and this man offered them a solid answer, he gave them the reassurance that everything would be fine for them, and that they wouldn't have to face hell or the horror of watching the world fall apart, or even the dark nothingness of forever.

And now that answer, that reassurance, is gone. Now they have to face the fact that he didn't know any better than they did and they have to decide whether to continue to listen to him and to make excuses for him because they aren't ready to lose that paternal figure in their lives, or whether they move on and try to find something else to comfort them, someone else to believe in, and if so...who and what that will be.

I hope that they find themselves, and learn to believe in their own heart and mind. I think that if they learn from this and move on, they will be the stronger for it. But I think that it is going to be a rough road for them. Especially for the ones who took drastic acts, like getting rid of everything that they own, or even the ones I heard about who put their pets to sleep so that they would meet them in Heaven. Families will be split over this (did you see the article on the family whose parents believed and kids didn't?) and it will cause immense amounts of pain.

So while I am still amused at the variety of Rapture jokes going around (because, yeah, some of 'em are pretty darned funny), I have to take a moment to send out my heartfelt sympathy for the people whose lives are going to be dramatically shaken up by this whole thing. I hope that they find themselves, and their beliefs in Good and a Higher Power survive their disillusionment about one man's belief that he knew more than anyone else.

All in all, I wish them well, and I hope that they come out of this better people than they were when it all started. It is going to be hard. Very hard.