Our Weight: A Tragicomedy?
Hey guys! I (somewhat) enjoyed crowd-sourcing interpretations of HAES. Just a note that HAES is a trademark of the Association for Size Diversity and Health and while we can all interpret it to oblivion, if you check out the site you can see the actual messaging associated with the approach. I also think that people get caught up on the “at every size” part of the acronym, so, for the purposes of this post, I’m going to not use “HAES” and use, instead, size acceptance. I think that may help people understand the important message that gets lost because most people have a knee-jerk reaction to the phrase and shut it down before even thinking about it.
Now…I hate to sound like a smug little brat, but, let’s face it, I am smug and a bit of brat (and I’ve been called worse). You cannot agree or disagree with HAES. There ARE people who are healthy at a diversity of sizes. Don’t get hung up on the “at every size” part. Just look around. Yes, health occupies many different bodies – bodies of different size, color, ethnicity, etc. What you can agree or disagree with is whether people should practice size-acceptance. If you want to practice exclusion and hate rather than acceptance and love, that’s your call. I hope I can change your mind, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it.
Every day there are reminders that your weight is a complex factor to be taken in conjunction with the rest of your body AND mind. You and I both know that if the mantra “eat less, move more” were effective, there would be no fat people. You know that even if you are slim or a “normal weight” (via BMI), you can still suffer from all sorts of maladies, both physical and mental.What’s worse – there are things you may not know and things, frankly, that have you’ve been told by professionals that are just plain wrong! This is where your anger should come into play. Don’t be angry that people love themselves and strive for health without preoccupation with their weight; be angry that you feel it’s more conducive to good health to be obsessed with size rather than to practice healthful behaviors.
And I know that it’s hard – almost appalling – to believe that you can improve your health without obsessing about your weight. We’ve all been indoctrinated into a society that tells us otherwise. We drank the koolaid.
It’s like being in a cult your whole life – jailed inside a house of close-mindedness where body-hate and body-judgment is the norm. When you first meet size-acceptance, it’s like finally being released into the light of day. At first the sun blinds you and you’re angry and confused. That was me. I always wanted to believe in size acceptance, but felt that I just couldn’t.
Then I finally adjusted my eyes to the light. And now I see the freedom and empowerment that comes with striving for my health rather than for striving for a particular size.This empowerment comes from being my own advocate, for being skeptical but open-minded, for doing my own research, for loving my body in all of its formations. You see, love fuels healthful behaviors. Hate does not.
Here’s the truth: I wish that 7 years ago when I was first beginning my weight loss journey that I had seen the light. Instead, my goal was weight-loss and solely weight-loss. This is not about denying the truth – I was NOT healthy at my 280-lb weight and 5’5 size. I was in physical pain; I didn’t get my period; my body was screaming for love. But I hated myself. I fed myself crap and way too much at all times of the day. I stopped moving. I lived across from a 7-11. I didn’t know how to eat healthfully. My parents were divorcing. We worried we would lose the house. I spent my days wishing I was thinner. I was unhealthy not because I was fat, but because I treated myself horribly and because, frankly, my life was crazy and tumultuous at the time. I was a kid and I believed you when you told me I was fat; I believed you when you told me to eat low-cal, low-fat food to be healthier. I believed that I would never find love.
Can you lose weight and still accept and love yourself? Absolutely! I don’t understand where people get this idea that if you believe in size-acceptance that you probably lie to yourself to accept an unhealthy version of yourself. I mean people do that no matter what their beliefs on size. I don’t understand why I get so much shit these days for believing we should love and accept ourselves as a means to bettering our health rather than hating our bodies and focusing on unhealthy means to lose weight (or striving for a weight that is unobtainable without drastic, unhealthy means).
In our society, we believe that we can and should try to get everyone down to some uniform size. And even people who are complete poster children for bad habits like smoking, eating shitty food, not exercising, using drugs, being an ignorant asshole, etc., believe that if they are thin, they can still judge others for their weight (because somehow on the totem pole of life, “thin” is the highest goal). Worse, just by virtue of being thin, these people believe they can and should tell others – who are not thin – how to live their lives and what a burden their unhealthy (whether they really are or are not) behaviors are on society.
We have been so indoctrinated into stigmatizing others based on their weight that we can’t even see our own fuckin prejudices. Yes, many fat people are guilty of being extremely sizeist! Weight stigma is something I cannot agree with. I’ll tell you what – I faced more stigma as a fat person than as a person with an eating disorder. And that’s just bizarre.
Wake up, people! Size acceptance is not something only fat people should abide by – it’s something ANYONE who has a body should fervently believe in.
So, to respond to the commenter who said, so compassionately & kindly…
“I disagree with HAES – there is NOTHING healthy about 300lbs on a 5ft tall frame. There is nothing HEALTHY about 300lbs on ANY frame. I also find it comical that, you Anabel are now promoting HAES while FIGHTING to maintain your WEIGHT LOSS.”
- There is nothing healthy about 300 lbs on any frame? Well, I know someone who is 300 pounds and, after years of treating his body like shit, decided to start treating himself well. So, while this person may be 300 lbs now, he has started eating well (better than pretty much everyone I know to be honest!) – so there IS something healthful about him. He is also working out for three hours a week and enjoying it – now that is healthful, too. He also is learning to love himself in a society that has shamed him. Forgiveness, self-acceptance…those things sound very healthful to me. He is starting to lose weight doing these healthful things and may continue to do so. But that’s not the point, is it? The point is that he is treating himself well and at whatever weight his body decides to get comfortable at with these healthful behaviors, he’ll be fine AND healthy. He won’t revert to an eating disorder to keep up the weight loss. Why? Because his focus is on healthful behaviors.
- I am happy that you find my journey comical. I have always been told I was not funny and I love making people laugh. It’s great for your health (you’re welcome!). The truth of the matter is, that I am DONE fighting to maintain my weight-loss. You know why? Because I was fighting to maintain my WEIGHT not my health. So while everyone may have applauded my thin body as an indicator of health, they would have been applauding an unhealthy, bulimic person. I am putting down the sword of self-hate and focusing on eating well and working-out because I love to do those things and they make me feel alive and strong. Whatever weight my body wants to be at to support those self-loving behaviors, will be the weight I will adore. It would be a tragedy if after 7 years of learning everything I could about my body, health, nutrition, food & identity politics I didn’t change or have any epiphanies. So, in my eyes, it’s much better for me to be comical now than to be tragical.
<3,
The Cranky One
Tags: association for size diversity and health, body acceptance, HAES, health at every size, weight stigma
12 People have left comments on this post
No matter how much that obese person loves or accepts themselves it is NOT HEALTHY.
You can keep believing these myths all you want, but science is science and an obese body WILL break down and suffer the pains of obesity, both physical and psychological.
And if you loved healthy eating and exercising as much as you say you do – you would NOT be “fighting” to maintain your weight-loss, nor would you have had such a substantial re-gain. Acceptance begins when the denial ends.
I don’t think I can reason with you Ann, you drank the Kool-Aid! I hope one day you can experience the freedom and happiness I feel as a person who is healthy in mind, body & spirit!
Ann’s just pissed because she’s guilty of all the things she’s accusing you of (battling to maintain her loss). Anyone that picks apart as many bloggers as she does has a problem with herself, because everyone knows if you are happy with yourself, you don’t care what anyone else is doing or not doing.
I think some people are getting caught up in your word choices.
Your 300lb friend is not physically healthy. He is doing healthy things which will help him to become physically healthy. All of which is excellent.
But me eating one vegetarian meal does not me a vegetarian make. I can’t call myself a vegetarian until I am. TAHT’s the disctinction I think soem people are trying to make.
I ended up in a little battle with you on FB recently regarding my views on calories in v calories out.
I wholeheartedly support your current decision to focus on health rather than weight. I believe you are at the perfect place for such a shift. “Dieting” is not life long sustainable. I believe it has its place in getting to a certain point, but at some stage, you want to be able to maintain with out feeling like you’re constantly fighting a battle.
So, while I am one foot in the camp of “overweight people cannot be healthy”, I wholeheartly support ‘overweight people can and should be encouraged to ACT healthy’. And I am vehemently against size-based prejudice.
The fact that my calories in v calories out principles are true for most of the population gives me no right to assume that the individual in front of me falls into that category, nor to know their story. Weight loss is hard. And you don’t know where that person in front of you has come from.
My great-grandmother was 103 when she died, and over 300 pounds. She outlived 3 primary care doctors who told her to lose weight. Her daughter, my grandmother, is 96 and still very overweight. Over what weight, I ask? BMI is bunk.
There was a study released last August that revealed that you can be overweight and healthy (just like you can be thin and unhealthy).
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20092559-10391704.html
Love this post. So glad you found your way to size-acceptance and HAES. You and I have a similar story – I’m done fighting my weight and just working on health now too. And it’s working out very well!
There is actually no science to show that a body at a very high weight is unhealthy in and of itself. All the science shows now that it is exercise that makes the difference. I have many very healthy fat friends – exercisers all of them. Before people start quoting “science” they should be required to actually find and analyze the studies that say so. And they need to remember that correlation does not equal causation.
There’s no study that shows pounds of visceral fat crowding and smothering one’s internal organs is unhealthy? There’s no study that shows excess weight causes stress on the lower body, particularly the knees? Are you serious? THERE IS NOTHING HEALTHY ABOUT BEING OBESE. I don’t care about your 300 lb grandma anecdotes; just because someone’s grandfather smoked a pack a day and lived to be 90 and never had emphysema or lung cancer, does that make smoking healthy? STOP USING EXCUSES (fake ones) to be fat. Morbid obesity is also a major symptom of an unhealthy EMOTIONAL state; no one gets to be 300+ lbs just because they like to snack and don’t like to exercise. There’s something much deeper going on with compulsive/habitual overeaters and Anabel should know this as well as anyone. If you want to pretend there’s no underlying psychological reason for someone to eat like that, go ahead. In any case, it takes a LOT of work to get to and maintain that weight (over 3500 cals/day if you go by pure math).
You are making a good choice. And it sounds like you might be struggling with PCOS, poly-cystic ovarian syndrome aka Stein-Levinthal Syndrome.
1 in 6 women in the world has this syndrome and for most sufferers leads to diet and exercise resistant weight gain.
Improper diagnosis by Fat-biased doctors and trainers is the LEADING cause of weight gain in people with Thyriod and Endocrine based diseases.
PCOS weight gain is caused by insulin resistance which require treatment and a special diet. But even have 70 years of PCOS being around, doctors STILL tell women that loosing weight is the only cure DESPITE the US Goverment and the OBYGYN medical instituition have updated their procedures for cure to address this.
My whole life? Spent being told by non-profit clinicians they didnt know why I had all these problems. I was put on birth control when it could have caused someone like me strokes. And I was told to loose weight even though I stated I was raised by a nutritionist AND I was a vegetarian.
I got to 275 pounds before a doctor, who was my boss, not even my doctor told me the real cure. And really for me its nearly too late.
I have a master’s degree and no one takes me seriously. In my jobs I am looked over for praise and treated like a stupid person. I had to switch doctors because my first doctor actually said I was fine and let me go, then I nearly crashed my car vomiting ten minutes later from their drug overdose. She never would touch me in exams. I try to go to job interviews and I am treated like filth. When I try to exercise people drive by and scream at me and throw things. I fight depression. Its not a happy life.
And if anything, if I could just go out in a public place and exercise in peace without snobby sneers or people thinking its ok to outright point and laugh at me, well i’d probably weigh much less.
Please keep up hope. I know if we can start catching things like PCOS early because doctors see past the fat as a bad person to fat being a symptom, well it will get better.
You are a bright shining star…thank you thank you thank you!
scientists also thought the world was flat, and that meat was good for everyone and did not catch on to many things for a long time – there is a whole lot more than science going on out there in our amazing universe -
JanieJ, I agree, many people (myself included) eat because of underlying psychological reasons. I worked with a cognitive behaviour therapist to fix my negative eating behaviours. I learned that adhering to a strict diet mentality actually triggers overeating (it’s not about food).
The study does not say that all obese people are healthy, it says that you can be healthy even if you aren’t at a healthy weight.
If you are interested, Yoni Freedhoff’ (a doctor specializing in obesity) wrote about it on his blog; see below for the link:
“A new study reveals the truth about the risks of obesity.” http://www.weightymatters.ca/2011/08/new-staging-system-reveals-new-truths.html