Fat Chicks Rule

Surviving the Holidays

 Every year I go to Amish Country in Lancaster, PA. While I partake in other activities, the simple reason we go is to eat. Amish buffets are amazing. Filled with all kinds of dishes roasted, baked and cooked with full fat. When I go to Amish country I do not stick to any of my normal rules. I don't have diet rules anymore but I try to eat foods my body can handle. I see no reason that three days out of the year I can have my buttered noodles.

Thanksgiving and other holidays are similar to Lancaster. There is a lot of food around and the diet centers are empty, waiting for the January rush. But if you are a former dieter like me, it's hard to figure out exactly how to eat. You don't want eat more than your body can handle but you don't want   to follow diet rules so serving sizes, calories, or overexercising to the point of exhaustion.

I am giving you a few tips for survival. If you find you need more, my friend Golda is doing a HAES for the Holidays teleclass for $49 to help you get through the holidays without going insane (at least from food decisions).

1. Enjoy your food and listen to your hunger cues. If your body says you've had enough, that's it. If it says it really wants a slice of homemade pumpkin pie, have a slice. Mostly enjoy your food. Enjoy the taste, the colors, the texture. Savor it.

2. Do not beat yourself up if you "overeat". Most of the time I eat normally, but I sometimes overeat, and about 5 days a year I gorge myself silly. Don't focus on the food. Don't worry if the portion is too much or how much fat and calories are in it.  

3. Don't  you allow family members to harass you about your eating. Tell them it is unacceptable. If you have to leave, do it.

4. The holidays are about more than food. They are supposed to be a time to appreciate family and friends, go to fun parties, and give and get presents. Remember that focusing on food takes away from your enjoyment. 

5. It's okay to eat your veggies and to exercise. As a former-dieter, one of my biggest issues doing exercise and eating my vegetables for health not weight loss. Vvegetables give you a good amount of fiber and vitamins. Exercise releases endorphins to help with that after eating lull. 

Above all, have a wonderful holiday. 

Still not buying it.

Every once in a while I’ll have a bizarre fantasy of what it’s like being thin. During my dieting days, I had this fantasy frequently. I would show off my thin and beautiful bod to the people who made fun of me. They would look at me with their mouths agape and beg to be my friend. I would laugh and shrug them off.

I don't have this fantasy as much because I accept that I'm fat and I no longer care what people think of me. I don’t want to be thin, except maybe while clothes shopping. With the exception of the Big Fat Flea and some of the plus size stores like Torrid and Lane Bryant, I find clothes shopping a level of hell. With an apple belly, large boobs and a rectangle side. I imagine what it would be like to walk into any store and have an abundant selection of what I need. Even stores that carry plus sizes often have such a small selection that I find nothing.

Mike Jeffries of Abercrombie and Fitch wasn't thinking about the future in 2006 when he said A&F was only for the cool kids (i.e. no fatties). He wasn't thinking there'd be a giant fucking recession and apparently retail clothing isn't as quite as niche a market as an exclusive night club. They find their niche has other crappy clothing stores to go too. Ones that have cheaper prices, aren’t run by assholes, and sell clothes that fit them.

"Students are looking for better prices," (Doreen) Burdalski says. "They may realize the quality of clothing isn't as good, but it serves their purpose for now. I think the price point is too high, they've been struggling since 2008. People are experiencing that crunch, college students included."

A&F has been suffering declining sales and have now realized that maybe they do need to actually sell some clothes to more than five people. They will be offering plus size clothes to women. I'm not sure what size they will go to. If they go to 2x I can possibly fit into their clothes.

But still I won't shop there. You see Old Navy, H&M, and Forever 21 all carry plus sizes but yet I don't step foot in them because I know I am but a token to them. Two-third of the US populatio are considered fat but you wouldn’t know it even from the stores that sell plus sizes. I won't find the same sizes, styles, selection as a thin person would. And unlike Torrid, Lane Bryant and the Big Fat Flea, I wouldn’t feel like a human being shopping in these stores. One time I went into the plus size boutique Lee Lee’s Valise, told the sales girl I need something for someone that has no waist and walked out with a kick ass dress.

I often state on my blog to never buy anything from a store that doesn’t carry plus sizes. My thin fantasy would end with the realization that no store that carried fat and thin sizes has ever been good to me. If I were thin I would have no where to shop.

I will continue to not buy A&F and laugh when they go under. I look forward to the same thing happening to Lululemon.

Guess what really still doesn't work? Stigma

I'm not sure why I have to keep pointing out that stigmatizing a fat person does not make them lose weight. You see, no matter which avenue the "Obesity researcher" is coming from, they always come to the same conclusion: fat people need to eat less. Some of them try to be kind, saying its not the fat person's fault they stuff their face, they are just too stupid to understand healthy eating.

Then there are doctors who think its perfectly okay to shame a fat person.

“It happens all the time,” wrote Dr Pemberton, who also has a column in The Telegraph. “Patients who are not interested in changing their diet in any way, demand to have their cake, eat it…and then pop a pill so that the calories never touch their waistline.

As a veteran of countless diets, lifestyle changes, "healthy" eating and OTC diet pills, that resulted in weight loss, followed by massive weight gain, I can say Dr. Pemberton is full of shit. And considering that no weight loss drug has ever worked in the long run while some have been deadly, diet pills are not the easy way to lose weight. 

It goes back to the same argument that all fat people overeat and if they stop they will suddenly become thin. I don't deny that sometimes when you stop eating junk food, you might drop a little weight or none at all. But that weight loss rarely makes a fat person thin. (And until we drop BMI as a primary health indicator, all healthy habits become pointless unless the person gets to the magic "normal" number.)

The people who come to your practice Dr. Pemberton, you might find out something if you listen to their words instead of looking at their fat. Chances are that by the time they meet you, they've already tried all kinds of diets and lifestyle changes and now they are getting desperate.

Last week I reviewed the book Shadows on a Tightrope. In it was an essay about a woman who got weight loss surgery (back when the death rates were 6-8%) purely because she couldn't deal with the stigma.

A good doctor would look at the entire health of the patient, listen to their stories. You might be surprised to find how good they were on their diet until the feelings of starvation took over and how willing they might be to be healthy if their doctor didn't try to shame them.

Parallel Lives

Shadows on a Tightrope has the distinction of being one of the earliest fat activist/liberation books. It was a collaboration of works by different fat feminists over a decade, of essays, narratives and poems all about standing up to the diet industry and reclaiming fat bodies. Many of the authors had body re-awakenings and learned to love, accept, and cherish their fat bodies while rejecting mainstream objectification. Others are hoping to reach that path, while some were just telling their story about how hard it was to live in a fat body.

"We know what they mean they say "attractive"-- It's not us."

When the book came out in 1983, I was 12. At the same time some of the writers were already on their fat path, already fighting against the Hollywood, medical and diet industry cookie cutter, I was at the beginning of my body hating journey that wouldn't end for 20 years.

I got fat when I was 9. I ate the same junk food as my peers, but when I got fat, the teasing and the "well-meaning" lectures began. Somehow I resisted dieting and body hatred until I was 12. Even though Shadows on the Tightrope was out, it was not part of my world. At 12, I wanted nothing more than to be accepted by my peers. I believed that "dieting worked" because that was no discourse. At 12, you went on a diet, you got thin, the end. There was nothing in the mainstream media, from my doctor or my parents that mentioned anything about the high failure rate, the dangers of weight cycling or the fact that I would completely destroy my self-esteem. I always assumed I was overeating. If someone had just handed me Vivian Mayer's essay on the fat illusion where she points out that fat people are assumed to be overeating when more often they are eating normally, my life might have been different.

Today this book is still relevant especially with the pressure now on children to be thin or else. Some of this has changed since Shadows on the Tightrope.  Many of the writers wrote about dealing with doctors who gave them pills and/or screamed insults at them. Women talked about being fat as a child and having to become bullies so they wouldn’t be picked on. One personal by Lynn Mabel-Lois "We'll Worry About That When You're Thin" taked about how she became addicted to diet pills and first getting access to them when she was 10. We would never think of giving our children amphetamines now, but we are still willing allow growing teens and children to have weight loss surgery. And it would be socially unacceptable for a doctor to scream at a child, yet it’s perfectly okay to scare children into thinking they are dying like the ads in Atlanta.

Reading the stories in the book sometimes made me sad because I saw my story from the 1980’s in the narratives that took place in the fifties and sixties. The only change was doctors went from pills and screaming to diet sheets and lectures.

But things have changed because of what Shadows on a Tightrope started. It influenced countless fat authors who then influenced hundreds more. I didn’t have Shadows on a Tightrope at 12, but when I finally decided to stop hating my body at 30, it had created a loving fat positive environment.

Today we have more than just this book that tells us to resist the message of hatred. We have countless books such as Fat? So! By Marilyn Wann, Taking Up Space by Pattie Thomas, Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon, Hot & Heavy by Virgie Tovar, my own book Fat Chick Rules and so many others I don't have space to name. We have activist groups, blogs, websites, e-groups, and Facebook groups which project the same message: You are perfect just the way you are.

Those blogs today will all be giving thanks on how Shadows on a Tightrope changed everything for the better.

 

 

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Blog this week moved to Friday

I will be blogging on Friday Nov 5 instead of this Monday to honor the 30th Anniversary of one of the earliest fat activist book Shadows on a Tightrope.