Fat Chicks Rule

What happens when there is weight loss/gain?

When I gave up dieting, I wasn’t fully into size acceptance. I realized dieting didn’t work and if I continued, I would wreck my body even further.

At first I worried I would gain an enormous amount of weight (this turned out to only be about five pounds). As I got more into size acceptance and loving my body, I was able to accept the occasional weight gain and loss. (Neither were dramatic. I went from a size 20 to a 22, and then back to a 20.) You may find that some changes will affect your weight: medications, exercise, stress, hormones, or dietary changes (Not for weight loss).

How can you deal with these fluctuations? When I was a dieter, I had an easy formula:

Weight loss =love myslf
Weight gain= hate myself.

The diet I was most "successful" on, I lost 40 pounds and kept it off for 2 years. I never got thin, but the day I fit into a size 14 (mind you, I couldn't breathe but they fit), I was excited and happy for the rest of the day, convinced that thinness was just around the corner (turns out it was just the same old story, weight regain and bingeing).

When I gave up dieting and started to learn to love my body, I felt I had the right to that self-love from getting into a size 14. But I also had to figure out how to make my life so as not to be defined by a number.

It was easy in the beginning because my weight stayed the same. But as the hormones of getting older kicked in, my pants got tighter. I bought new pants but I had to figure out a way to not hate myself.

The first thing I did was end negative fat talk. This is when you look in the mirror and tell yourself "OMG, I'M FAT” like it's a bad thing. You need to look at your reflection and tell yourself "OMG, I'M BEAUTIFUL!" “OMG, I LOVE YOU, BODY!”

If you catch yourself telling your body bad things, tell that voice to shut up. Loving yourself is the most important thing you can do.  

It's important that if there is weight gain to not go back to any kind of dieting. HAES and Intitule eating means you listen to your body cues. Forcing your body to eat less than needs is devastating instead of nourishing it.
 
On the other side is weight loss. Maybe you got sick and now your pants are loose. You still love your body but you may feel a little extra self-esteem, especially when other people around you compliment it. I deal with that two ways: I hunch my shoulders like I don't care or I try humor: Thanks! It was a stomach virus/mono/tapeworm. The most important thing is to still love your body and not to feel like you betrayed it for feeling a surge of self-esteem that years of dieting probably programed into you.
 
Still go to your mirror and tell yourself. I love my body no matter what!

 

Making Safe Space in Your Body

Ending dieting and embracing HAES has helped improve my health, but it’s still hard when I’m bombarded with messages that fat is bad. I need to do more about dealing with the stigma of having a big body in a fat hating culture. If I can’t make the world a safe space, the least I could do is feel at home in my own body.

The Rudd Center recently came out with a study showing that weight stigma affects the stress hormone cortisol. This is just the beginning of showing that some "fat-related-diseases" may be more related to the stress of stigma rather than being over some arcane number.

Exposure to weight-stigmatizing stimuli was associated with greater cortisol reactivity among lean and overweight women. These findings highlight the potentially harmful

physiological consequences of exposure to weight stigma.

Another study said that labeling fatness as a disease undermines health.

Specifically, obese participants who read the "obesity is a disease" article placed less importance on health-focused dieting and reported less concern for weight relative to obese participants who read the other two articles. They also chose higher-calorie options when asked to pick a sandwich from a provided menu.

Essentially fat people who saw themselves labeled as diseased didn't care about health when dieting and also ended up eating more.

I've mentioned it before. Dieting pushes weight loss not health as the ultimate goal. You diet, you lose some weight, then the weight loss stops and you go on a massive binge. When all that matters is being thin, health usually goes out the window.

Stigma causes stress and anxiety. Fat people face stigma either outright or even unintentionally: Small seats, labeled diseased, poor quality clothes, assumptions that you drink soda, or don't exercise.

All this could lead to body shame and a mistrust in yourself. I mentioned that when I was climbing the Manitou incline it was harder the closer I got to my goal. I didn't trust myself to make it. It disturbs me because it's been over 10 years since I stopped dieting and tried to work on loving my body and still I have doubts. I still sometimes look at weight loss “successes” (the exception, not the rule) and wonder why couldn’t I do that.

Stigma is hard to escape especially when you are bombarded with weight loss ads, and fat hatred. When you're patronized and told just to eat one less cookie. So how do you escape the stigma? Staying in your house without access to internet isn’t going to cut it.

We can, and have, changed the world to becoming more accepting that people come in all shapes and sizes. It’s slow but happening.

However in the meantime we need to think of ways to protect ourselves from fat hatred.

The best way to deal with that is improving your self-esteem. Names become meaningless if you feel you are better than them. Here are a few suggestions to help deal with stigma.

•   Love yourself and tell yourself of your achievements. Tell yourself you deserve it.
•  Write everyday things you are grateful for.
•  Meditate and do deep breathing. Try not to think about triggers. Empty your mind if possible and concentrate on your breathing.
• Take a nice relaxing bath and tell your body how much you love it. If they didn’t make a bathtub big enough for you, take a nice hot shower.
• If you are someone like me who blogs about fat hatred, give yourself a respite when you feel like you’ve had enough. Read a fat positive blog or book.
• Remember this is the only body you have. You need to trust it.

 

 

 

Different Worlds

No Blog post next week. Second vacation coming up!

 

While doing research on plus size shopping for my book, I walked into a store looked at the outrageous prices, saw the look the sales woman gave me, the What the fuck is this fat woman without trimmed eyebrows doing in my store? and walked out. I hadn't been savvy yet of recognizing places by sight that don't have plus sizes. I'm sure if I had been buying something for a thin friend the sales clerk would have rather listened to nails on a chalk board than serve me.

 

Recently Oprah Winfrey,, who most of the planet knows, for some reason was not recognized in a store in Zurich. Oprah was looking at handbags, asked for a pricy one, when a clerk insisted she look at cheaper items. 

 

If I was ever mega wealthy, I wouldn't shop in stores that wouldn't have given me the time of day now and I would never buy a $38,000 dollar handbag unless it was an actual Bag of Holding (For non-gamers the bag of holding can hold large amounts of heavy items including swords, foods, mounts, potions, gold etc,).

 

Oprah felt that this slight was racial bias; Heidi Moore of the Guardian felt it was also due to her size.

Race is tied with socioeconomic status struggles; so is weight. There have been some studies of a link between a woman's size and her socioeconomic status, showing that women with low incomes tend to be of higher weight. There are many theories on this – because of unsocial working hours, lower availability of healthy food in poor neighborhoods, and other factors that may affect food choice and metabolism.

 

I think that these attitudes towards fat people aren’t necessarily poor food. If I was looking for a retail job, who do you think would hire me? The high end boutique or Walmart? Oprah’s talented, smart, beautiful, sand avvy, but she cannot be the only fat  black American woman who is. (She is the only black face in Forbes' Richest Americans list coming in at 152.)  As Moore points out:

 

Oprah was looking to buy a handbag, which has no size measurements, but the product is not the point: in an upscale boutique, all buyers are judged, in part, by their weight.

About great achievements.

Sometime after I earned my first Master's degree in Education, I had a thought. Here I was achieving a graduate degree that only about 8 percent of the US population have done. My thought was I could achive this, so why can't I be thin? After all there only about an 8% chance of losing weight and keeping it off, why should it be harder than getting a master's degree?  

My first Masters had been difficult. I twice thought about dropping out. I got two low grades, I had second thoughts about going into teaching and later it turned out the thesis adviser was barely letting anyone graduate (She was eventually replaced and I finally finished.) Writing the thesis itself took all my free time and I lived in the library. 

But all I thought about after this incredible accomplishment is why I couldn't get thin. 

The first degree was a nightmare. I ended up never using it. I really didn't like teaching and I had trouble finding work. 

So I got another Master's degree this time in Library Science. Getting was much smoother than the first one. When it was time to do my thesis, I was ready. I found two partners who wanted to finish in one semester. We all worked full time. So every single weekend and some weekday nights the three of us would hole up in a study room at the library and work on our research for hours. Imagine that, having the discipline to give up weekends (at the time I was recently married) to finish this paper. 

During this degree, I was a "successful" dieter. I had being doing a low carb diet for almost a year, I had lost 40 pounds and kept it off.  Eventually I stopped losing and started gaining. But for a while I thought I had it all: the education, the husband, and the weight loss.  

Recently a visiting NYU professor tweeted: Dear obese PhD applicants: If you don't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation.

The tweet was taken down quickly but the damage was done. The "professor" had to quickly backtrack his words, probably fearful of losing his job. 

It's funny of all the unwarranted dieting advice he signalled out that fat people cannot stop eating carbs. Earlier tweets indicated he is a fan of the paleo diet fad (I can write an entire blog post about how incorrect it is and how our Paleo ancestors ate mostly vegetarian.) 

I have previously written that when  I gave up carbs completely, I got very ill. Even in the earlier low carb diets I did where the carb count was higher, I had heart palpitations, reflux disease, constant thoughts of food, dreams about cheating. I became pre-occupied with food, always thinking about the next meal. It turned out that low carb dieting is yet another low calorie diet. 

I have to wonder how I managed to find the strength and discipline after all this dieting to finish two masters degrees. 

And if you want to see more fabulous fat people with advanced degrees, click here. 

No More Turkey Day diets.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it! Thanksgiving is the time of year when we celebrate family and friends by eating ourselves silly and getting lots of dieting advice.

I remember Weight Watchers and Thanksgiving. At the time, Weight Watchers was still using their exchange system and your goal for Thanksgiving depended on what day of the week was your first day. For years my night was Thursday and first day of a new menu was Friday. Thanksgiving would always be the last day of the week, so in order for me to be “good” I had to save all my extra exchanges and free calories for the big day. The entire week, I had to limited myself to exact portions, so I could save my precious extras for Thursday.

On the big day I was ready. I had saved my extra calories and exchanges. I know I probably went a little over, but my turkey portion was bigger than a deck of cards, covered by a little more than 1 teaspoon of gravy and stuffing. Maybe four breads and two fats instead of three breads and one fat. But all an all I thought I had been perfectly restrained.

The problem happened the next day. The entire week was restrained eating and Friday was a whole new day.

To binge.

The exchanges, the free calories, and painstakingly measured portions flew out the window as I binged mightily on cold turkey and my favorite stuffing. At the time, I’d be very happy to eat an entire box of stove top. I didn’t really eat the food so much as inhaled it, and I craved so strongly I felt I no longer had a will of my own. I was on WW from ages 16 to 20. Four years of bingeing the day after Thanksgiving. Afterwards I felt ashamed like I had done something wrong, that I could control myself if I wanted too (after all, look how well I did on Thanksgiving). The leader at WW always told us that after a binge (she called it “going off the program"), we were supposed to immediately return and start anew. But considering how much I ate, how much would be left for the week? Just water and vegetables? Because I binged on my first day of the new week, I felt ashamed until the following Friday. I loathed myself for being unable to stay in control.

Now, I celebrate Thanksgiving twice, once with Friends on Wednesday night, once on Thursday with family. Both days I will have traditional thanksgiving fare including my favorite stuffing and this is how I will handle it:

There will be no points, exchanges or guilt. I will eat, enjoy my meal and have a good time with the people around the table. The holiday no longer means counting calories or points, eyeing my food, making sure my turkey slice were no bigger than a deck and a half of cards. I have absolutely no idea how many calories were consumed. My only guess is a lot. (My favorite response to “Do you know how many Calories are in that?"  "Yes, a million.")

Linda Bacon’s book Health at Every Size and any book about eating disorders would call Weight Watchers not just a diet but restrained eating. My body, soul and mind did not get the food they really wanted and rebelled. Had I had my normal fill on my WW Thanksgivings, there would have been no bingeing the next day.

So this Thanksgiving, how a wonderful time, don’t fear your food and don’t feel guilty over seconds.

 

How loving my body saved my life.

I don't remember the exact day I started getting heart palpitations but it was early 2002.  In January (January 2 to be exact), I started what would be my last diet. When I say diet, I mean consuming fewer calories than my body needed. After failing repeatedly on Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, and Nutrisystem, in 1998 I gave low-carb a try. Low carb was my most successful diet. I almost never cheated and I lost 40lbs and kept it off for a year. I was pleased with my weight loss and hoped for more. I ignored the beginnings of GERD, that my cholesterol was at the high side of normal, the massive sugar crashes, dreams about eating bread, obsession with carbs (the diet required eating two no-carb meals, and one meal with a carbs that had to be eaten in an hour),  and what I can only call fun filled nights of heart palpitations. 

However after losing weight I stopped at 40 pounds. I weighed about 190 lbs which was still considered obese. And nothing I would did would restart the weight loss. I was also bored by my limited food choices. (The doctors who wrote the diet, recommended eating a salad before the carb meal.) Eventually the cheating started going into high gear. And when I say cheating, it wasn't just eating more carbs, I began bingeing on unhealthy crap. 

But in my mind, I thought low carb was the answer. After all failing many times at other diets, I had been somewhat successful on this one.

So back to early 2002, after the low carb failure, I went to the no-carb diet, Atkins which I had been doing for a few weeks. Again I was pleased. I was losing weight again. 

Then I tried going to sleep. 

My heart felt like it was going to explode. I felt like it was pounding, skipping a beat, and struggling. I went to the emergency room. They couldn't find anything wrong. I went to a cardiologist who discovered I have a slightly prolapsed value, but after an echo, ekg, halter monitor, everything looked okay. He put me on a beta blocker.  My gastroenterologist diagnosed me with GERD and put me on nexium.  (Actually he told me Atkins was crazy but I should still lose weight.)

But I still couldn't sleep and my heart kept me up. I was terrified it was going to stop in the night which made it race even more.  I was doing Atkins induction where you eat 20 grams of carbs or less to get your body in ketosis. (I never got to full ketosis) so I moved out of the induction phase to next one where you could have some carbs. 

The heart palpitations went away, so did the weight loss. Then I realized it. This wasn't healthy. I was now on two medications. This crazy dieting had to stop, it wasn't helping me.  

So I stopped. However this time around I didn't binge as much. This time around I had something different. Body acceptance. 

I've toyed around with body acceptance since I was in college. It was always in the back of my mind. Picking up Marilyn Wann's book in 2001 helped even more. I realized dieting had possibly done irreversible damage to my body. I knew that going to sleep with a dread of not walking up and now being on two medications I didn't previously need that dieting and this obsessiveness with weight loss would kill me. I know that I had to (a) stop dieting and learn actual healthy habits and (b) learn to love and accept that I am fat.

I knew that giving up dieting did not mean I had to give up being healthy. I didn't celebrate the end of dieting with a huge cake. I had to relearn how to eat, because my eating had become so disordered that when I wasn't dieting, I was eating fast and too much. (As if my body didn't think it would ever get food again.) I started to learn to listen to my body. Eat the foods it liked and avoid foods it didn't.  I eventually got off the Beta-Blocker and moved from Nexium to an antacid and herbal remedies which have improved GERD's greatly. (I am hoping to stop taking the antacids eventually); I rarely eat more than my body can handle and I am slowly but surely learning to eat normally again. (I don't know if I ever will.)

Every time I get the temptation to diet again, I think about the nights on Atkins where I wasn't sure I would wake up.  Because thinking that you are dying isn't healthy.  Listening to and loving your body is.

Dead end mall

I was getting Starbucks at my local mall. And when I say my mall, I have been going to this mall since I was a teenager. It became my second home when I had to get out of the house and none of my friends were around. I have kind of a love/hate relationship with malls. On one hand I find them to be an urban and suburban blight, on the other hand, this mall allowed me an escape for a few hours at a time.

Today this mall offers me little except for the occasional Starbucks and my credit union is next door.  The mall opens at 10 but Starbucks and Gloria Jean coffee opens for commuters before that. I got to traverse the mall with no pedestrian traffic thinking this might be a good place to walk during hot or cold days. The mall is mostly small chic clothing stores such as Banana Republic, White House, Black Market (stupidest name for a store ever), Bebe, Charlotte Russe, Guess, Forever 21, H&M. If you see one suburban mall you should know all the stores. Despite the fact these stores sell overpriced crap, this mall is one of the most successful malls in the country and that disturbs me considering that the neighborhoods around it are all working class, median income people.

Oh yeah about almost none of the stores carry plus sizes. At last count out of the 33 stores in the mall that carry clothes for woman, only 4 carry plus sizes and of those 4, only one carries a variety of selections. For example Hot Topic which owns Torrid has plus sized t-shirts but nothing else. So what does that leave us in the mall? Not the food court because fat people aren’t supposed to eat.<

I often hear comments that the reason stores don’t carry plus sizes is that fat people never buy clothing but a small study shows that might not be the point. In this study a random sampling of people of difference sizes went to stores in a Houston mall. Casually dressed fat people were discriminated more than the others, even well dressed fat people. Fat people who held a diet drink and talked about how they exercised were treated better than fat people who held an ice cream drink, talked about not dieting and being unable to do exercise. Average size shoppers who carried different drinks did not suffer discrimination.

So if you walked in a store that didn't have your size and if they did they had terrible selection and limited sizes (And if you are over a size 26, don't even bother looking) and they treat you like dirt,would you shop there?  I wouldn’t. There is a reason I am now only shopping regularly at two stores, Re/Dress which is unique to New York and Marshals because I can shop with anonymity. Department stores no longer carry the selection and style I need. In fact many have gone downhill since I published my book. While Fashion bug, the Avenue and Lane Bryant carry style, sizes and selection, I find their quality of clothes substandard and in the case of Avenue and Lane Bryant overpriced.

So what does a fat person get? Lack of quality, quantity and selection or nothing at all. So my fat sisters and brothers. What do we do? First things first, if you like a store's style, but they don't have your size. Let them know. Let them know that until they carry your size in the store (Not the Old Navy BS that has plus sizes online but not in their stores) you will never shop there for anything and you will encourage other friends to not shop there as well. If you do find a store you like that has what you need, patronize it as much as possible. I go to Re/Dress as much as I can despite the long trip and I go to Marshals despite the long lines. Don't give any money to a store that won't give you respect!

The cookie cutter

On Friday and Saturday I attended a Feminist conference at Sarah Lawrence called Breaking Boundaries which had speeches, panels and workshops about the diversity of bodies. Although a lot of it focused on fat bodies, there was also focus on thin bodies, disabled bodies, and racial stereotypes. 

Our bodies are all very much the same, yet unique. However it seemed that society keeps us in a very narrow cookie cutter: thin, tall, able bodied, white, if female waif and dainty, if male, muscular. However most people don't fit into that mold. I think one of the more interesting aspects of the conference was a panel run by disabled poets. One of the points brought up is if you had a choice would you not be disabled?

If you had a choice would you not be fat? Some people would say that you have a choice. You just have to eat less and exercise more and you'll be thin and svelte.  Except with statistics stating that anywhere from 85-98% of weight loss attempts fail. Despite these facts fat people are often blamed for not being able to lose weight and keep it off. There is still plenty of prejudice but fat seems to be the only acceptable prejudice because it technically can changed short termed. 

One thing never considered to affect the health care of fat people is stigma. Yet in this recent study The discrimination that obese people feel, whether it is poor service at a restaurant or being treated differently in the workplace, may have a direct impact on their physical health, according to new research from Purdue University.  However when we see studies "proving" fat is bad, stigma is rarely incorporated or given as another reason fat is bad. Fat people are expected to make themselves thin and not change the world view. Whereas someone disabled, gay, African-American etc expects the world to change (Not that it neccessarily has but in theory we are supposed to have a loving accepting rainbow world unless you are fat.)

But back to the conference. There I met some very different people. I didn't agree with everyone but I think a common thread was feeling marginalized, and being forced into this narrow cookie cutter. These are smart intelligence people who aren't looking for special rights but equal ones.  A favorite quote of mine is: "No one is free when others are oppressed"

So would I prefer to be thin? Before 2002, you betcha. After 2002 when I began reclaiming my body as my own, only on occassion, usually when bra shopping.