to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
(Mary Oliver – “Wild Geese”)
This is lengthy, but it needs to be said. As often as possible.
We live in a superficial society. Many of us seem to think it’s OK and acceptable to hate those they perceive as less than perfect. And many of us perceive a very unnatural, abnormal, and for the vast majority of people, impossible body weight as ‘perfect’, and anything else as something less.
I have been persecuted, for most of my life, by a variety of shallow, hateful, and often self-hating people – some of them very close to me, people who should have loved and supported me – for not being thin. (For much of my life, I wasn’t even overweight – just over what they thought I ‘should’ weigh.) For the record, I don’t know what I weigh these days, and haven’t for some years, because I don’t possess any bathroom scales. I am 5’5” and a British size 18.
In recent years, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am never going to be a thin person. The body I have works well, and I take steps to keep it healthy. Eating healthily is good for everyone. So is getting regular, enjoyable exercise and taking time out to relax. BUT…..trying to reach a number on a scale is not part of that, and doesn’t have to be.
Some people may not believe this. They’ll say that they ‘care’ about my health, that I’m killing myself by being bigger than a certain size. I know, from experience, that people who say this often aren’t bothered about my health, because some of the same people were saying how wonderfully ‘healthy’ I looked at my lowest weight ever, when I was in fact ill.
The facts about weight and health are exaggerated. There is actually very little evidence of an ‘obesity epidemic’. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the overweight may be healthier than those of ‘ideal’ weight, and that even the very obese are healthier than the underweight (and the sort of bodies you see in the movies and on TV are often very underweight). Very little unbiased research is allowed to reach the popular media, because too much advertising revenue – from weight loss clinics, diet clubs, the makers of artificial low-fat and low-carb foods, the writers of diet books, surgeons, and drug companies – depends on it.
Further…diets DO NOT WORK. (Even if they stress that they’re ‘not a diet’.) Restricting calories doesn’t work the same way for everyone – one person on a given diet may lose a lot more weight than another, and it doesn’t mean one of them is ‘cheating’ – just that people are individuals, and their bodies work in different ways. People who cannot stick to diets are NOT weak-willed and greedy. They’re human – humans need to eat, and even many so-called ‘sensible’ diets fall well within the WHO definition of malnutrition. I forget who said it, but someone rightly pointed out that losing weight is as easy as holding your breath…keeping the weight off is as easy as keeping on holding your breath. People who keep off all the weight for even five years after losing it – yes, even after gastric bypass surgery! – are very, very rare. Dieting screws up your metabolism, and most people who diet end up fatter than they started.
In short, we are being sold a big fat lie.
Google the authors Paul Campos and Gina Kolata, for starters, and you’ll find some information that may surprise you. The information is out there, if you just know where to find it.
Get the facts. Stop dieting, throw away the pills, ignore the magazines. Stop hating and punishing yourself. Start loving your body and really looking after it, and you will be the size and shape you’re supposed to be. That probably won’t be the image in the media. But that’s just an image. You’re a real person. You deserve love, respect, and a life. And that applies no matter what size you are.
