POST #8
BODY ACCEPTANCE V FAT ACCEPTANCE
When I first started this journey I was confused about clothes. I wanted to look good and, I’d lost some weight, so I thought I’d be able to find out about clothes whilst I continued loosing weight and be ideally in a position to get that fabulous wardrobe by the time I got to my goal weight.
Of course that didn’t happen. I stopped loosing weight for a start and gained what I’d lost back plus a bit more, but more importantly I found out about body acceptance and fat acceptance. My goal in searching was to find a way to make peace with myself, once I’d lost all the fat of course.
What I found instead was the world of fat acceptance or the ‘fatosphere’. The fatosphere is an online community of blogs about, predominantly life being fat.
If you were anything like me at the time you would expect this to be a litany of self-hatred of body bashing. Not so. In fact the fatosphere is a positive environment for fat people where they spearhead the fat acceptance movement. In the fatosphere diet talk and body bashing are banished and replaced with support and real world advice about combating the many, many pressures to be other than what you are, ie thin.
Fat acceptance is very different from body acceptance. Fat acceptance is a political movement whilst body acceptance is a fiercely person journey that takes place within each person. Fat acceptance is the fight against discrimination based on body size. Body acceptance is finding peace with yourself no matter what shape or size you are.
Fat discrimination happens. It happens in the job market, in happens in the dating world, it happens on the street, at the doctors, in schools, at the mall, at home, everywhere. I sincerely doubt there is a single fat person out there who has not experienced discrimination in one way or another at some point in their life.
And you know what; it’s wrong. It just is. I don’t know why some people hate fat people, but they do. And now, fat shaming and blaming is so rampant that even if you don’t actually have a problem with size, it’s probably not safe to say so. And that is a sad indictment on our world and it makes place like the fatosphere extremely valuable and very necessary.
That said, I personally, want to turn my sights toward body acceptance. I’m a fledgling blogger. I adore writing. Actually I adore communication in any respect, but writing is something that brings me an enormous amount of joy. I want to write all the time. Unfortunately I haven’t become the uber successful blogger I plan to be yet so I still have a day job. And I write in whatever spare time I can muster up.
I have doubts about my ability. I thought I would be instantly good at this, but, not so much. The biggest problem I have is my doubt expresses itself as body hatred.
Because I spent so long invested in the fantasy of being thin I berate myself constantly about the size and shape of my body. Especially if I’ve tried something new and been anything other than immediately successful. Out come the recriminations. If I were thinner. If I didn’t have such big breasts. If my thighs were smaller. On and on and on. And I know the spots that I’m sensitive so I poke them ruthlessly.
I need to accept me as I am; my body that is. I’m fat; I’m also beautiful.
I plan to stop saying that actually. I’m not fat. I’m just me.
Lisa
Jose says
Yep! Green leafy vtebeagles, raw vtebeagles, apples, foods that are rich in fiber. Fiber always did it for me. Eating these healthy foods on a daily basis will assist in weight loss whether they make you go to the bathroom or not. And drinking lots of water is excellent for ridding the body of toxins and losing weight.