I was inspired today by this blog entry from the great Lesley over at Fatshionista.
It's about time I dug deep and wrote my own personal history with this issue.
I have not always been a fat girl. When I was a little kid I was constantly made fun of for being short and skinny. I was always in the front row in class pictures, on or near the end. My son is now in this position, being 7 years old and only 40 lbs. Everyone in my family was a small baby. Every woman in my family has small babies. As children, we've all been petite.
In high school I fluctuated between a size 4 and 8, depending on time of year, whether I was on some crazy self-imposed diet, or where I was buying my clothes. I'd always been fairly busty, filling out a 36C by the end of freshman year, but the rest of me was generally small. I always thought of myself as fat, like most teenage girls seem to. I went through phases of counting calories, eating only certain foods, exercising in my room for hours on end... but the plain truth was, I was in no way fat, I loved food, and I was making myself insane for it. My metabolism was at a rate that I honestly could have been eating whatever I wanted all the time and still only weighed 125. But that's not what society tells us. That's not what our mothers and friends, and even our friend's mothers tell us. I can't even count how many times someone said to me, "you're lucky you can eat that, but it's going to catch up with you." Which of course was the be all, end all of teenage existence. NOT THE FAT! NO! ANYTHING BUT THAT! I'd lose 10lbs, gain back, lose 5 more, gain back 15. Eat nothing but steamed white rice with 2 spritzes of lo-cal butter spray and drinking my mom's crystal light. Only to raid the snack cabinet by the end of the week and devour every last ding dong and fruit roll-up in record time.
I love food. Only as an adult have I been able to really admit that and embrace it. I cook a full meal for my family atleast 4 times a week. I love cooking. I love trying new vegetables and playing around with spices. The bulk of our meat consumption is chicken and fish, with the occasional beef dish thrown in. We eat lots of foods that would be considered "super-foods": salmon, black beans, red potatoes, asparagus, etc. I bake with soy and millet flours, and put flax seed meal in almost everything. We don't keep junky snack foods in the house. We only eat out a couple times a month. We are all moderately active... yet I weigh 200 lbs. My boyfriend of 3 years, who eats more fruit than I do, but also consumes much more salt and drinks 3 to 6 beers most nights, weighs about 30 lbs less than I do. I have a job where I am on my feet the entire shift, he has a job where he sits about 80% of the time. And people say it's all about how much and what you eat, and getting exercise. Bull. Genetics, my friend. Unless you want to go to extremes.
I know a thing or two about extremes. My mother yo-yo dieted my entire childhood. She'd be a size 6, then a size 10, then a size 16, then back down to a 10 or 12. She did weight watchers, liquid only fasting, the zone, jenny craig, atkins, nutrisystem, south beach, slim-fast, protein power plan, step-aerobics, weigh down workshop, every diet book ever endorsed by Oprah... Three years ago she made a major lifestyle change and cut out ALL sugar and flour from her diet. She now wears a size 2 and has maintained the weight. But my mother is a rare breed of crazy that can actually do things like that and stick with them. But, the bottom line is, she is no "healthier" today than she was then. The years of back and forth made her blood-pressure permanently high, she's anemic, and she is not in good physical shape. In this most recent program, she cut out all exercise and became almost completely sedentary. I could probably outrun her. I'd be flopping all over in the process, but running nonetheless. I'm a size 16 and also have high blood pressure and take an iron supplement for anemia. Doesn't that show right there that genetics certainly play a part in this? That she could weight 85 lbs less than me and we still have the exact same health problems? I see no reason to starve myself or become obsessive-compulsive about food just to be smaller with the exact same ailments.
I don't know if I'm one of the good fatties or bad fatties. I don't care. I eat fairly healthy, but I love diet soda and drink A LOT of it. I get more exercise than a lot of people who are smaller than me, but don't really go out of my way to get it. My job has me on my feet. If I had a job where I sat, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to find much activity elsewhere.
Watch this!!
The bottom line is, I like the way I am. I love myself. I love wearing the clothes I wear and being the person I am. I'm in decent shape, but could easily find you thin people in worse shape than me and fat people in better shape than me. I'm pretty middle of the road. In some circles I am "the fat girl", but when I walk into Lane Bryant I'm one of their "skinny" customers. I have a wonderful boy who loves me, an active and healthy sex life, great friends, a son who is pretty much the coolest person I've ever met, and a job I enjoy about 90% of the time. I'm me, I am the way I am, and there's nothing wrong with it. Take it or leave it.
As an afterthought, I figured I may as well provide a list of the sites I read daily, that have helped me on my road to self acceptance and body love.
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