by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com
This quote makes an interesting point about how the way people perceive themselves affects everything from their political views, to their choices about what is best for them.
Those of us in the fat acceptance community often confront the difficulty of getting fellow fat folks to accept a fat identity. Like some poor folks not seeing themselves as currently poor and poor for the foreseeable future, fat folks often see themselves as temporarily embarrassed thin people. They’ve bought into the very persuasive argument that fatness is merely a temporary state, one that can be easily changed if you just work hard enough or have the luck of finding the right “lifestyle changes” or whatever.
Not that I blame fat people for believing that fat is temporary. Everywhere you turn, weight loss is being sold as a reality, something that works, a solution to the stresses of being fat in a fat-hating society.
The facts that weight is about as genetic as height, that 95% of people who diet gain the weight back within 3 to 5 years, 83% of people who diet gain back more weight than they lose, and 70% of weight variation can be accounted for by genetics[1], are all very hard to hear. When you’re constantly being sold the idea that fat is unhealthy, unattractive, undesirable, and worthy of discrimination and ridicule, you don’t want to hear that fatness may just be your lot in life. It’s very hard to identify as fat in a society that makes thinness a pinnacle of achievement.
I get that. I totally get it. It is hard to be fat in most of the world, and fat people may feel like they need the hope of eventually becoming thin to make it through.
But there are benefits to identifying as fat, or identifying as just having the body you have, rather than being a temporarily embarrassed thin person. I want to identify a couple of these benefits for you now.
So my bit of advice for this week is to stop seeing yourself as a temporarily embarrassed thin person and begin to see yourself as having a body that is perfectly normal and natural. Begin to see the power in identifying as fat. Allow it to change your worldview for this week. Let me know how it goes in the comment section below.
Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. To learn more about Golda and her work, click here.
“I scheduled a session with Golda because I thought she could really help me explore my body issues and learn to love myself how I am. I anticipated spending some time talking about my current body image and some past experiences that have affected it, as well as my goals for the future. Golda helped me map out what my ideas were for how I would like to see myself and treat my body. It was nice using her methods to imagine my future self-image and get some ideas on how to take small steps toward my goals. Anyone who has dreams of having a positive body image, a healthy relationship with food an…”
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