It's not an easy thing to do and a lot of people say it's not healthy to love your fat because it's killing you. But the irony in this riddle is that you can't lose the weight or start treating yourself the way you should to move on without that unconditional love.
Of course it's far more complicated than that. Self Esteem is tied to appearance and our society still shuns the overweight and for a lot of good reasons. But it doesn't make it right, that shame is painful and so is being obese. There is a lot of pain involved in the relationship between mind and body or the actual break.
Our relationship to food has broken down and our relationship to where it comes from is non-existant in a lot of places in this Country. There is a connection to this and to the amount of money that is poured into advertising for food we shouldn't eat.
Salon has an interview with David Kessler regarding his book, The End of Overeating. America doesn't have a self control problem, it's just more complicated than that. And more and more people have a self image problem because they believe that they've failed. They think they've failed every single day they can't lose weight, they can't resist food or they just can't get out of bed.
What do you think is the biggest misconceptions about why people overeat?
That it's a matter of willpower, that you can just use self-control. I think a lot of people don't understand why it's so hard to resist food.
What is going on in the brain when you start thinking about a very desirable food, like a potato chip or a chocolate-chip cookie?
The power of food comes not only from its taste but from that anticipation. That anticipation is based on prior experience, learning and memory. Something's going to set off that anticipation, those thoughts of wanting.
When I'm flying into San Francisco airport, as soon as the plane hits the ground, I start thinking about Chinese dumplings at the airport food court because I've been there before. It creates that arousal, that slight anxiety. And what does that do? It grabs our attention. It occupies our working memory. Our brains get activated. We can now look at the imaging of which circuits and areas of the brain get activated, and we see in millions of people that anticipation results in excess activation of the amygdala, part of the brain's reward circuits.
It's about the reconditioning of the human brain and it is being shoved down our throats, that we deserve this break, this treat, that we deserve to indulge. And a lot of people think so to.
Am I saying that we can't change? Of course not, but this change can't start at a point of self loathing. And your judgment doesn't help. Your comments and sneering doesn't help. There are so many things in our society that doesn't help.
So when I talk about fat acceptance, I'm not talking about accepting the fact that you are fat and live with it. I'm talking about the starting point and recognizing that before you can lose weight you have to be at peace with yourself as you are.
I want to share this piece from Utne Reader because well, it's much better than what I could write here. It's an issue that many women and men deal with and it's gone too far. Stop the hating.
Love Your Fat Self
by Courtney E. Martin, from the book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body
Sizeism remains the only truly socially acceptable form of discrimination on the planet. We see living in a fat body as an insurmountable disability. Nearly a decade ago, the feminist therapist Mary Pipher wrote that "fat is the leprosy of the 1990s." Today fat is the death penalty of the 21st century. Skinny girls, counting their carrot sticks for lunch, can’t imagine being lovable at that size, applying for a job at that size, even living at that size. When I asked 14-year-old Manhattanites how their lives would be different if they were fat, they were struck silent. After a few moments, one responded, "I would be dead."
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Conflating obesity with laziness or stupidity is an inaccurate habit of linking a physical trait, in this case fatness, with personality. This is equivalent to believing that all smokers or anorexics are incompetent. Just the fact that someone is genetically predisposed to fatness and struggles with the complex psychological implications of food and body image does not disqualify her from being brilliant, talented, and effective. As obvious as this sounds, many of the health professionals I spoke to about this issue aired an unmistakable tone of disdain for fat patients. While they were able to empathize with women who undereat, the idea of overeating sent them into a dispassionate laundry list of how to decrease input and increase output—as if people were machines.
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Our all-or-nothing nation is built on foundations of fantasy. Our imaginations are harnessed to America’s favorite adolescent fantasy: how much prettier, thinner, richer, and more successful we will be one day. This perpetual American daydream is written in the language of "somedays." Someday whispers us to sleep at night, gets us through a boring workday, makes our little lives bearable. The hundreds of ads the average American sees every day brainwash us into believing that we need more shiny, new things and, of course, food—glorious piles of chocolate chip cookies, decadent ice cream, burgers the size of elephants. "Someday" soothes insecurities, numbs discomfort, and keeps perfect girls running obediently in the hamster wheel of preoccupation with their weight. Someday we will be thin. Translation: Someday we will be happy, loved, and powerful.
But even those precious few who get to this someday destination aren’t happy or better. If you live fat in your head, then you are fat. If you believe you are unattractive, you will experience the world as an unattractive woman. If you hound yourself about everything you put in your mouth, you won’t enjoy eating. Regardless of the number on the scale, if the number inside your head is large, insurmountable, and loaded with meaning, then you will feel weighed down by its implications.
This is the heart of the matter: A starving person can ache just as deeply inside a thin body. Our dissatisfaction is never, at its deepest, about our bodies. This is why fat women and thin women often experience the world in similar ways. If a thin woman feels inadequate and "thinks fat," she may endure less hate coming from the outside in than a fat woman does, but just as much criticism and sadness from the inside out. Likewise, if a woman of any size is able to stop her negative self-talk and accept herself, she may experience the world with a little peace of mind.
Six page piece, I felt this still falls under "fair use".
My body is not the enemy and neither is yours. We are not our bodies either, they are the glorious tools we use to live in this world and whether we are connected to them can be an indication of not just physical health but our mental well being. My goal is not necessarily to be thin but to be connected and to love this gift that I was given in the form of life. And loving that means adoring it in the state is it in now to start my journey to healthier state down the road.
Just as it takes one day at a time it takes one step at a time, if it means walking two steps the first day, it's starting. Love your body at whatever size you may be at, it's yours and you deserve to love it just as much as anyone else.