There are some who feel that fat acceptance is defeatist, that it promotes the notion that if you’re fat, you might as well give up and eat all the junk food in the world. I have to admit i find this somewhat bizarre, because i just don’t get that at all.
And then today something kind of clicked in my head. I’m going to see if i can put it into words that make sense outside of my head.
“Accepting one’s fat” does not equal “accepting one’s fate”. Generally the latter phrase is associated with Giving Up The Good Fight. Accept your fate, come to the Dark Side.
For those who see weight loss as a Good Fight, fat is a fate worse than death. They’ve had bad experiences with it, perhaps - maybe they found they had poor health when they were fat, or maybe they’ve known someone who was fat and in bad health. Maybe they’ve experienced the social ostracism that can come from being fat. Maybe they’ve had a relationship where the other person broke up with them (or threatened to do so) because of a weight issue.
So yes, for people who see thin as better than fat - whatever the reason - giving up the pursuit of thin is “accepting one’s fate”. But let’s look at some of those reasons.
Reason: “I used to be fat, and i had all sorts of health problems that went away when i lost weight.”
If that’s your experience, i’m not going to try refute it: i’m not the one living in your body. If you found that losing weight made you feel physically better, then good for you. I’m glad you feel better. However, since we are now dealing in the realm of experiential evidence (at your behest, might i add), let me state that there are people who have not had that same experience. There are some folks who found that their health problems were lessened after they gained weight, or that losing weight did not change their health in any way. And there are some folks who are fat and have no health problems. There are even people who found that losing weight caused health problems for them.
Is it possible to have weight-related health issues? Yes. It is possible to have health issues that are contributed to by being too fat, just as it is possible to have health issues that are contributed to by being too thin. Here’s the problem: all bodies are different. A weight that might be too fat/thin for one person might be a healthy weight for someone else. What works for you may not work for me.
One of the most common arguments against Fat Acceptance is that we avoid talking about or dealing with the subject of the health of someone who is 400 pounds. This is something that has come up both inside and outside of the FA community.
Not many people have honestly known someone who was 400 pounds or more. I have. To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t have nearly as many health problems as his wife - who was about 110 pounds soaking wet. In any case, i found him to be a caring individual who i enjoyed knowing. We never talked about his health, and if we had? I certainly wouldn’t have passed any moral judgments on him for any issues he might have had.
This is where i’ll admit to having had some difficulty remaining neutral: i have health conditions that are not caused by my being fat. I will continue to have these conditions for the rest of my life, regardless of my weight. Accepting this fact is not accepting defeat. It is an acknowledgment of my limitations, but that acknowledgment actually improves my quality of life: i do not attempt to do that which will hurt me, even if it doesn’t hurt someone else. For me, there is no good or bad health: there are only better and worse days. (For the record: i found that my health problems were at their worst when i was at my thinnest.)
That being said: i do believe it is possible to be fat enough that it worsens a person’s health - with the caveat that i do not believe that fat is the primary cause of their health issues. Furthermore: health and fat are not moral issues.
Reason: “All of the fat people i’ve known ate poorly and were in bad health.”
Again, i have no idea who you do and don’t know. I cannot and will not attempt to argue about someone else’s experiences. In my experience, i’ve known people who ate poorly - some were fat, some were thin. I’ve known people who ate well - again, some were fat, some were thin.
Are some people fat because they eat a lot of food? Yes. However, that does not mean that any single person out there has any right to treat them (or anyone else) poorly.
Reason: “No one wants to hang out with fat people.” / “No one finds fat people sexually attractive.”
Correction: you might not want to hang out with fat people. And you know what? That’s entirely your prerogative. You are welcome to choose your own friends. All i ask is that you recognize that there are people for whom weight is irrelevant to how they judge a person’s character. Not everyone has the same criteria by which they choose their friends and relationships.
And again: it is you who might not find fat people sexually attractive. That’s also entirely okay. Attraction is entirely subjective.
For my part, i have no interest in being in a relationship (be it intimate or otherwise) where i am not liked and appreciated. You can do your own thing, i’ll be over here doing my own thing. And that’s perfectly fine. My time is no more or less important than yours, and i have no interest in wasting it.
Claim: “My relationship went down the tubes when i gained weight, and got better when i lost weight.”
This one’s a doozy. The knee-jerk reaction is to get the impression that physical attraction was the primary factor of the relationship, and that that’s a bad thing. However, i recognize that is not always the case. Physical attraction is a very important part of any intimate relationship. I do feel that when it comes to life-long relationships, predicating the health of the relationship on the weight of one (or both) of the people involved is an emotional land-mine.
In this sort of situation, it is never a simple black and white thing across the board. There are a myriad of possible reasons for the weight gain - so many that i don’t feel i could begin to describe them. Even if i had that kind of energy, i don’t think it’s appropriate or necessary to do so. Whatever the case, the decision on how to handle this issue is solely the responsibility of the people involved. If it is not my relationship, it’s not really my business. It is not my place to say “you’d be better off without them”, or “you should do whatever is necessary to repair the relationship.” I’m not the one who has to live with the consequences; i think we all need to bear in mind that it is incredibly easy to have a strong opinion on something that does not affect your daily life.
Now then, since we’ve gone over the reasons why someone might feel that accepting one’s fat = accepting one’s fate, let’s look into the other half of the equation.
Question: What does it mean to “accept your fat”?
We have to split hairs and get into semantics briefly:
- Accepting that you are fat means that you understand that you are not thin.
- Accepting that you are a fat person means that you understand that you are not a thin person.
The two statements are similar, yet can be taken very differently. The former can be very simply a statement of body size, whereas the second can imply aspects of personhood, or aspects of personality. In both meanings, there are folks who would view this as a statement of character. Part of “accepting your fat” means to acknowledge that fat is a physical characteristic, not a mental/emotional/moral characteristic.
Accepting your body (be it fat or thin) is an important aspect of accepting your self. Some would argue that it is shallow and immature to define one’s self based on one’s body. I agree, but only in that there is more to the self than the physical shell that contains the soul. Accepting your body is part of accepting your self - it’s not the whole shebang.
I think the bit that trips people up about accepting your fat is that it means accepting that you are not thin. If we’re to believe the stereotypes, it means that accepting your fat means subjecting yourself to a life of bad health, social ostracism and sexual abstinence - and denying yourself good health, social acceptance and bone-crunchingly good sex. But if we’re to take a closer look at the subjectiveness of the reasons for why fat is supposedly such a sad fate to accept, the argument that “fat acceptance is defeatist” doesn’t hold water.
February 15, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Well said.
February 15, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Hmm. I’m conflicted. Not with other people’s decision to accept fat– if it works for you, then do what feels good and fuck the critics. In my case, things are not so straightforward. Maybe they never ever, for anyone.
Long story short: Bulimic through my teens and early 20s, I ended up fat through crazy, financially damaging binge-eating. In the past year, I’ve lost weight. I can’t say how much, because I no longer weigh myself– size-wise, I went from about a 20 to an 8/10. Nor can I say what changed. All of a sudden, I felt okay, not desparate to eat every minute of the day, not always planning what I’d eat next.
For some people, weight loss is not a healthy possiblility. But for me, (and yes, for other fat people I’ve known) it has been. Left to its own devices, my body is starting to find its natural state. Which begs the question: why not lose?
I began reading FA websites shortly after I began losing, and I love a lot of what I’ve found in the movement. It reminds me not to dwell on food, reinforces my decision to forsake the scale FOREVER, and encourages me to continue regular physical activity. But it sucks to read that oft-repeated line, “95% of people who lose weight gain it back.” Yeah, I guess I could have (another) nervous breakdown and relapse into disordered eating… but I’d really perfer not to, thanks.
Similarly, “accpeting” fat would have required accepting behaviour that was controlling my life. It wasn’t physically unhealthy, but it was definately mentally unhealthy. No, not all fat people overeat– but I did! Is there room in the FA movement to accept that Health at Every Size may often be accompanied by weight loss?
February 15, 2008 at 10:42 pm
GB: I’m not sure where you are getting your information from, but I don’t know of a single legit FA source that says FA is about getting and staying fat at all costs. All we are saying is that the scale itself will not tell you how “healthy” you are (or anyone else is) or how “healthy” your habits (or anyone else’s) are. If you are truly meant to be a smaller size than you are, or were, there’s nothing anyone could possibly do to stop you.
But FA-ers are not here to hand out angel wings for weight loss, either. You can get those almost anywhere else. That’s NOT the same thing as saying, “Please keep bingeing, we don’t care how painful it is for you, as long as you stay fat enough for us.” Not by a long shot.
And Lindsay, I love this post. Especially this:
This is where i’ll admit to having had some difficulty remaining neutral: i have health conditions that are not caused by my being fat. I will continue to have these conditions for the rest of my life, regardless of my weight. Accepting this fact is not accepting defeat.
THANK YOU. I’m not going to run around telling everyone my health is perfect. It’s not. Never has been. However, it wasn’t any better when I was much thinner, and in fact improvement in many of my health issues has had a net result of serious weight gain (from medications). I really cannot stand this assumption that fat + medical issue –> weight loss cures/prevents medical issue. Of course all fat people aren’t “healthy.” How could we be? Not all thinner people are, either.
February 15, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Yeah, don’t want your angel wings, Meowser. Nor did I request them– the societal benefits that accompany conformity are more than sufficent, thanks.
I don’t think I put my point across very well. The thing is, I lost weight practicing HAES, (even before I knew what HAES was). Start feeling pretty good. And it is troubling to read, “you’re gonna gain that back, sukka!” when the only way I could is to return to some pretty sick habits.
There was a more substantive part to what I wanted to write, howver, that goes more to the post at hand, and my feeling conflicted. This is, the degree to which my life has improved. Looking different has made me feel different, and it scares me. People respond to me differently than the did during thelast five years of my life, and I am more outgoing, friendly, etc. Changing my fat has changed my fate, even though I know intellectually that I could have changed my fate without any weight loss, (and that the end to my disordered eating only *happened* to go along with physical changes.)
This post stirred up a nagging feeling that I have only been paying lip service to HAES. It would have been far harder for me to do so if HAES had not resulted in weight loss. I would have felt my fat, and thus my fate, were sealed.
It’s late. I appreciate the post, these are just some of the things it brought to mind. Nighty-night.
February 15, 2008 at 11:48 pm
And then there is the mental health aspect of it. When I was dieting very strictly and exercising a lot, I might have looked ‘healthier’ than I ever had (though still not slim) but in my mind, it was becoming so that getting out of bed in the morning was not worth the effort. The depression I hadn’t seen since I was a teen (slim) was back and it was dead scary.
I had starved my brain of good fats. I had drained my body of B12 and iron through not eating enough to meet the exercise demands and the demands of my thyroid condition. I had worn out my adrenal glands with too much exercise so that even now exercise no longer makes me feel good. It just enervates me.
Now I am fat again (surprise surprise) and making sure I only do what I feel like and eat what I feel like. Guess what, the depression is gone. I would rather be fat and happy than thin and miserable (or dead!). That is not accepting my fate, that is making a choice to be happy. I was never going to be slim anyway, no matter how hard I tried, and even before I gave it up, my body was rebelling and gaining again.
GB, HAES is about eating and living well, not calling attention to weight. Some people may lose a little weight, some people may lose a lot, some may lose none or even gain weight. That is not the point. Or, looking at it another way, that IS the point. The point is to be healthy and not care what size you end up.
February 16, 2008 at 12:05 am
“I don’t think I put my point across very well. The thing is, I lost weight practicing HAES, (even before I knew what HAES was). Start feeling pretty good. And it is troubling to read, “you’re gonna gain that back, sukka!” when the only way I could is to return to some pretty sick habits.”
GB, of course there’s room in the FA movement to accept weight loss caused by following HAES. The problem the FA movement has is with dieting specifically in order to lose weight. You lost weight through intuitive eating rather than food restriction, and weight loss was not your goal, improved health was. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no need to be troubled by reading “95% regain the weight” because if you are at the weight you’re meant to be as a result of HAES and real intuitive eating, if you didn’t get there by restricting your food intake and exercising obsessively, then you’re going to be fine. The 95% who regain are dieters, which by all accounts you are not. If the only way you could gain weight is by returning to unhealthy habits then practising HAES will not result in regain - sounds like you’re at your natural set point, which is a fantastic place to be. The FA bit is really about saying “well, I’m healthy like this and that’s great. If I gain weight and continue to be healthy, that’s also fine.” We don’t exclude people who lose weight. We don’t exclude thin people. We only ask that nobody talks about their weight loss as if it deserves praise (which, don’t worry, I didn’t think you were doing), and that nobody tries to tell us we should lose weight.
February 16, 2008 at 11:03 am
‘There are some who feel that fat acceptance is defeatist..’
Because they don’t know and often don’t care or understand what it is about.
And there are few things more defeatist than failing day after day to diet whilst, unknowling keeping your depression going and stoking up your eating compulsion, the former making every little movement feel like a herculean effort, hardly conducive to exercising.
And what’s with GB, you lost weight on a diet, how is it possible to be offended by a statistic? If you can beat those odds you can beat ‘em, all you can do is what you’re doing, the rest is not up to you but the caprices of your metabolism.
When I was trying to lose weight, I didn’t care in the end if the odds were a million to one, I was going to keep trying I wasn’t ‘disturbed’ by the truth, I just carried on regardless.
February 16, 2008 at 11:12 am
Sorry ‘unknowling’, should read, ‘unknowingly’.
February 16, 2008 at 11:50 am
GB I just want to say as a fellow FA newbie who has also lost a good deal of weight through intuitive eating, there’s plenty of room for us in the movement. Our disordered eating was our problem. Now that we’re eating better, our bodies are finding their natural sizes. I, for one, celebrate finding better health and a more ordered life. I don’t know what size my body will end up being when my weight finishes balancing out, but I do know that HAES is called Health at EVERY size for a reason. Bodies come in all sizes and shapes. If you’re eating properly and getting moderate exercise, then you’re going to be healthier than if you are eating in a disordered manner, whether you would be eating too much, too little, or just entirely the wrong things. Disordered eating is what FA and HAES battle against, not a specific body size or amount of weight loss.
Overcoming bulimia must have been a tremendous struggle. That you’ve managed to do it successfully is something to be celebrated. I don’t think there’s a person in the FA movement who would argue against that. If once in a while we forget in our enthusiasm to mention that, please try not to take it personally. Remember that we’re trying to get people to think in terms of loving their bodies rather than fighting them and a lot more people out there are trying desperately to lose weight their bodies need than otherwise.
As for you, Lindsay, thank you. This is a great post with plenty of food for thought. If it makes just one person examine their own knee-jerk reaction to fat, then it’s well worth the effort.
February 16, 2008 at 10:38 pm
I’ve yet to meet a formerly fat person whose problems were all solved through weight loss, although a few that insisted on it who were in glaring denial.
Fat acceptance is not fatalism and is most certainly not feederism. In its own paradoxical way, it’s the first step to real change: by accepting yourself as you are, you actually have more power to make changes in your life.
February 17, 2008 at 7:50 pm
GB: Before I developed an eating disorder, I weighed 300 pounds. I lost 175 pounds via the eating disorder, and now that I have been in recovery and striving towards HAES and intuitive eating, I’ve regained about 60 pounds. I’m still fat, but I’m not as fat as I was before. Never have I felt unwelcome in the FA movement.
And it is troubling to read, “you’re gonna gain that back, sukka!” when the only way I could is to return to some pretty sick habits.
But it sucks to read that oft-repeated line, “95% of people who lose weight gain it back.”
It’s important to note here, 95 percent of dieters who lose weight gain it back.
There’s a big difference between losing weight via HAES and losing weight via dieting or disordered eating. The latter are not sustainable and actually foster weight fluctuations and weight gain. HAES promotes a healthy relationship with food and body image, and often results in the body settling into its natural set point range.
You ask, “Why not lose?” I think your priorities are misplaced here. HAES emphasizes wellness, not weight loss. Sure, adopting healthier and intuitive eating habits may result in weight loss for some (not all), but weight loss shouldn’t be the goal here: wellness should.
Great post, Lindsay.
February 18, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I am SO behind on responses. Yeeks.
Nix: Thank you.
GB: By now i think that this has already been really well covered by several other commenters, but let me reiterate. The FA community is not against people who lose weight; rather, we are against dieting for the sole purpose of weight loss. HAES is not solely about what a person eats, but about living a healthy life. If you rock the HAES casbah and lose weight, then the only person who’d get upset with you is someone who doesn’t understand what HAES or FA are really all about.
Meowser: Dude, my health has been crap since day one. Seriously. I’ll spare you the (rather lengthy) list, but the health issues started way before the weight issues did. If i were truly being defeatist about it, i’d have killed myself long ago - because there are issues that are NOT going to go away. Ever.
Keechypeachy: Excellent point! There is more to health than purely physical health. That gets forgotten so often - thank you for reminding me.
wriggles: if i’m to understand correctly, GB did not lose weight by dieting, but by following HAES (GB, feel free to correct me if i’m wrong). Dieting for weight loss DOES have a large failure rate over long periods of time, but HAES tends to even out and remain fairly stable. So to have kicked some rather unhealthy habits and start doing HAES, only to be told that it’s going to fail? Yeah, i can see why they might be upset.
Twistie: I really appreciate the eloquence of your comments; they are quite beautifully said. Thank you, i appreciate them.
Di said, “by accepting yourself as you are, you actually have more power to make changes in your life.” … Di, it’s so simple that i think it confuses people. I think i remember there being a taoist or buddhist koan about something similar. Now i’m going to have to find it. Heh.
Rachel: You rock, as always.
February 19, 2008 at 12:48 pm
OK lindsay, I misunderstood GB, she was saying that after recovering from an ED, bulimia, she left her body to its own devices and practised HAES, she lost a lot of weight, fine. She is disturbed by the 95% regain weight figure, attributing it to herself, when this stat is about DIETING, (which is why I misread her) so actually doesn’t apply to her.
At the end of her first post she asked if there’s any room in FA for WL that occurs as a result of HAES, the short answer is of course yes, something that is said time and time again. Then suggesting that fat acceptance means preferring her to stay bulimic and fat rather than slim and recovered, that really annoyed me because we keep being accused of this kind of thing and it is not what FA is about at all.
January 1, 2009 at 4:06 am
[...] Accepting your fat vs. accepting your fate I think the bit that trips people up about accepting your fat is that it means accepting that you [...]