Back in March, my annual physical results came in. My A1C and cholesterol were up, and my GFR was down. As you do, I made some tweaks to my diet to get things back to where they needed to be, to where they always had been. It wasn’t easy. I’m no kind of cook, though I do know how to choose healthy foods. I’m just not really a fan, and I don’t know how to cook most of them so they’re edible. I did some research. I came up with a few recipes. I stopped adding salt to proteins. I stopped buying the delicious cookies I’d discovered at Whole Foods a few months earlier and subsequently devoured every weekend. I switched to water only, all the time. By early May, I sat squarely in narrow diet land, and discovered something I hadn’t considered. I’d lost weight. A significant amount, in fact. I was baffled and confused. Not your typical reaction to weight loss, right? My loss left me at a loss.
In our culture, weight is, inevitably, well, a loaded topic. For women especially, the patriarchy’s expectation of thinness burdens us throughout our lifetimes. Thinness equals value — the thinner you are, the more valuable you are to society. Fat people, and especially fat women, face cruelty and challenges daily, from fatphobia on instagram to medical malpractice from dismissive doctors, and hundreds more micro- and macroaggressions while just living our lives. We post a photo of ourselves on social media enjoying a fun brunch with our girls, and the comments come rolling in. We’re either surprisingly confident (how brave of you to leave the house looking like that!), promoting obesity (just by existing!), or hooottttt. For years, I’ve been a proud member of the body positive movement. Coming from a childhood filled with negativity and cruelty regarding weight, I spent YEARS working towards loving myself as a plus size woman. And I got there. Y’all. I love my body. I mean, I hate that muscle in my back that likes to pretend I’ve injured it, but all the rest, I love. I spend my dollars at plus size stores that want me. I call out stores that don’t. I post pics of the healthy food I’m eating, and the unhealthy food. I snap shots after sweaty workouts and show the world fat women are working out, eating whatever we want, and living our best lives. We are fat AND beautiful, and we are proud! We are not promoting obesity! We are promoting loving yourself right now, all of you, as you are. If I can, you can! I was what some call a small to medium fat, and I always tried to leave room for the women in the community who had done the work before me, and who put up with more abuse than I did because they were far more visible, and far fatter. I value endlessly the women, especially the women of color, who’ve fought for the body positive movement, and gotten it to the place it is today. I’m proud to belong to this community. I love my fellow fat women, and the support I’ve received and witnessed is an awesome thing to behold.
And this is why I’m lost. Why this weight loss hits me so hard. I can no longer call myself fat, though the fat person inside doesn’t just go away. I respect the word, and those who’ve claimed it. For me, fat meant plus sizes, and I don’t wear plus sizes anymore. Tonight, I bought a pair of size 14 jeans. I didn’t want this weight loss. I don’t know what to do with it. I know it sounds absurd to say that, but that’s because our society so values being thinner. It’s another thing I’ve fought, as a body positive person. I’ve encouraged my friends to love themselves, to work towards health, not a smaller number on the scale. I don’t believe losing weight makes me more valuable. In fact, it’s a nuisance. I still can’t afford more clothes. I like the clothes I was wearing. I worked hard to assemble a wardrobe I enjoyed wearing, over many years. And now I’m having to pick up items wherever I can afford them, so I don’t sport baggy-ass jeans at work.
I feel disconnected from a community I so loved being a part of. As soon as I discovered plus size bloggers, I knew I’d found my people. Women who loved fashion, clothing, dressing up, and eating? Love at first sight. Women who knew, deep in their hearts, we didn’t have to let go of our style and fashion sense just because we weighed more than clothing designers were comfortable with. I even joined them for a bit, blogging about the clothing lines I’d recently discovered, and anyone that dared to not make plus size fashion. You don’t like my fat? That sounds like YOUR problem! I love my fellow fats, and felt the love from them, too. These people taught me so much about what it truly means to embrace yourself. It’s no wonder that just a few years after being immersed in this community, I finally began therapy to deal with my childhood trauma. Because of the support and inspiration I’ve received, I felt strong enough to work for and deserve the best version of myself.
So what do I do now? Where do we go from here? I will continue to lift up the community, and speak up where I can. My inner fat will always be there, and in 5 years, when I’ve put it all back on, I’ll still have my clothes, because of course I’m keeping everything. But I know the pain of hearing my straight size friends call themselves fat, and I would never want to inflict that on anyone. I will do my best to watch what I say, and what I claim. I will ALWAYS remind friends that food has no moral or ethical value, and that you aren’t good or bad for eating something. Oh, yeah, I’m always going to be that asshole. And I realize this whole thing may be a bit overly dramatic. But if there’s one thing an adult with a traumatic childhood seeks, it’s external reassurance. I finally found a community, a family, if you will, and now I’m possibly losing them because of a thing I did. It’s an achingly familiar feeling, and a terrifying one. This loss hits the already-hurt part of me, and I’m working through it as best I can. Throughout this journey I’ve surprised myself with my responses. Anger, frustration, annoyance, happiness, optimism, fear, sadness. No one is more surprised than me, and it just goes to show you that weight loss really isn’t the solution to your problems.
