Do fat women who are Body-Positive really love being fat?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Perhaps because ignorant people comment negatively and nastily on fat people's bodies and weight all. of. the. time.

Fat person here. This. All day long. I don’t love being fat, I doubt anyone does. But I am so f$#&*%g tired of being looked down on, or ignored, or treated like a second class citizen because people assume I’m lazy, or dumb or whatever else (cue the aholes who will respond to this with those exact comments). Losing weight for me is really, really hard, because I hate going to the gym, have two small children, and yes, I don’t want to spend my life starving myself and working out that I hate just to please society. And I have two young girls that I don’t want to subject to body shaming or make self conscious of their own bodies. My mother obsessed about weight and being fat her whole life, and it has imprinted itself on my brain in negative talk. I do NOT want my daughters dealing with that. So yeah, I have learned to accept my body, teach them that women are beautiful at any size, it’s what’s inside that counts, and anyone who says otherwise can go pound sand.

OP here - thanks for this response! I’m sorry people are so rude. I have a daughter too, and I would never want her to feel badly about her weight. I imagine a campaign against rudeness would make more sense to me than the whole body love movement, though.

Would you say that to people born with severe genetic deformities? Dwarfism, limb differences, twisted spines, facial deformities? What about people who have lost limbs to accidents and war? Don't try to love and accept your body, just make sure people aren't rude to you about it. Would you want your daughter to feel bad about her body if she was missing an arm or a leg?

None of this will kill you.

They do lead to shorter life spans, yes they do.

Perhaps. But they are not a direct cause of death like obesity is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not familiar with the HAES movement, but I LOVE this blog on body acceptance, and o have been reading it for years. The author is a fitness instructor and semi professional dancer, and she is FAT!

https://danceswithfat.org

This is one of my favorite posts.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/danceswithfat.org/2011/06/17/the-trouble-with-proving-it/amp/

This post is amazing and deeply insightful. Thank you for sharing (signed, petite and thin woman who cannot do any of the things she demonstrates in this post).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do extremely thin women really love being thin? Do women with no breast or butt convince themselves that they look good? Do women with significant thigh gaps think they look good in spandex? You should love yourself and worry about you.

Worry about your health. Why are you shaming and judging thin women? Why are you evaluating orher women’s butt or breast size. Stop.

[Anonymous]

I'm overweight. I'm not THRILLED about it and sometimes wish I was smaller, but like another PP on this thread, I'm not willing to make the extreme diet and lifestyle changes that would be required for me to lose the 25 pounds I could stand to lose quickly.

I've been carrying those 25 pounds around for about 5 years. Before that, I was up at 5am to go to the gym, eating salads I hated every day for lunch, never getting dessert and doing a variety of other things to maintain my size that were not fun or affirming. I was also married to someone who was a major fat-shamer, such that if I gained a couple pounds on vacation, he'd make concern troll comments about it ("It'll be nice to be home from vacation so you can get back into your routine" or "I'm just worried about your health" when his 5'7" wife weighed 145 pounds instead of 140 pounds).

When we got divorced, I stopped the 5am gym torture and the salads and ordered cake if I felt like eating cake. I gained like 10 pounds. TBH, I loved my body because I did not feel like I was being judged all. the. time. A couple years later when I met my now-DH, I got to experience what it was like to be married to a person who truly appreciated my body rather than just seeing things that should be corrected.

I'd love to lose the 25 pounds, but I'm in a place where I know that happiness and love are not dependent on me killing myself on the treadmill every morning at dawn or eating things I hate.

[Anonymous]

IMO, overweight/fat really all depends on how you look at things. I have plenty of friends that are well over 200 lbs, but they are active, work out, eat reasonably, etc. They don't kill themselves, and I hang out with them enough to know they have plenty of "cheat" days. They may be "overweight" on paper, but they are so fit. I am very petite and in most people's eyes, I am thin and in shape, but in reality, I am in the worst shape of my life.

What is not good for anyone is being morbidly obese and just saying to yourself that it's okay and I love my body. It's not okay. It's not healthy. I would also say the same about someone who is 5'10" and 100 lbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps because ignorant people comment negatively and nastily on fat people's bodies and weight all. of. the. time.

Fat person here. This. All day long. I don’t love being fat, I doubt anyone does. But I am so f$#&*%g tired of being looked down on, or ignored, or treated like a second class citizen because people assume I’m lazy, or dumb or whatever else (cue the aholes who will respond to this with those exact comments). Losing weight for me is really, really hard, because I hate going to the gym, have two small children, and yes, I don’t want to spend my life starving myself and working out that I hate just to please society. And I have two young girls that I don’t want to subject to body shaming or make self conscious of their own bodies. My mother obsessed about weight and being fat her whole life, and it has imprinted itself on my brain in negative talk. I do NOT want my daughters dealing with that. So yeah, I have learned to accept my body, teach them that women are beautiful at any size, it’s what’s inside that counts, and anyone who says otherwise can go pound sand.

OP here - thanks for this response! I’m sorry people are so rude. I have a daughter too, and I would never want her to feel badly about her weight. I imagine a campaign against rudeness would make more sense to me than the whole body love movement, though.

Ugh that's the "all lives matter" response to this specific thing that PP is describing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps because ignorant people comment negatively and nastily on fat people's bodies and weight all. of. the. time.

Fat person here. This. All day long. I don’t love being fat, I doubt anyone does. But I am so f$#&*%g tired of being looked down on, or ignored, or treated like a second class citizen because people assume I’m lazy, or dumb or whatever else (cue the aholes who will respond to this with those exact comments). Losing weight for me is really, really hard, because I hate going to the gym, have two small children, and yes, I don’t want to spend my life starving myself and working out that I hate just to please society. And I have two young girls that I don’t want to subject to body shaming or make self conscious of their own bodies. My mother obsessed about weight and being fat her whole life, and it has imprinted itself on my brain in negative talk. I do NOT want my daughters dealing with that. So yeah, I have learned to accept my body, teach them that women are beautiful at any size, it’s what’s inside that counts, and anyone who says otherwise can go pound sand.

OP here - thanks for this response! I’m sorry people are so rude. I have a daughter too, and I would never want her to feel badly about her weight. I imagine a campaign against rudeness would make more sense to me than the whole body love movement, though.

Would you say that to people born with severe genetic deformities? Dwarfism, limb differences, twisted spines, facial deformities? What about people who have lost limbs to accidents and war? Don't try to love and accept your body, just make sure people aren't rude to you about it. Would you want your daughter to feel bad about her body if she was missing an arm or a leg?

I would like for my daughter to love her body, regardless of how it looks. I wouldn’t want her to go around campaigning how much she loves her body because it sounds insecure to me.

So if she's in an accident and loses a limb, you wouldn't support her if she started a campaign to say that people with different bodies can love them too?

Why should other people need to be convinced she loves her body? It seems like people who genuinely care about themselves don’t need others to affirm it. But maybe I‘m wrong, I have not been overweight or disabled so that’s possible.

Read the last sentence again, then consider the possibility that you know less about all this than you think.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:And yet we can't. We really can't. I've done every diet known to man and the weight always comes back.

You eat whatever you want and the weight never increases.

It's genes. Just like being left-handed.

I used to be very overweight and I’m thin now. I know this feeling—that thin people have it easy and don’t know what it’s like. That’s a false generalization. Many thin people are very careful about what they eat and exercise a lot.

Unless you have maintained a significant weight loss for more than 5-7 years, you have no idea what you are talking about. If you have maintained for that amount of time absent bariatric surgery, congratulations for being an extreme statistical anomaly.

Np to this thread, and have maintained my weightloss (naturally, no surgery) for almost 6 years. I'm not a genetic anomaly. It's hard work - to cook and prep more meals, and to exercise most days of the week. Changing habits is hard, but once you do, you don't know how you lived any differently.

I have sympathy for fat/obese people, but it's absurd to blame it on genes, or to pretend someone "looks great" or beautiful being obese. "Health at every size" is also an impossibility - human bodies were simply not designed to carry so much excess weight on bones, joints, ligaments, etc. I don't care what your blood pressure is right now - being obese automatically makes your body unhealthy.

Of course that does not mean that skinny people are automatically healthy - being fit with good muscle mass is a much better qualifier. Skinny but weak isn't a great end of the spectrum, either.

All of us have choices - doesn't make them easy, but it helps no one by lying to oneself and blaming it on genes.

It actually does help to "blame it on genes" since so much of it is tied to genes

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/health/americans-obesity-willpower-genetics-study.html

[Anonymous]

I’m fat. I love my boobs, booty, and thighs. I don’t love my belly or underchin pudge. I would not want to be thin. I’ve been thin (size 2-4). I looked sickly. I had no butt. My face looked older than I usually look. I don’t know if that makes me happy to be fat, but I’m happier fat if that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Everyone should love their bodies, regardless. Everyone is worthy of love. People who hate their bodies are often self destructive. Loving oneself as you are is the first step to honoring and caring for yourself. Fat, thin, old, young, sick, well, straight, gay--hating ourselves is never the answer.

[Anonymous]

MHO - If you have newly found body love, keep it to yourself, as well as thin, old, young, sick, well, straight, gay, diverse. Your are boring when you shove it in my face and I will then avoid you. Why, because I liked you for you and now I can't anymore, because I just realized that you thought that is how I pictured you, when I just liked you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MHO - If you have newly found body love, keep it to yourself, as well as thin, old, young, sick, well, straight, gay, diverse. Your are boring when you shove it in my face and I will then avoid you. Why, because I liked you for you and now I can't anymore, because I just realized that you thought that is how I pictured you, when I just liked you.

Good to know. I'm sorry you have issues.

[Anonymous]

https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/you-have-the-right-to-remain-fat?_ga=2.265037071.1667855043.1564494820-1305871448.1564494820

[Anonymous]

I'd need to lose 20 lbs to reach a "normal" BMI. Years ago, I lost 40 lbs and kept it off 5 years, so I know I can do it -- but, for me and my genetics, it was just all I did. My hobby was exercise and meal prep.

Then I had a kid. So now I do other things with my time, and I'm fat. I don't hate my body. I have low blood pressure, I'm active, and my body can do all the things I need it to do. I buy clothes that fit, I go to the pool. The only reason for me to lose weight is to look like people think I should look. I wish I did look that way, but I don't want it more than I want to enjoy my life and family.

[Anonymous]

I would probably love being fat and eating whatever I want, as much as I want, whenever I want. I'm too vain though. I like being thin and I don't mind eating clean 85% of the time.

I don't judge those who DGAF though. I have friends of all shapes and sizes. As much as DCUM loves to talk as if overweight people are miserable, lonely, un-f***able pariahs of society, all my overweight and obese friends are married/dating, getting laid, and leading happy lives.