Anonymous wrote: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 wrote:The title of your post tells me you don't really get it. I don't think these women love "being fat". They have just learned that despite what society wants to tell them, they have a body, they are the way God or nature or whatever made them, their body is a miracle and amazing and doing what bodies are designed to do. They can embrace and accept and love themselves and even their bodies despite your disgust and that's OK.

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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?

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.

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Anonymous wrote:I have an overweight friend who is really into body positivity and the HAES movement. I don’t really think much about about people‘s size and I‘ve never been overweight, so body positivity is something new to me. Why do people who love their bodies need to convince everyone?

WTF - you saying it's only fat people who do this?
Are you saying skinny people who love their bodies never try to convince everyone?
Are you suggesting that confidence is a character trait that only skinny people can have?
Last I checked one's attitude and sense-of-self has absolutely nothing to do with one's looks.
Any human being can be anything when it comes to personality regardless of their physicality.
Whether fat or skinny or attractive or ugly people can be nice or mean or intelligent or idiotic or self-assured or self-conscious.
Stop trying to put labels on people and put them in boxes to lessen your ignorance/confusion of the diverse and intricate world we live in.

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Anonymous wrote:You guys, there's a big difference between having an extra 20lbs, and an extra 100.

I think the majority know you can have an extra 20 and still be healthy, active, a body you love and feel comfortable in most days.

But 100... no. There's no way it's enjoyable to carry that much extra weight all day, every day--or more.

Is it enjoyable? What an odd way to put it. Do I love being 75 pounds overweight? No, I don't sit around saying, hooray, hooray, look at these folds!

But I do love my life and don't allow myself to focus on what I can't do or wear. I take a sunrise walk every morning with the dog and watch the light touch the flowers and grass and think, god, it is a wonderful, beautiful thing to have another day on this earth. Then I go inside and pour a cup of coffee and wake up my kids and my husband comes downstairs and kisses me good morning and nobody is thinking about how much I weigh, not even me.

Anonymous wrote:You guys, there's a big difference between having an extra 20lbs, and an extra 100.

I think the majority know you can have an extra 20 and still be healthy, active, a body you love and feel comfortable in most days.

But 100... no. There's no way it's enjoyable to carry that much extra weight all day, every day--or more.

Anonymous wrote:You guys, there's a big difference between having an extra 20lbs, and an extra 100.

I think the majority know you can have an extra 20 and still be healthy, active, a body you love and feel comfortable in most days.

But 100... no. There's no way it's enjoyable to carry that much extra weight all day, every day--or more.

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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 wrote: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.

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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.

My nephew’s wife is part of that movement. She is 27 years old and has just had serious back surgery because if the stress on her body. The surgeon told her to lose 120 pounds and she went nuts.

Anonymous wrote:Do women with special needs kids really love their children?

Do people with bad marriages really think they're 'stronger' for it?

Anonymous wrote: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.