Judging for Yourself: Some Size Acceptance Data

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I’m headed off to share the size acceptance message on Dr. Drew’s Show on HLN tonight at 6:00 with the amazing and beautiful Julianne Wotazik.  We’ll also be hearing from MeMe Roth.  So I figured, I’d get some of my data wrangled up to share with you.  There are lots of wonderful sources where size acceptance data is gathered and posted on the web.  So I’m just going to share some links with you:

Ragen Chastain offers some fantastic research on her blog on this posting (scroll down to the bottom of the post.)

The Association for Size Diversity And Health has a lot of great information posted here on their site.

The amazing Dr. Linda Bacon has a lot of articles and research available here on her site.

And of course, there’s lots of research sited in my book.

There are literally thousands of research studies and articles embracing the Health At Every Size approach to wellness.  Hopefully this small compendium will give you a jumping off place in your reading and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

Because you need to remember my dear chicklettes, it’s YOUR body, so YOU decide what is the best way to care for your body and yourself and love the skin you’re in.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Stuff that Weighs More than Me: Tallinn TV Tower

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A big, BIG antenna for watching a few boats.

With all this activity around The Fat Chick on TV, I thought I’d check out some transmission possibilities.  I’ve already done a transmission satellite, so I thought I’d look at some television transmission towers.  And let me tell you, this week’s entry is a doozy.  Located in Pirita just outside Tallinn City in Estonia, this free-standing tower (complete with observation deck) was used to provide better telecommunication services for the regatta event at the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics.  So essentially, this HUGE tower was built so that the world could get a better look at a boat race.

The  tower has an interesting past, and features bullet holes from the Soviet Coup attempt of 1991 and was apparently held for a time by a handful of radio operators who protected the free radio station by jamming matchboxes into the elevators to force the Soviet troops to climb the over 1000 steps in the tower.

Here’s the stats…

Time to completion: 5 years

Height, including antenna spire: 1030.2 ft.

Foundation: includes reinforced concrete rings over 50 cm thick

Total Weight: Over 20,000 tons.

Conclusion: the Tallinn TV Tower weighs more than me.

In other TV news, the Fox 11 LA news segment will be rebroadcast at 5PM tonight and Julianne and I will also be appearing on Dr. Drew’s new show on HLN this week.  Stay tuned!

Olympic-levels of FUN!

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The Fat Chick with Olympian Cheryl Haworth, Filmmaker Julie Wyman and awesome producer Barbara Multer-Wellin at the Pasadena screening of Strong!

I am so excited and blessed that my dear friend Barbara Multer-Wellin and I had a chance to meet two absolutely amazing women–3-time Olympian Cheryl Haworth and extraordinary documentary filmmaker Julie Wyman before the screening of their movie Strong!  What an awesome film!  (I am trying for the WR for the most superlatives in one blog post ever, so work with me here.)  It is such a joy when you meet famous people who are so warm and down to earth and funny.  We laughed our heads off!  And I do want to give a shout out for the film.  I’ve seen it at least 4 or 5 times now (I’ve lost count) and it seriously gets better every time I watch it.  The film is beautifully shot and really portrays Cheryl’s strength, sense of humor and well-grounded sense of self.

Part of the sense of self that Cheryl portrays in the film is a sense of ambiguity in her feelings about her physical appearance.  I want to applaud both Cheryl and Julie for allowing us to see that ambiguity.  During the panel discussion last night, Julie spoke about the great temptation to have the movie be a message and have everything tied up in a neat bow at the end.  But life rarely works that way, and the openness of both Julie and Cheryl in allowing us to see that struggle for body acceptance is one of the most powerful things about the film.  Self acceptance, especially when one does not meet certain societal standards for body size and shape is hard.  The film shows us how hard it is without offering simplistic, preachy solutions.  I found that deeply meaningful.

So for heaven’s sake my little Chicklettes, go see this film!  If  you’re in Southern California, you can join me for a free screening followed by a panel discussion in Long Beach at 6 PM on May 29.  And there are still a few other screenings scheduled throughout the country.  Or at least plan on watching it on PBS when it airs in July.  Just don’t miss it!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Julianne Wotasik, The Fat Chick and NAAFA on the News!

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I’m so excited to share with you a clip of an interview on Fox News in LA yesterday. Finally, a nice piece where we share our thoughts without a nasty comment or a smirk in sight. YAAAAAAY! This was an amazing experience and I MUST give a shout out to the amazing producer at Fox that put this together: Gerri Shaftel Constant. I feel so blessed that she made the effort to take our story in hand and shared it in such an intelligent and respectful way. This is a GOOD day!

Love,
TFC

Oh and here’s the evening recap with a longer video piece:

But won’t you lose weight if…?

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At the San Bernardino Valley College screening of “Strong!”

Last night at the panel discussion after the screening of StrongI at the San Bernardino Valley College, I got asked a very common question.  People assume, that if I did a marathon or if I ate healthy or if taught aerobics, I would have lost weight.  And audience members were, as always, floored when I told them, yes I did those things and no I didn’t lose weight.  They usually follow this question with a tentative, “well you lost inches, right?”.  To which I usually respond, “well I didn’t get any shorter!”  Seriously, it seems very hard for folks to believe that a person can do healthy things, even extraordinary physical things and not get thin.  This seems to fly in the face of EVERYTHING that they’ve heard.  And I’m sorry about that. But it’s still true.

When I started teaching fitness, I went from very little exercise to over 4 hours per week.  Did I get svelte?  Did I get slim?  Nope!  When I bumped my teaching up to 9 hours per week, I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 pounds and ended up with a ligament tear in my knee.  I gained one 3-pound pair of crutches for a net weight loss of 0.00.  While training for the marathon, I routinely walked and ran 15 to 20 miles per week.  Near the end it was well over 30.  And you know how much weight I lost? Zero. Zip. Zilch.  I felt better.  I was stronger and healthier.  And no doubt some of my weight shifted around a bit.  But the fact is, I didn’t get thin.

And here’s why that’s important.  Wouldn’t it have been a shame for me to have crossed the finish line of my first (and only) marathon feeling like a failure?  Can you imagine? Going 26.2 miles in one day without dying and feeling like a FAILURE?  Well that’s precisely what would have happened had I not learned to separate the concept of fitness from the concept of weight loss.  Since I wasn’t worried about losing weight, I can tell you that crossing that finish line was one of the most amazing moments of my life.

So that’s it.  That’s why I call myself The Fat Chick.  Because I think it is so very important to let fitness stand on its own as an accomplishment.  Because I want people to understand that not all folks who exercise look like fitness cover models.  A lot of them look an awful lot like me.  In fact, if you’d like to see some exercisers of size, don’t forget to hit the photo gallery of Fit Fatties which I developed in concert with the lovely and amazing Ms. Ragen Chastain.

And remember my little chicklettes, if you want to see what an athlete looks like, just check in the nearest mirror.

Love,

TFC

Feeling Poopy without Feeling Guilty

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Over the last few days I haven’t been feeling very well.  I’m not saying this because I want you to feel bad for me and try to make me feel better.  (Well, okay maybe a little.)  After all I don’t have a man flu.  But as I was trying to get a little rest yesterday, I found myself thinking in a familiar pattern.

I started thinking, “Well maybe I’m not eating the right stuff and that’s why I’m sick.  Or maybe I’m not feeling well because I have too much repressed anger.  Maybe this is because I didn’t get enough sleep.”  And in my rambling way, I went on to think, “Maybe it’s nobody’s fault I’m sick.  Maybe I just AM.”

I remember now that I used to often think that if I lost weight I wouldn’t be sick any more.  I used to think that no matter why I was ill, it was my fault because I was fat.  And then for a while (like a minute) I got thin.  And you know what?  I still got sick.  And so did all of the rest of the thin people I know.

And you know what else?  While it’s a great idea to do everything you can to be healthy there are no guarantees.  You will still get sick from time to time.  While it can be tempting to believe that we can control whether or not we get ill we can’t.  We can give ourselves a good chance of being healthy by doing healthy things–but we are still likely to feel lousy from time to time.  And unless you’re talking about a hangover, or going without sleep for four days, you aren’t going to know exactly why and there isn’t much point worrying about whether or not it’s your fault.

It’s especially important to get this straight in our own heads because there are plenty of people out there ready and waiting to tell us that it’s our own fault for being sick or even that we deserve to be sick because we’re fat.  They rail about the costs we “add” to their health insurance.  Doctors do the slow, sad head shake and tell us that we wouldn’t “have this problem” (whether it’s strep throat or carpal tunnel syndrome) if we weren’t so darn big.  Our friends and family seize on every illness as “proof” that they are “right” about the fact we need to lose weight.  And before you completely lose your Zen and want to stop talking to these folks, let me remind you of something.  Remember when I said, it’s tempting to believe we can control whether or not we get ill?  Well it is.  It’s comforting to think that if we don’t drink too much and we don’t smoke and we don’t get fat and we eat our broccoli that we will never get sick and we will live forever.  We know intellectually and rationally that this isn’t true.  But who the heck is going around being intellectual and rational all the time?

The truth is that people get sick and while there are certain issues that make certain populations more likely and less likely to be sick, nobody knows for sure why we get sick when we do.  After all, one of the greatest risk factors for illness is getting older but I’m not sure the alternative is a health path I want to follow.

So my little chickadees, by all means eat your broccoli.  Sleep well and go out and play with your friends.  Do your best to manage stress and anger even when your friends and family drive you crazy trying to “help you lose weight”.  But when you get sick, and you will get sick at some point, my prescription is to stop worrying about who’s fault it is and just worry about feeling better.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Some seriously strong chicks!

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Check out me and HELLGA (Robin Coleman) from American Gladiators posing at the Operation Fitness Red Carpet in Culver City last weekend!  It was super fun and I was so excited to meet this awesome and powerful woman!

Exercise Animals: Muscle Buildin’

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Check out this little guy.  Clearly he’s been doing his resistance training to have created such magnificent biceps.  There’s lots of reasons to consider resistance (weight) training like: stronger bones, better sleep, better mood and better sex.  And of course, better “guns” (pew, pew)!

Speaking of biceps, I’ll be on a panel as part of a free screening of the movie “Strong” about Olympic Weightlifter Cheryl Haworth next week Tuesday in San Bernardino and the following Tuesday in Long Beach, CA.  More info coming soon!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Stuff That Weighs More Than Me: Largest Combined Olympic Weight Lift

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Okay, so I”m cheating a little.  But the Olympic “combined”  weightlifting score is devised by adding the heaviest “clean and jerk” weight lifted to the heaviest “snatch” weight lifted for a single contestant.  The “clean and jerk” is a weightlifting move where the contestant first squats down and lifts the bar to shoulder level and then lifts the weight overhead.  The “snatch” is a weightlifting move where the contestant squats down and lifts the weight directly overhead without stopping at the shoulders.

Olympic gold medalist Hossein Reza Zadeh (The Iranian Hercules) holds World Records in both the clean and jerk and Olympic combined.  Here’s the stats:

Weight: Hossein Reza Zadeh: 358.5 lbs.

2000 Sydney Olympic “Snatch”  lift: 467.5 lbs (WR)

2000 Sydney Olympic “Clean and Jerk” lift: 572 lbs.

2000 Sydney “combined” lift: 1039.5 lbs.

Conclusion: Hossein Reza Zadeh’s Lifts Weigh More than Me.

Weight of the Nation: Five Techniques for Preserving Sanity Points

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If you gotta watch it, you might as well get something out of it.

In my work with ASDAH and on the Health At Every Size(R) approach to wellness I’ve felt it my duty to watch HBO’s newest fat panic-mongering documentary “Weight of the Nation”.  Let me tell you, it can be a tough slog to get through this with sanity points intact.  It’s all there: the screaming about the “obesity crisis”, hand wringing and head shaking as folks ask, “What about the children?”, the headless fatties, the obligatory food porn shots, the mug shots of sad and distressed people of size.  It’s enough to make you crazy.  There’s a definite dearth of happy, healthy exercising fat people like those pictured on our Fit Fatties Forum.  Nevertheless, I felt I should watch this, so I can be prepared when my well-meaning friends, families, co-workers, bosses, and complete strangers feel compelled to share some little tidbit of “wisdom” from the show.  So I created a few special tools to help me get through this, and now I’m sharing with you.  To quote the amazing Ragen Chastain, I’m a giver.

Fat Panic Bingo: Just print out this handy FAT PANIC BINGO document, grab some bags of M&Ms and that fat panic video will just fly by.  Enjoy!

Dire Disaster Drinking Game:  Choose one or more of the items listed on the Dire Disaster Drinking Game game sheet and write it/them on index cards.  Every time one of the items on the card shows up on the screen, everybody has a drink.  (I usually suggest shots for this game, but given what I’ve seen so far, you and your guests will be under the table within 15-20 minutes.  Maybe a beer, with low alcohol content, will allow you to get through an entire episode.)

SECRET Word: Pick one or more of the words listed in Dire Disaster Drinking Game and let everybody in your group know what it is.  As you watch, every time the “secret word” is uttered everybody yells and screams.  This game is probably familiar to all of us who watched live morning television in the 80’s…

Target Practice: Who says that people of size should be the only targets?  Put a small piece of translucent tape at the exact center of your television.  Then give each person a nerf suction cup gun and give each person their own color of arrows (or do teams).  Every time the players get really annoyed, they can let the arrows fly.  At the end of the game the one with the arrow closest to the center, “wins”.  NOTE: Shoot objects at your television at your OWN RISK.  If you’re worried about your TV, just arm everybody with wadded up paper towels or folded pairs of gym socks.  Not as satisfying as suction cups, but probably safer.

Prove It: Pick one person to be the judge or the “referee”.  Every time somebody makes an unsupported assertion, the remaining players should yell “prove it”.  Whoever yells first each time, gets a point.  At the end of the game the points are tallied and the one with the most points is the winner.

I am working on some more sober and studious tools and plan to post them here as well.  But in the meantime, I’m hoping these five special games will help both you and me get through this thing.  Hang in there and hold on to those sanity points my little Chicklettes!

Love,

The Fat Chick