Tag Archives: HAES

Stuff that Weighs More than Me: Big Ben

Ripples on the Pond

At the Blogging Panel at the NAAFA Convention with some amaaazing ladies!

One of the things I loved past about this past weekend at the NAAFA convention was the blogging panel. I shared the table with the authors of Dances With Fat and NotBlueAtAll and the fabulous moderator Julianne Wotasik.

And one of the common themes that came up again and again at the panel was the way that none of us, on the panel or in the audience, ever seemed to know ahead of time how we were able to impact other people. It always seemed the small things, the innocuous things, the tossed off things that would find someone and change the way they felt about things. And this held true when it came to blogging or even just an off handed compliment we paid a stranger or a moment of kindness that came at a critical moment. You just never know how much you can help somebody just by doing your thing.

I was astonished to hear a story told by Ragen Chastain of Dances with Fat shared with the panel about the effect her blog had on a person of size who had contemplated suicide. This woman had decided to use pills but wasn’t sure about the appropriate dosage for a woman of size. This woman went on the internet and searched “fat suicide”. It turns out that Ragen’s blog had had so much hate mail suggesting that fat people should commit suicide that Dances With Fat came up in the search engine. The woman spent the entire night reading past blogs on Ragen’s site and in the morning decided to send Ragen an email explaining why her blog had helped her decide not to end her life. Because Ragen had been so bullied in the comments section of her own blog, that woman is alive today.

So my little chicklettes, you don’t have to save the world. You don’t have to write a best-selling novel or be a movie star. Someone asked the panel how to help people find happiness and body acceptance earlier in their lives. And the answer was this: just be yourself as hard and as completely as you can. That’s it. And you can make the world a better place for you and so many people around you.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Reducing A World Title to a Hairdo

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I’d like to talk today about another way that obsession with thinness reduces us. I wasn’t always a person who spoke out on behalf of HAES(R) and Size Acceptance. For many years, I hated my body. I was miserable because of my body. And I put my life on hold waiting to be pretty enough and thin enough to be ready to begin my life.

This went on for years.

There were years and years where I wasn’t living to my full potential, because I didn’t think it was possible for a woman of size. Day after day, I didn’t dare to try challenging things or exciting things because I thought they were impossible to achieve unless I was thin. Month after month, I let opportunities pass me by–waiting to be acceptable.

And all during this time I was spending thousands upon thousands of dollars and thousands upon thousands of hours focused on losing weight and recovering from the inevitable (at least for me) weight gain.

I love my life now, but I honestly wonder where I might of been had I not lost nearly two decades obsessed with losing weight. And I am one of the incredibly lucky ones. I have a genuinely wonderful supportive family. I have an amazing spouse. I have a survival instinct that has always fought against this desire to make me smaller–to make me less than.

But I wonder about the millions of us that are right now not achieving, not winning not being in a world where Gabby Douglas can win the most prestigious gymnastics award in the entire world, and face a huge argument about her hairstyle. I mean really? Gabby beat out countless thousands of gymnasts around the country, achieving an unbelievable level of perfection in a merciless sport where skill is measured in thousandths of a point, and you want to talk about her hair? What is going on here?

Is Gabby threatening the idea of what a gymnast should look like? Is she redefining a visual standard of success? You’d better believe it! And you’d better believe that a whole lot of people are threatened by it. And you shouldn’t be surprised when that threat manifests itself in terms of people finding any excuse to put her down.

You have to wonder, is obsession with thinness a tool used by those who must compete with us? Those who see our talent and our power and are afraid? Those who will do anything to put us down and make themselves seem better, sexier and more powerful? Those who will cut down the herd of competitors by any means necessary?

My dear chicklettes. You can choose, right now, to throw off your shackles. You can choose to love yourself and accept yourself. You can refuse to gain ascendancy on the backs of other women. You can choose to empower and strengthen your fellow women and succeed together. You can live your absolute best life, right now. Right this very second. I’ll be in the stands, waving a flag, jumping up and down and cheering.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Thursday Theater: Nike Ad Featuring Fit Fatty Runs During 2012 Olympics

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I have to admit that I was pretty excited to see this Nike ad pop up during the Olympics. When the jogger trotted into view I held my breath waiting for them to say something nasty. After watching all those perfect bodies in spandex, this kid was a breath of fresh air. And I have to say, that for the most part I think Nike got it right.

To me, this kid embodies the awesome spirit of the joy of fitness that I try to share on The Fat Chick website. He embodies the nearly 1,000 Fathletes featured in the Fit Fatties Forum which I host with the amazing Ragen Chastain. He’s out there doing it. He’s not limping along. His pace is steady. His breathing is even. There’s nothing tongue-in-cheek or sarcastic about it. He’s just going out for an every-day training run. And kicking butt.

The voiceover reads: “Greatness, it’s just something we made up. Somehow we’ve come to believe that greatness is a gift, reserved for a chosen few, for prodigies, for superstars. And the rest of us can only stand by watching. You can forget that. Greatness is not some rare DNA strand. It’s not some precious thing. Greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We’re all capable of it. All of us.” Cue the logo text that reads: “Find Your Greatness”.

Now, I imagine, given the assumptions of our culture and the placement of the ad within the Olympics with its flood of conventionally beautiful and chiseled bodies that some viewers will add their own subscript stating “this kid needs to lose weight to be great.” But luckily nothing in the V.O. or text that says anything about finding greatness “within”. It’s talking about finding your greatness and is part of a group of ads featuring other unconventional athletes like this one, and this one and this one. Frankly, I wish the voiceover from this ad could be on the ad with the fat kid, but still. For the most part, I found myself giddy with excitement when I saw this one.

And yes, Nike could make a lot more fitness clothes in much bigger sizes. I wish they did. Although they do have a few pieces of plus-sized wear that are 1-3x (generously sized) that I have purchased and I absolutely adore. But there’s not a whole lot to choose from.

So, perfect? No, far from it. But I think, with this ad campaign, Nike displayed a potential for greatness.

So my little chicklettes, I’d love to hear from you. Let me know what YOU think.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Reductionism: Why They Want Us Smaller

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Yup, those dogs sure like to chase!

A friend of mine recently started experiencing a lot of success and positive attention in her career. She started doing really well, and began to realize some of the dreams she’s had for decades. But she also started seeing a lot more criticism for her weight, and found that that criticism had become nastier than before.

In addition to the increase in body shaming she received, she found that she was also feeling especially vulnerable to these negative comments. She found that things she might have easily shrugged off a few weeks ago were now hurting her deeply. She found herself frustrated both with herself and her peers. And she found herself yelling at herself for her hurt and her tears. It led her to ask me, “what is going on here?”

I think that as we get larger in the world and as we make a bigger impact, forces both within and without conspire to make us want to be smaller. I think this is true for two reasons:

Many of us women have been taught all our lives to be smaller. Think about it. From the time of our birth, many of us girls were taught to fade into the background. We were taught to sit with our legs together with our handbag sharing the seat. We were taught not to brag, not to make too big of a deal of ourselves, and not to make too much noise. So I think, for many of us, as our lives become larger, we are triggered by a desire to make our bodies smaller. We feel so conspicuous and so exposed by the new attention in our lives, we want to shrink back down, curl up, and not expose our luscious bellies to the enemies.

Dogs don’t bark at a parked car. And it’s not so surprising, really that our enemies head directly for our soft underbellies just as we start to see some success. Most of our enemies were taught the same thing we were taught. They were taught to be small and humble and inconspicuous. So what happens when they see somebody who starts to grow in stature and achieve many of the dreams they may have had for themselves? What happens when they see the car speeding away from them? They start chasing, and they start barking. And oh my goodness what a racket they make! When folks see somebody achieving something they wish the had the guts to go after, do you think they are introspective and use it as a life lesson to get themselves off their butts? Well some folks do. But most folks just run along side, nipping at the tires and yipping their fool heads off.

So my dear chicklettes, this week I’d like to talk about reduction. I want to talk about making our doubts smaller and our lives bigger and louder and even more amazing! Because I don’t want you to let the yipping dogs slow you down. Oh no. I want you to speed on ahead in your gorgeous, great big convertible and leave all those other dogs panting in the dust.

Love,

The Fat Chick

OM: Using Meditation to Help Manage Stress

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For better health, find a few minutes per day to just breathe…

The idea of meditation may seem a little “woo woo” to my Midwestern upbringing, but there is more and more evidence that it actually does lower blood pressure, improve attention span and help manage stress. There’s even new evidence that indicates that meditation actually changes physical aspects of the brain over time as well. But our lives are crazy busy, and sometimes it seems impossible to add even one more thing to it. So how do we add meditation to our lives without stressing out about adding meditation to our lives?

Many experts suggest that you begin by adding just ten minutes per day. Meditation is an incredibly rich practice which can be deepened and enriched over years of practice. But you can get your start by simply focusing on your breathing. I sometimes use a really terrific iPod app called “Breathe Together”. It’s a very simple app that simply provides a breathing noise. You just synchronize your breathing to the app with the added benefit of knowing that you are synchronizing your breathing with others who are meditating throughout the world. At certain hours of the day, a specific focus for your meditation like “peace” or “joy” are suggested. One word of caution, it can sound a little odd to innocent bystanders. The first time my husband came across me using the app, he was convinced that either A) I was dying or B) Darth Vader had taken over his wife’s body.

Meditation is simply a time of quiet directed focus and can encompass many things including introspective prayer, repetitive prayer (like saying a rosary) or even a guided relaxation. In fact, I’m currently creating a special body love-inspired guided relaxation track. It will be available free for members of The Fat Chick Clique, so if you’re looking to get your OM on, hop right over to my website and join already.

In any case, my little chicklettes, I want to invite you to find just a little time, maybe just a minutes per day to take a deep breaths and relax your mind. It’s a little bit like bicep curls for your brain. You’ll feel better and be better able to manage stress better. Both of which are powerful tools for better health.

Love,
The Fat Chick

Thursday Theater: Knee Stress

The Stress of Stigma and Body Dissatisfaction

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Loving your body can really help reduce stress in your life!

Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about satisfaction and stress. Today I’m going to stand at the intersection of these two ideas and talk about how feeling bad about your body is bad for your health. There’s no question that many of us are dissatisfied with our bodies. The cult of media and celebrity focuses our minds on a body ideal that is not even achieved by the most beautiful of the “beautiful people”. The vast majority of images in magazines are digitally altered to even more impossible beauty standards. And it’s a not so carefully guarded “insider secret” that a number of film and television stars demand that the image be “vertically stretched” to make themselves appear even taller and thinner on TV and the silver screen. It’s no wonder that so many of us have negative thoughts about our bodies. We’re not talking about a few minor thoughts now and again. A recent survey suggests that young women have an average of 13 seriously negative thoughts about their bodies per day–nearly one for every waking hour. And a surprising number of us have a lot more negative thoughts than that with 35, 50 or even 100 brutal thoughts about our bodies every day.

Unfortunately, all this body hatred is very bad for our health. Aside from the well known ties to depression, anxiety, and even suicide, body dissatisfaction leads to increased stress and ultimately to poorer physical health. Research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver links women with poor body image with increases in the stress hormone cortisol. And increases in cortisol can lead to higher blood pressure, sleep disturbances, digestive problems and can negatively impact virtually all body processes.

So one important element in dealing with stress in our lives, is learning to love our bodies as they are, rather than constantly comparing them with impossible ideals. One way to do this is to put yourself on a media diet, and minimize exposure to fashion magazines and prime-time television. Another is (not surprisingly) to get regular exercise, as women who exercise tend to feel better about their bodies. And finally, don’t hesitate to seek advice from amazing healers like Golda Poretsky who help you make peace with your size and shape.

So whenever you’re stressed my little chicklettes, consider the notion that body dissatisfaction might be a central cause. And resolve to love the skin you’re in.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Dealing with Stress

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It’s so interesting to me that so many discussions about health begin and end with losing weight. As I mentioned, the need for a decent night’s sleep is rarely discussed. And the need for managing stress rarely gets even a passing mention.

This is astonishing to me because there is so much research indicating that how we manage stress can have a profound effect on our health. There are many kinds of stress. Some kinds of stress seem to be positive, giving us an immediate boost of adrenalin to deal with something dangerous or just exciting. But some kinds of stress, especially chronic stress, seem to cause a lot of problems in the body.

Chronic stress has been linked to changes in t-cells and a weakened immune system. Other studies link chronic stress and anger to higher incidence of cardiac arrhythmia and sudden cardiac arrest. Chronic stress is also linked to higher incidence and poorer management of a host of other diseases including diabetes, cancer and hypertension. I’ve heard statistics suggesting that over 90 percent of doctor visits can be linked to stress. Yet how often has your doctor asked you about stress? So many of my doctors have repeatedly asked me about how much I exercise and recommended a diet. I have had doctors repeatedly recommend pills and radical, invasive surgery. But I’ve only had one, truly amazing doctor, who regularly inquired about the stress levels in my life.

I’m not entirely sure why this is. Maybe discussions about stress take too long for our overscheduled and overworked medical professionals to manage. Maybe being “stressed out” is still something of a badge of honor for our amped up, caffeinated, type-A culture. In any case my little chicklettes, we’re gonna talk about stress here this week. Because getting your heart thumping because you’re shaking your tail feathers or looking at a particularly hot and sexy bird can be a good thing. Getting your heart thumping hard all the time because you’re anxious, worried or stressed out–not so much. So this week we’ll take a deep breath, search for our Zen and cultivate peace.

Love,

The Fat Chick

The right to bare arms

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In my previous post declaring body independence I asserted “I have the right to expose my fleshy arms as I embrace my freedom”. And I firmly believe this. Yet I sometimes still have trouble doing it. I am now coming to love my upper arms after a long time of disenchantment. I have what my dear friend calls “hello-goodbye arms” (because they just keep on waving). But you know what? It’s HOT out there! I don’t like hot and I certainly don’t like wearing extra clothes when it’s hot. I’m coming to terms with my arms. Instead of “hello-goodbye arms”, I’ve got “guns” (pew, pew). I’ve got biceps. They are powerful and strong. I can lift babies. I can lift groceries. In fact my arms are almost strong enough to hoist my insecurities.

So my little chicklettes, ask yourself in these sweltering days? What gorgeous part of you are you hiding from the world? What are you keeping under wraps? Why not use this summer heat to shed a little insecurity, and just a little more clothing?

Love,
The Fat Chick