Tag Archives: HAES

The Fat Chick on TV: Talking About Body Snarking

Hello my friends! I am excited to share with you this interview from CBS news in LA about “body snarking”. This is a relatively new term that refers to feeling the need to comment on the bodies of other people, usually in a nasty, negative or sarcastic way. Seems like this has really come to the forefront after Lady Gaga started speaking out about her weight. Don’t be stressed out by the sad stuff in the beginning of the story. I think it ends in my happy place! And I’m pleased to be included in story about body snarking that suggests learning to deal with the “snarkers” rather than suggesting that the “snarkees” simply need to lose weight. It’s surprising now to have two major news outlets here in LA, the home of the plastic people, do relatively positive stories on body acceptance. Along with the other major worldwide coverage we’ve been seeing, I’m hopeful that the tide is turning.

What do you think? Is it getting harder or easier to talk about size acceptance and HAES these days? I’d love to hear from you!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Thursday Theater: Empowerment Cards Presentation by Dr. Rick Kausman

Stuff that Weighs More than Me: World’s Heaviest Limo

1 Reply

Okay kids, this ride goes way beyond your average stretch limo and even puts those stretch Hummers to shame. This bad boy is HUGE. Towed by a 440 horsepower semi, the trailer rides smoothly on 22 wheels. The Midnight Rider boasts a bar, three separate lounges and sports a crew of five including a driver, a co-driver, a hostess and two bartenders. You’ll never get bored on this thing as each of the lounges is equipped with a large screen television and high isolation entertainment system, with satellite television, movies, music, & live feed capabilities. Going to the prom? You could probably carry half your graduating class! This rolling wonder can comfortably host you and 39 of your closest friends. Heck, I’m ready to grab my cell phone and move in to this thing!

Here’s the stats:

Width: 8 ft., 5 in.

Height: 13 ft., 8 in.

Length: 70 ft.

Turning Radius: 48 ft.

Area: 460 square ft.

Weight: 25.5 tons

Check out the video here:

Conclusion: The world’s largest limo weighs more than me.

And, party on Wayne, party on!

Love,

The Fat Chick

On being a Shameless Woman: How Forbes Got it Right

5 Replies

Ooooo, I’m so excited about THIS article from the Forbes.com site She Negotiates! In this piece, author Brooke Axtell talks about why shame doesn’t make us thinner OR healthier, and she rounds up an amazing group of experts including Dr. Michelle Segar and Dr. Linda Bacon. And I’m resonating so deeply with what is said here that I’m ringing like a big old bell! The article starts out asking a simple question:

The U.S. Diet and Weight Loss Industry produced over 60 billion dollars in revenue last year. With all the available information and products, why do many intelligent women continue to diet and exercise without achieving lasting results?

Good question! Why do we keep banging our head on this same wall over and over again? Why do we keep doing the same things we’ve always done before and expect different results. Why are we behaving in a way that could be defined as insane?

The article goes on interview Dr. Michelle Segar. And while I don’t intimately know her work and can’t comment on her personal feelings about weight loss, I couldn’t find much to fault in her interview here. Basically, her research indicates that if you start trying to change your health and wellness from a point of self-hatred you are doomed to fail before you even start. The article goes on to state:

Many of the behaviors that improve health, such as getting more sleep and making better eating choices, also lead to experiences, such as reduced stress, that contribute to happier lives. It is the positive experience that we crave and it is far easier to measure on a daily basis. Although many claim that their health is a priority, the truth is that we are far more motivated by wanting to feel good than to improve our health.

Yes, yes and YES! In my experience with all of the folks that I work with, it’s the immediate pleasure of having fun, of building relationships with classmates, it’s the better sleep and higher confidence and improved sex life that comes with exercise that keeps them exercising. You can create charts. You can pull out your calipers and scales. You can give the “deathfat” speech all you want. You can even give them a “gold star” for being “good”. But what keeps exercisers coming back for more is having a good time and feeling good both during and after exercise. Period.

This is such an important idea. So often people ask me why I call myself The Fat Chick. They ask why I can’t just skip over the issue of being “curvy” and tell people to have fun while they are losing weight. They ask why I can’t just “suggest” that they could or should lose weight. But I can’t. Because telling people to have fun while they are on the way to being worthy, while they are in the process of becoming okay just doesn’t work. I have to tell them that they are okay now. I have to let them know that they are worthy even if they never achieve the BMI or number on the scale they are seeking. I have to let them know that we will experience joy right from the beginning of our work together, not after some magic number or arbitrary goal is achieved. As the article states:

Ultimately, it matters why we exercise and eat healthy foods. This is important not only to sustain our efforts of authentic self-care, but also to resist the toxic messages of a 60 billion dollar industry that depends on women feeling ashamed of their bodies.

Amen, sister. Amen. So I’ll keep calling myself The Fat Chick, and I’ll keep focusing on feeling good and having fun. I will refuse to fuel the industry built on shame that keeps us down and holds us back. I’ll keep working with people of many different ages, weights and abilities. I’ll call myself and all of my students worthy on the first day and the last day and every day in between. To put it simply, that’s what works in the short term, the long term and the whole term.

Thanks for listening.

Love,

The Fat Chick

When Life Gives You Lemons–Work Out!

Thursday Theater: Confirmation Bias

1 Reply

The video posted above is hilarious. I mean I LOL’d big time. But then I started thinking. I thought–what an amazing example of how our society filters information to confirm what we already believe. I mean nothing in the video is really proven. There’s no evidence that cats are better than dogs. And most of the stuff in the video is totally made up. The back story of the video is invented in a way that “proves” the central thesis of the filmmaker.

Sound familiar? I mean how often have we seen a video of a headless fatty shot from a low angle displayed in slow-motion? And how often is this video used to “prove” that there something wrong with bigger people? And how often are these videos accompanied by a completely manufactured back story that have no basis in actual fact?

So my little Chicklettes as funny as the “Scientific Proof that Cats are Better than Dogs” may be, I’d love for you to use it as a primer. Use it to learn how the media manipulates images to make us inferior or less than. How often are these images used to make us believe we have to run out and buy special products to change our lives? And please remember that clever use of Photoshop and editing software do not constitute “scientific proof”

Love,
The Fat Chick

Why You Don’t Have to be the Perfect Example of Anything

4 Replies

On one of the list serves I regularly read, a person came on asking for support. She has secured some very important opportunities to share Health at Every Size and is herself a person of size. She is very excited about these opportunities. She is also, understandably, terrified. I wrote back to her with some thoughts and have decided to share them with you here.

My dear Chicklettes, I have a confession to make. My work as an advocate for exercise for people of all shapes and sizes and as an advocate for body love and size acceptance almost never happened. For a long time, I was paralyzed by fear. I dipped my toe in the water, but I was very afraid to go public in a big way. Why? Because in order to represent people of size, I felt I had to be the perfect example of a healthy, happy, fit and fat person.

I asked myself a lot of questions. What if I get sick? What if I injure myself and can’t exercise any more? What if I get diabetes? People might point at me and say, “see I told you fat people can’t be healthy!” People will disbelieve everything about Health at Every Size(TM) if I am not the perfect embodiment of HAES(TM). People will publicly deride me and call me names! What if I’m not strong enough?

At one point, I worked with a great coach Mary Jo Thatcher who helped me understand one very important thing. Even though I represent an idea, and even though I’ve given myself a moniker (The Fat Chick) I am a person and not a persona. That means I’m not perfect. I am a living, breathing, individual being who has fears and strengths and problems. I will get sick sometimes. My body will age. I will get hurt both physically and emotionally. And I will ache.

Being imperfect makes me vulnerable. Sometimes I am yelled at by doctors, by well meaning relatives and by pumped up (but very insecure) small-minded people on TV. Some of the comments that I moderate out of my YouTube channel and blog and website are just so unbelievably mean and stupid. And they hurt–every time. I am stronger now. This meanness doesn’t quite hold the same power over me that it once did. But it still aches.

However, this very thing that makes me imperfect and human also gives me power. It gives me a way to relate to the other imperfect humans that I work with. It allows me move beyond the need to be perfect and move into the need to be flexible, and open and LISTEN to those around me. And it allows me to help others accept their own humanity and right to be loved and respected right at this very minute: not when they’ve reached some arbitrary goal I’ve set up for them, and not when they’ve created a suitable “after” picture to help me hawk whatever product I have for sale, but right now.

So my dear Chicklettes, if you’re afraid to represent for people of size, or if you’re waiting to be perfect in order to earn the right to share your thoughts and your energy I have some sad news. You will never be perfect. You will never be the perfect embodiment of anything. All you can be is you–as hard and as joyfully as you can! Fortunately, that’s enough.

Love,

The Fat Chick

ROUND numbers: Fit Fatties Forum nears 1,000!

What Everybody Knows

1 Reply

I got yet another comment on the video of Julianne and I on Fox News as posted on my YouTube channel congratulating us for saying that plus-sized people should feel good about ourselves, and then chastising us for saying that fat can be healthy when “everyone knows” that fat can’t be healthy.

I replied, “please review some of the evidence listed below refuting the idea that everyone knows fat is unhealthy”. You see, somebody had started an argument earlier on the very same thread about the very same thing and a lot of size acceptance folks (including me) posted links to scientific studies that indicate fat people can be and often are healthy.

Within just a few short minutes of my reply, the poster withdrew her comment from my channel. I’m not sure what to make of this. Did the poster change their mind? Did the poster just not want to argue? Were they embarrassed? I’m just not sure.

I do know this. I hear this “everyone knows fat people can’t be healthy” argument a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. But just because someone says the earth is flat doesn’t mean I have to believe it. Just because somebody points to the horizon and asserts that I will fall off the edge of the world, doesn’t mean I can’t get in my boat and go sailing.

It can be hard to argue with folks who bring up the “everybody knows fat people can’t be healthy” argument. Sometimes it seems like there aren’t enough sanity points in the whole world to deal with this nonsense yet again. But maybe the best way to deal with the fallacies that “everyone knows” to be true is to stand up and say, “Not me! I don’t agree, and here’s why.” Because throughout history, “everybody has known” one lie or another to be true, until enough people stood up and said “Not me. I don’t believe it.” Or at the very least, some people stood up and said, “Oh yeah? Prove it!”

My dear chicklettes, don’t allow yourselves to be bullied by what “everyone knows”. Get your hands on the facts. Do the research. And don’t allow yourselves to be stressed out by arguments from those too lazy to actually support what they are saying with statistics or numbers or citations. Because what I know is that you are awesome and deserving of respect.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Some Athletes are Notably Missing from NBC’s Creepy Bodies in Motion Video

4 Replies

An Olympian woman licks her lips accompanied by a boom chicka wow wow 70’s soft porn soundtrack in NBC’s Bodies in Motion clip on the NBC website.

I’ve admitted it before and I’ll admit it again. I am complete Olympics junkie. I LOVE watching the Olympics and cheering for people who have devoted a serious percentage of their lives to be incredibly good at something. But I have to admit how sad and disappointed I’ve been with the NBC coverage which seems intent on objectifying women and shows a ridiculous fetish-y need to show off the rear ends of incredibly talented women athletes.

First, there was the concern over the London weather being too cold for the beach volleyball players to wear their bikinis. Then there was the uproar over Gabby Douglas’ hair. And if that wasn’t enough, NBC felt the need to post a totally inappropriate video called “Bodies in Motion” that along with it’s 70’s soft porn style soundtrack featured a whole lot of women’s bodies, often without faces, in loving slow motion that featured, a lot of women’s butts. Not that Olympic booty isn’t wonderful. But seriously, these women train hard every day of their lives to be excellent at their sport. So why oh why do we need frame-filling close-ups of beach volley-butts?

Probably most distressing to me about this video is who ISN’T in the video. Weight lifters? Nope. Boxers? Uh-uh. Fencers, Judo Competitors, rowers, horseback riders, in short anything where women sport bodies considered slightly less movie-star-ready or wearing slightly more clothing? No, no, no, no and no.

And what really frosts my fridge is the effect that this desire for conventionally attractive bodies has on sponsorship dollars for women athletes. Sure if you’re gorgeous, blond, bouncy, ponytailed and razor thin, money can often be found. Meanwhile serious athletes like Sarah Robles often have to get by on a few hundred dollars per month and help from neighborhood food banks.

Let’s face it, not all athletes look like porn stars. Not all of them were considered worthy to star NBC’s soft porn video (which has since been pulled due to public outcry). Nope, lots of athletes look just like you and me. And nearly 1,000 of them participate in the fit fatties forum that I host with the ever-awesome Ragen Chastain.

So my little chicklettes, even if your rear-end is not bikini-clad or featured in barely safe for work fetish videos, don’t despair. Remember that fitness comes in all shapes and sizes.

Love,

The Fat Chick