Tag Archives: Health At Every Size

Warts and All: New Sources for Inspiration in Body Diversity

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tumblr_mjds6nBBln1rvkvumo1_1280Over the past two weeks, I’ve seen a number of new sources for inspiration in the world of body diversity.  Of course we have new inspiration from tried and true sources like Adipositivity (BTW notoriously NSFW).  But there are some exciting new sources as well.  For example, The Body Images Project contains a number of scrumptious photos of folks of all shapes, sizes and ages.  And we’re not just talking about cellulite here.  There’s grey hairs, scars, scabs, freckles, warts and more.  And we’re also seeing some especially awesome feeds on facebook and tumblr lately, including THIS one and THIS one.

And beyond the pictures, there’s the dancing–OOOOHHHH the dancing.  Aside from the toddler dancing that I posted a few weeks ago, we have awesome dancing old ladies.  HERE’S an 88 yr. old lady who boogies down the stairs:

And there’s old ladies doing Zumba and old ladies standing proudly for portraits and there’s just bodies, all different kinds of bodies EVERYWHERE!  In a sea of previously perfectly toned and tanned and coiffed and waxed bodies, it’s so exciting to me that social media can also be a source of difference.  It seems that just now in cyberspace, I’m seeing big bodies and small bodies and smooth bodies and wrinkly bodies and white bodies and black bodies and freckly bodies and scarred bodies.  All are sacred bodies.  All are unique packages encompassing the divine.  And all I can say is, HOW DELIGHTFUL!  Rather than a one page menu of clone, drone, Barbie types, I’m seeing a bodacious BUFFET of bodies of all different kinds.  And I ask you, how can this NOT be a good thing?

So click away.  Click at links and click at cameras.  Show us your gorgeousness you cyber cuties.  And let us see how decidedly, deliciously DIFFERENT you all are!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Fit Fatties Across America–California, Baby!

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Well hello out there.  I’m so very proud to announce we have reached my home state, California in the Fit Fatties Across America project founded by myself and the amazing Ragen Chastain!  We’ve walked, shimmied, swum, cycled and boogied across this great country of ours for a total of over 2,500 miles!  And it’s only just March.  It’s just so darn exciting to see what we can do together.

I’m especially excited about the way that we are busting stereotypes with this cool project.  Many people hold the prejudice that if fat people never exercise.  They think we just sit on the sofa all day eating bon bons.  (What the heck IS a bon bon anyway?)  But our mighty group of plus-sized exercisers have racked up over 2,500 miles in just over eight weeks. It’s a testament to the power of the Health At Every Size approach to wellness, and it’s super fun!

Aside from the Fit Fatties Across America project, the Fit Fatties Forum is a great way to be inspired by exercisers of ALL sizes.  Our forum currently boasts over 1,500 members as well as over 350 fabulous photos of fat people dancing, swimming, cycling, shimmying, lifting very heavy things, aiming arrows, and flashing some flaming hula hoops!  The pictures are amazing.  What a fabulous, myth busting, stigma shattering resource for men and women of all sizes!

Now, my loyal readers, I’d like to enlist your help.  Some of us local California peeps are planning to meet at the beach to do the final leg of the Fit Fatties Across America project together on Saturday, March 19.  But that means that as a group, we need to clock just over 200 miles in the next two weeks.  Will you help us get there?  If you’re not already a member of the Fit Fatties Forum, would you consider joining?  It’s totally FREE!  And if you’re already a member of the Fit Fatties Forum, would you consider entering your exercise totals for the next two weeks so we can reach our goal?  And if you are a member of the Fit Fatties who lives in the LA area, would you consider joining us on March 19 to finish the last few miles of this great project together live, and in person?  Let’s dip our toes in the big blue ocean together!  Let’s show ’em just what a few fatties can do!

Love,

The Fat Chick

 

The Right Now Show Episode 006: Exercise and Chronic Pain

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In Episode 6 of the Right Now Show, we address a viewer inquiry about exercising with chronic pain or disability.  We discuss strategies for exercising with osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia and other sources of chronic pain, discuss the traffic light method for rating pain conditions and discuss techniques for getting the most out of your workouts.

Here are some other important resources for exercising with chronic pain:

This week I’m offering a special FREE BONUS VIDEO with additional information on exercising with chronic pain.

Here’s an extended (1 hr.) interview with me and Pain Specialist Dr. Paul Christo talking about coping with plus-sized exercise and chronic pain:

Here are some studies about the effects of exercise on chronic pain:

And here’s an extremely informative article about chronic pain and exercise technique:

Hollow Leg Days–FEED Me Seymour!

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I think one of the realities of intuitive eating is understanding that some days you are hungrier than others.  Some days I hardly think about food at all.  I go for hours and hours not feeling particularly hungry and eat a little bit and that is that.  But some days are what my dear husband calls “hollow leg days”.  These are days where you feel like you must have a hollow leg because it seems like you’ve eaten plenty to fill your stomach but still feel hungry.  My husband says, “It must have gone somewhere.  Maybe I have a hollow leg.”

I’m not talking about stress eating here or eating because you are bored.  Although these are both potential pitfalls of intuitive eating.  I’m talking about genuine, tummy grumbling, there’s gotta be a few more crackers in this box hunger.  Sometimes it seems a tame thing that is kept at bay.  And sometimes I find myself like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors demanding, “Feed me Seymour!”

This intuitive eating thing can be really challenging.  It’s easy to eat intuitively when you are craving spinach.  It’s a little more challenging to eat intuitively when you are craving spumoni or sausage.  It can be a struggle to quiet the guilt and keep the old diet thoughts at bay.  Luckily, I get to observe a real, native, free range, lifelong intuitive eater in my own house.  My husband has always been naturally thin, so people have encouraged him throughout his life to eat exactly what he wants.  So he’s an intuitive eater.  He always has been.  And I’ve seen “hollow leg days” happen to him.  (It’s his terminology after all.)

Since dieting was such a disaster and the HAES (R) approach has been such a force for happiness in my life, I plan to stay the course.  Part of intuitive eating is pushing away from the table when I’m full.  Part of intuitive eating is looking for something to eat again 2 hours after lunch because I am still hungry or I feel hungry again.  These are two sides of the same coin.  Part of pushing away when full, eating just one cookie or eating two bites of pie is the implicit understanding that I can have another cookie or another bite of pie or another 1/2 hamburger whenever I am truly hungry for them.  Even if logic seems to dictate I “shouldn’t be”.

So when I’m having a hollow leg day, I’ll shout (or sing), “Feed me Seymour!  Feed me all night long!”

Love,

The Fat Chick

 

What Happens When We “Let Ourselves Go”…

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TheFatChick

After I tell people that I support Health At Every Size (R) and after I explain what Health At Every Size is, people often share with me their fear that if they ever stopped strictly policing their body size, their food intake and their calories burned, they will grow “big as a house” and they will “never stop eating”.  Now this fear is natural.  We’ve been conditioned to believe that we are just one chocolate chip cookie away from total body apocalypse and that only constant, fierce and consistent vigilance will keep us from serious medical harm.  There’s a $60 billion dollar diet industry as well as an unbelievably huge system of bariatric surgery and drugs and research grants and public health initiatives to support the notion that if we take our eyes off the thin body prize for even a moment, all hell will break loose.

Except, in my experience, it kind of doesn’t.

Some recent research coming out of Australia, seems to support the notion that Health At Every Size and Size Acceptance does NOT generally lead to giving up on health altogether.  “The Role of the Fatosphere in Fat Adults’ Responses to Obesity Stigma: A Model of Empowerment Without a Focus on Weight Loss” details interviews with 44 bloggers in the “Fatosphere”.  The subjects of these interviews often talked about moving from a reactive response to stigma (attempting weight loss to conform to societal norms) towards a proactive approach to stigma (recognizing stigma, reframing fat, and focus on self-acceptance).  These bloggers described significant improvements in well being as a result of being associated with the size acceptance community and taking a direct approach to dealing with shame and stigma.

Granted, we’re only talking about 44 bloggers here.  This is hardly a representative sample of fat people all over the world. But it does seem to map to my experience.  For a short time after I declared all foods legal and nothing off limits I ate a LOT of cookies and chips and pizza.  But after not very long, the bloom was off the rose.  I found I really didn’t want another candy bar.  I wanted broccoli.  I wanted chicken.  I wanted whole wheat bread and peanut butter.  I wanted real food.  Once the “forbidden” label was removed from foods, I found I could often take them or leave them.  I could eat one cookie.  I could eat 3 potato chips.  Because you know what?  I knew I could have them again whenever I wanted them.

Once I removed the notion of punishment from my physical activities and started focusing on finding exercise that was fun, I started enjoying my workouts a whole lot more.  Rather than dragging myself up onto the treadmill and burning an arbitrary number of calories, I called the dog and we went outside for walkies.  I got my heart pumping.  I bumped up my Vitamin D levels.  And I HAD FUN.  When I accepted that I no longer had to do exercise that I hated, I found myself free to focus on fitness that I loved.  I learned to look forward to workouts again.

Clearly I’m citing anecdotal evidence here.  But there is plenty of other research by amazing people like Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor that explains what happens when people lose their obsession with weight loss and start focusing on the Health At Every Size approach to wellness.  What happens is that folks get happier and generally healthier all without the nasty side effects of disordered eating, weight cycling and depression so common to the traditional diet-based approach.

So after I tell people about Health At Every Size and after people tell me that they can’t support HAES because they would lose all control and would wind up desperately unhappy and unhealthy, I still have an ace up my sleeve.

I share the overwhelming evidence that the HAES (R) approach typically leaves people at a weight that is natural for them with a body that is healthier and with a mind that is happier than ever before.

Seems like a safe bet to me.

Love,

The Fat Chick

 

And the Award for Best at Wearing a Dress Goes to…

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dressed

Long before the final statuettes have been given out, the awards for who looks best (and worst) in a dress are being decided.  From the moment these film actors and actresses stop onto the red carpet, the world is frantically deciding, do they look good?  Isn’t it interesting that the Oscar is almost a secondary award to the main award–the best and worst dress lists?  These lists begin to come out before the first Academy Award envelope is opened and before the stars and starlets have even had a chance to find a drink or have their first, post-red-carpet pee.

Anybody who has any doubts about the priorities of our culture need look no further than this night.  Winning for being the best actor or actress often simply takes second place to who wore the best dress, had the right hair, and managed to score the most exclusive awards night jewelry.  Even the directors, producers, costume designers, writers, set designers, sound designers and more are meticulously dissected based on hem length, cleavage, tux tailoring, strappy shoe wearing and bling.

I can’t help thinking that it all feels so “High School”.  The pecking order for the most prestigious film awards in the world seems to share more than a little in common with your average High School prom evening.  You have the popular kids, the AV nerds, the smart kids, the jocks, the goth kids and others.   You have limo rides that are probably more awkward than fun.  You have folks who have poured more money into one evening that anyone ever thought prudent or even possible.  And at the end of the day, it seems all anyone cares, is how they looked in the dress.

Meh.

Maybe that’s why, despite multiple invitations to various Oscar parties, I opted to simply go to the pub with my sweetie.  I ate sliders.  I wore jeans.  I drank wine.  Life is good.

So maybe I won’t win the award for best at wearing a dress.  But at least I had a good time.  Oh, and I didn’t have to wait three hours to pee either.

I guess it’s all about priorities.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Stuff that Weighs More than Me: The H2 in the Best Buy Lot

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hummer_h2_suv_luxury_2008In honor of Wednesday’s post, I present the H2: a not so very fuel efficient ve-hic-le that I feel fairly confident weighs more than me.  This bad boy gets less than 10 MPG and decidedly does NOT belong in the compact parking spots in the lot because friends, it is one big brute of a SUV.

Here’s the stats:

Engine: 6.2 Liter V8

Wheelbase: 122.8 inches

Height: 79 inches

Width: 83.1 inches

Length: 203.5 inches

Curb Weight: 6614 pounds

Conclusion: The H2 weighs more than a ton more than me.

Dealing with Diabetes: Episode 004 of the Right Now Show with Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

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Are you coping with diabetes?  Is your doctor shaming you because of your weight?  Do you wish you had some body-positive advice for coping with this disease?  I’m pleased to share with you episode 004 of The Right Now Show. In this episode, I answer a viewer’s question about dealing with Type 2 diabetes. Tune in for helpful hints for taking a Health At Every Size (R) approach to coping with this challenging disease. I offer tips for integrating exercise (even when coping with chronic pain), managing stress, and how to keep loving the skin you’re in through it all.

There are more tips available about coping with diabetes in a special article I wrote for the Association for Size Diversity And Health available here.

And there’s a really fun music video I did with Ragen Chastain all about managing family boundaries during the holidays available HERE.

You can learn a lot more about The Fat Chick on my website.

And you can buy Jeanette’s progressive workout DVD (with that 10 minute beginning workout) on the shopping page or at Amazon.com HERE.

Thanks so much for watching and don’t forget to subscribe!

Love,
The Fat Chick

Ellen and the Biggest Bully

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I love the Ellen show.  I love the sweet, silly nature of it.  I  love the dance breaks.  I love Ellen’s work to end bullying.  So I was so very sad when one of my readers gave me a heads up that Jillian Michaels was going to be interviewed on the Ellen show.  Sure enough, the show aired yesterday, and I am so very disappointed.  I am so sad that Ellen had professional bully Jillian Michaels on her show for a super soft interview.  First, she let Jillian go on and on about how she’s helping people with The Biggest Loser.  Please. Who exactly is Jillian helping with that show? Scientific studies have been conducted.  One of those studies indicates that people are less likely to exercise after watching The Biggest Loser.  So the show discourages exercise.  What about weight loss?  According to Yoni Freedhoff in his excellent article “When Science Met the Biggest Loser” even former contestants of the show are unlikely to keep the weight off.  There are a few, who have since made their body size into a career with lucrative speaking engagements and product endorsements who manage to stay thin.  A group of researchers including the show’s own Robert Huizenga have determined that those participating in shows like The Biggest Loser face an extremely significant metabolic slowdown after their weight loss, making it very difficulty and extremely unlikely that participants will maintain their weight loss.  Another study cited in Freedhoff’s excellent article indicates that people who watched even a single episode of The Biggest Loser led viewers to “dramatically increase their own hateful and negative biases towards those with obesity”.

So who is Jillian helping?  She’s making millions of dollars participating in a show that increases stigma against people of size, makes people less likely to exercise and espouses a weight loss method almost guaranteed to leave participants even larger in the long run.

Next, Jillian went on to complain that her role on the show is taken out of context and that people see her as a “cartoon caricature”.  Yet, in this same episode of Ellen, Jillian participates in a segment where she “yells at Ellen” and is in turn yelled at by Sean Hays for not, yelling at Ellen well enough.  The clip concludes with Ellen and Sean making sure Jillian is gone and then stuffing popcorn and donuts into their face as quickly as they can.  So if Jillian  worried about her image as the woman who yells at people a lot, she sure has a funny way of dispelling that image.  I think it important to mention the one thing in this clip that is accurate.  There are studies that indicate that shaming and bullying people is more likely to produce binge eating and other negative health habits than to encourage healthy habits.  So score one for accuracy there.  But I don’t think Jillian is misunderstood.  She is a professional bully.  She makes her living by finding new ways to humiliate and shame fat people.  She makes MILLIONS of dollars at it.  Misunderstood?  I think she’s understood only too well.  If by chance there is some shred of decency in her, if she really doesn’t believe in behaving like a cartoon villain, guess what?  All she had to do was walk away from the show and not come back.  All she had to do was turn down those big fat paychecks.  She didn’t.  She may use that “I’m helping people” line to make herself feel better, but she isn’t making people feel better.  She isn’t making people healthier.  What she’s making is money and LOTS of it.  What’s not to understand?

Then Jillian went on to a section where she busted some exercise myths.  Please.  As if Jillian Michaels is somebody we should trust to fill us in on health and fitness.  The Biggest Loser is one of the greatest perpetrators of exercise myths on the planet.  As I pointed out in two previous posts, just about everything they do on The Biggest Loser goes against solid exercise science.  And as was stated previously in this post, science indicates that The Biggest Loser does more harm than good.  Either Jillian is in agreement with what happens on The Biggest Loser which demonstrates poor analytical skills, or she’s in disagreement with what happens on The Biggest Loser and participates merely to make a buck.  Either way, this is not a person I’m going to turn to for solid advice about health and fitness.

I can’t say I’m disappointed in Jillian.  She delivered exactly the kind of nonsense I thought she would.  But I am disappointed that Ellen caved to whatever pressure was brought to bear and allowed someone like Jillian Michaels on her show.  I’m so sad that Ellen offered yet another media platform to a person who makes her living hurting and humiliating fat people.

By the way, the petition to keep kids off The Biggest Loser is still live.  If you haven’t signed yet, you still can.  Why not do it Right Now?

Love,

The Fat Chick

A Fatty Affair 2013 was Off the Hook!

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If, like me, you were privileged enough to go to A Fatty Affair last weekend, I imagine you are still basking in the afterglow of what can only be called a massively cool rad fatty event.  If you didn’t get to go, I’m sorry.  But you can still view the clip above to get an idea of just how much awesome and win was experienced by all.

There was singing and dancing.  There was talk about sex.  There was home-baked yummy desserts.  There were hula hoops.  There were butt bounces.  There was laughing and playing and more fabulous clothes for swapping than you can even imagine.

Kudos go out to Sarah Redman and her entire planning committee for creating such an uplifting, warm and positive event.  I can’t wait for next year!  Thankfully, Sarah has informed  us that they plan on doing even more events in the coming year.  If you want to stay on top of all the stuff this great group is cooking up, check out their web site.

This weekend reminded me once again, just how powerful community can be.  I think at one time or another all of us feel like we are all alone in our journey towards self acceptance.  But there’s no reason to go it alone.  In addition to the Fatty Affair folks, there’s the Size Diversity Task Force (who has already collected over 15,000 pages towards the Paper Mache in a Big, Big Way project), ASDAH, The Fat Chick Clique and The Fit Fatties Forum (who have reached the Rockies in their jaunt across the USA).  Don’t worry if one particular group is too far away or doesn’t fit your style.  There are amazing size acceptance groups everywhere!  So don’t try to do it all by yourself.  Share or be square!

Love,

The Fat Chick