Tag Archives: perfect

Recursive Recrimination–Beating Yourself Up (For Beating Yourself Up)

Several decades ago, I made the decision to not let negative feelings about my body rule my life any more. I decided to stop putting my life on hold until I reached a certain size or shape. I decided that all the things I was waiting to do until after I had the “right” body, well I was going to do those things right away. I have never regretted that decision. It was a massively important turning point in my life.

However, when I decided to become The Fat Chick and make this decision extremely public, I hesitated. Because I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfectly healthy. I wasn’t in perfectly physically fit. I wasn’t the ideal poster child for fat people. And sometimes I had bad days where I didn’t feel perfectly happy about my body. How, I asked, can I inspire others to love their bodies and love exercise again when I don’t always exercise and I sometimes frown at what I see in the mirror.

Working with a very wise coach and my super smart husband I came up with the answer. I have it on a post-it note on the window in my office. It reads, “The Fat Chick is not a ‘persona’, she is a person. And people aren’t perfect.” Getting past this little post it allowed me to finish my book and be on national television and face down another pile of hate mail and ugly comments on my YouTube videos. It has allowed me to get on with things–even when I’m feeling far less than perfect. And it’s allowed me to stop beating myself up for beating myself up.

Look, we all have days where we feel powerful and strong and invincible. And then we have days where we don’t. This is normal. This is life. But when we make the decision to stop hating our bodies and hating ourselves for the way our bodies look, there is a tendency to want to exchange one sort of perfectionism (the search for the perfect body) for another (the complete cessation of negative body thoughts). I get it. First I mourned for all the perfect things I imagined would happen in my life once I had the perfect body.

And then I had the honeymoon period where I believed I would never feel bad about my body again and I would remain perfectly healthy and nobody could ever hurt me again. And then I had the bad days where I didn’t feel perfectly happy or healthy in my body AT ALL. And then I started beating myself up for beating myself up about not having the perfect body in a perfect recursive storm of self-recrimination.

Sometimes I just have to STOP. Take a few deep breaths and tell myself that I am hereby absolved of the need to be perfect in anything. This includes being perfect at self-acceptance. This includes being perfect about body love. This includes being perfect about not needing to be perfect.

I take another breath and try to be grateful for the whole, non-perfect, f’ed up mess of it. Try to be grateful that I can breathe. Try to be grateful that I have a life to muddle through and mess up. And try to remind myself that I don’t need to be perfectly grateful either.

I don’t always get it right. But that’s okay. Because I am a person, and people aren’t perfect.

I hope this little blog post helps serve as a reminder for some of you who are currently in the process of beating yourself up for, well, beating yourself up. You have the permission of the universe to be profoundly imperfect. Because the universe made us that way. You are a person, and people aren’t perfect. And that’s totally okay.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want me to talk to your group about being imperfect? Click HERE to learn about my speaking.

P.S.S. Want to buy a book or DVD to help you in your fitness journey? Click HERE to learn about them.

After Happily Ever After…

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Watching this video really got me thinking. It’s hilarious and awesome because it ties into something we all so desperately want to believe. We want to believe in happily ever after. We want to believe that once we achieve that one thing, after we reach perfection, then everything will always be okay from that point on forever, amen. Right? It starts with the whole princesses thing, and then for many of us, it becomes the whole weight thing.

I spent many years indulging in “happily thin ever after” thinking. I believed that once I was thin, insanely rich and handsome men would swoop by in super yachts and pick me up and take me off to James Bond-style vacations (without the sorta violent parts) in exotic places. I dreamed that academy award-winning directors, stunned by my new svelte beauty, would discover me in a local Starbucks and offer me a three picture deal. But mostly I dreamed that I wouldn’t feel self-conscious any more, I would always feel fabulous about how I looked and that I would then have the courage to do anything I needed to achieve my dreams.

And then for a while, I got thin. And you know what? Absolutely none of the stuff that I believed in my happily ever after fantasy came true. None of it. No yachts. Not even a canoe. No vacations to exotic places–violent or otherwise. No three-picture deal. (Although I did get a latte…) And I still felt self-conscious, and unhappy about my looks and fearful and all of that stuff. I still wasn’t equipped to do everything I needed to achieve my dreams. I still felt miserable a lot of the time. And I thought, “What a rip off!” I was pretty annoyed that the whole getting thin thing was not as advertised. I mean I was averaging 700-800 calories per day. My hair was falling out. My digestive system was no longer working properly. I was no longer menstruating. I was exercising 2+ hours per day. And you know what, I was THIN. But the awesomeness I expected, just didn’t happen. I did have more places to shop for clothes but not more money to use for that purpose. I did have less trouble dealing with doctors, relatives and complete strangers who no longer felt it necessary to have “concerned conversations” with me about my weight. And for a while, I got a ton of positive attention from friends and family. And then it became like no big deal. I didn’t get positive attention any more. I got tired of feeling sick and tired all the time. And I just wanted to EAT! After over 12 months of this crazy regimen, my metabolism tanked to the point that I was gaining weight at 1,000 calories per day. So not surprisingly, I gained it all back and then some.

Society promises us that when we are thin, our lives will be perfect and exciting beyond our wildest imagination. Many of us who experience becoming thin (temporarily or otherwise) find ourselves totally unprepared for finding out the truth about being thin. The truth being that most of our problems are still with us, and our wildest imaginations go a long, long way beyond the lives that we experience as thin people. I was so moved when I read this account of a woman who had lost a lot of weight after weight loss surgery. Not surprisingly, she experienced an intense letdown when she realized the wonderful, perfect life she was promised in the doctor’s office never really materialized. And she was also completely unprepared for the loss of her sense of identity and her sense of self that can come with such a dramatic change in the shape of your body.

I am sure there are those out there who are eager to tell me that it is our fault we don’t experience the perfection that comes with weight loss. We weren’t thin long enough. We didn’t get thin the right way. We didn’t use the right products or achieve the correct level of enlightenment. But you know what? I don’t think there is any magic bullet that makes life perfect. I don’t believe that there is a moment after which you live happily ever after. I like to believe I’ve reached a moment after which I have a reasonably good chance of being happy a lot of the time. I like to believe that I’ve reached a stage where I feel reasonably content in my body and am equipped to make the best of what life has to throw at me. But happily ever after is a fantasy I’ve happily learned to outgrow.

Love,

The Fat Chick

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

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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