Tag Archives: the fat chick

Knock it off, Michelle Obama!

AAAAAARRRRGGGH! We’ve recently gotten news that Michelle Obama is to appear on the upcoming series of the television show, “The Biggest Loser”. Apparently her topic will be somewhat benign. She is to talk about the importance of drinking water. And given the show’s somewhat checkered past in dehydrating clients to help them achieve weigh-in goals, a focus on drinking water might not be such a bad thing. But the fact that the FLOTUS plans on appearing on this piece of crap show at all is not, to quote Martha Stewart, a GOOD thing.

A fair amount of criticism has recently been leveled, especially by the size acceptance, eating disorder prevention and anti-diet communities against the First Lady for making this choice. There’s this amazing video showing dozens of people from the community (including me) speaking out against Michelle Obama’s upcoming appearance. And there’s even a petition you can sign asking Michelle to “just stay home”. We haven’t heard much from her camp yet. But I imagine if we do hear from her or her people about this appearance, she’s likely to scoff and say that she’s just talking about the importance of drinking water for goodness sake. What can be bad about that?

My response? Plenty.

Here’s a few reasons why I think Michelle Obama should just knock it off, and refuse to be on The Biggest Loser:

1. The show is built on the notion of shame. And as I state here and here and here and in my submission for the video, SHAME DOES NOT HELP. It doesn’t make people healthier. It doesn’t make people happier and it doesn’t make people thinner. It makes people less happy, less healthy and it tends to lead people into disordered behavior around food and exercise.

2. The show is based on BAD SCIENCE. I wrote so much on this topic in the past, I had to create a two-part blog post. The “weight loss” techniques depicted on that show are contrary to accepted professional practice and can be downright dangerous. It needs to stop.

3. The show routinely tortures its contestants. Check out these interviews between Golda Poretsky and a former Biggest Loser contestant. The cult-like experience of this former contestant demonstrates the unhealthy power dynamic between contestants, directors, producers and other show staff. And the long term health prognosis for many of the former contestants is not very good.

4. The show uses the magic of editing and other Hollywood tricks to further mess up people’s expectations around exercise, health and weight loss. Sometimes weight losses that are depicted as taking a week actually take longer. People’s fluid levels are manipulated to help them look like they are losing more weight than they actually are. Extreme exercise is described as an important weight-loss tool even though it is not that closely related to winning weight-loss totals. It’s described, oxymoronically as “reality television” even though it bears little resemblance to the real world.

5. This show is unhealthy not only for those who participate in it, but also for people who simply watch. Several studies came out showing that the show negatively impacts viewer opinions regarding people of size. Additional studies show that those who watch the show wind up LESS INCLINED TO EXERCISE than those who don’t. So much for “Let’s Move!” Michelle.

Look, I think it’s awesome that Michelle wants to encourage people to engage in healthy habits. And it seems in many ways, she has toned down the weight-loss rhetoric in her “Let’s Move” campaign verbiage. But even if she doesn’t appear with a weight-loss message on the show, simply being on the show adds weight and credence to a television program that is irresponsible and just needs to go away.

Feeling good and mad over this whole thing?

Good! Let’s do something about it!

1. Sign the petition.

2. Share the video.

3. Join weight neutral exercise spaces like the Fit Fatties Forum.

4. Stop watching the show.

5. Help spread the word about Health At Every Size(R).

Go get ’em!

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want to get access to FREE STUFF? Just opt in RIGHT HERE!

Exercise Discovery–Finding Your Fun

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Naturally a lot of people ask me what I do. And very often when I tell them, they say, “Oh I hate to exercise.” And if they seem happy with the idea that they hate exercise, I leave it at that. People are allowed to love exercise or hate exercise or do exercise despite the fact they hate it or start a small hat shop. It’s not my job to tell them what to do. But sometimes people ask me how they can stop hating exercise, and that’s what this blog post is about.

Because as the graphic says above, exercise is like sex, if you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right. And if you flipped that slide over, you would come to the second part of that statement which is, “sometimes you’ve got to kiss a few exercise toads before you find your exercise prince or princess.”

Cuteness aside, I think a lot of people try one kind of exercise one or two times and decide that they hate exercise altogether. And I’d like to gently suggest that maybe you need to try “dating” a few other kinds of exercise in a few other places with a few different people before you decide to give up on exercise forever. That’s not to say that some people don’t simply hate all forms of exercise. I’m sure that’s true for some people, and that’s totally okay. But if you haven’t tried any form of exercise since elementary school dodge ball tournaments or Jane Fonda leg warmer exercise videos, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try something new.

We started out this week with a day dedicated to discovery (at least in the United States). And whether you choose to call it Columbus Day or Bartolome Day or just that extra day off in October, we can choose to let that day encourage us to be adventurers. Let’s choose to be exercise explorers together.

One way to begin is to evaluate your last dreadful exercise experience. What did you hate about it? Was it the sweating? Was it being outside? Was it in a class where you felt you couldn’t keep up? Was it somewhere that made you feel embarrassed or inadequate? Did the exercise hurt? Were you too hot or too cold? Did you get injured? See if you can pinpoint the specific thing or things you hated most about your experience.

Once we’ve got that figured out, we can work to expand our exercise minds. ANY kind of movement can be considered exercise of one sort or another. Even if it seems too “easy”. Even if it doesn’t seem like exercise at all. It could be gardening or playing racquetball. It could be walking around the mall or roller skating or having magnificent tantric sex with movie stars.

Next, we can work to evaluate a the items on our expanded exercise list based on a few criteria:

1. Does it help us avoid the stuff we hated about exercise last time? If we hated walking outside was it the walking part we hated or the outside part we hated or both? If it was the outside part, will walking on a treadmill or walking inside at the mall be better? If we hated walking will cycling or roller skating outside be better? You get the idea.

2. Is this form of exercise something I have a reasonable chance of actually getting to try? I imagine that wild, frantic, fabulous sex with James Bond would be high on my list of exercises I’d like to try. There are just a few problems with that: A) I’m married, B) I don’t know where to find James Bond, and C) James Bond doesn’t exist. I don’t want to pee in your pool here, but if you live in Iowa, maybe surfing is not the sport for you. If you want to go to California on your next trip and try it out, by all means please do. But in the meantime, maybe you’d like to try something a little closer to home.

3. Does it seem like fun? Surfing and secret movie star sex aside, there is probably some sort of activity that will sound at least a little bit fun to you. Maybe it’s salsa dancing or hula dancing lessons. Maybe it’s Japanese drumming. Maybe it’s running around with a DV camera and recording stuff or swimming or scuba diving or canoeing. There are so many activities out there that can increase your strength, flexibility or stamina. Get some magazines! Surf the net! Roll some different kinds of exercise around in your mouth until something tastes delicious and you are eager to try it.

4. Accept that you will have to kiss some more exercise toads. In our search for Mr. or Ms. right, I think most of us understand that we won’t necessarily find our perfect match on the first date. Or the twentieth date. Or even the one hundredth date. But you know what? There’s a lot of fish in that exercise sea. And sometimes, ya just gotta pick yourself up, dust that spandex off and try again.

5. Evaluate, rate and keep trying. Each exercise “date” deserves a little post mortem. Ask yourself, what did I love about this? What did I hate? What parts were just okay? Is there a way to make this exercise more fun or am I just dressing up a toad here? Is it possible for the Fat Chick to even get one more silly mixed metaphor into a single blog post? After you’ve done your evaluation, you can decide if you’d like to try another date with that exercise, if you’re done dating that exercise or if you never want to see another exercise remotely like that EVER AGAIN. It’s up to you.

By the way, I’d like to add one more tip. Given the fact that we’re “dating” exercise forms here, can I humbly suggest that you don’t offer to marry that exercise before you’ve even gone out on your first date? Please, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t sign up for $8,000 worth of courses or sign up for an 18-year non-refundable gym contract before you know if you even like a form of exercise or a place to do it? I myself have subscribed to the, “If I pay $3,000 for it, I know I’ll do it, because I don’t want to waste the money” school of thought. And I’ve spent many years hanging my lingerie on the treadmill while I learned the folly of that thinking, hopefully for good.

So my dear readers, I hope you feel encouraged to go out there and try something new. And once you find your exercise bliss, I’d love to encourage you to take photos and share them with Ragen and I on the Fit Fatties Forum. And don’t forget to have fun!

Love,

Jeanette (AKA The Fat Chick)

Loving Your Body by Listening to Your Body

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I’ve been married for nearly 20 years, and that’s quite a while. If I’ve learned anything over this past 20 years about relationships, it’s this–if you love somebody you have to take time to listen to them. Sure, it’s important to buy each other presents, and show affection. And yeah, sex is pretty important too. But few things are as important as taking time to really hear what your partner has to say.

Today is Love Your Body Day, and I think that’s wonderful. It’s a day which encourages us to celebrate the bodies we have as they are. It’s a day which encourages us to put diets aside and to spend at least 24 hours not comparing ourselves to unrealistic media ideals of bodies and not beating ourselves up for failing to “measure up”.

But I think we can take this relationship with our bodies a little further than failing to beat ourselves up. And I think one of the most important things we can do to show our bodies love is to learn to listen to them.

Our bodies are mysterious and magical and wondrous. So much of it works without our having to think consciously about it at all. Our hearts beat, and breathing happens. Our stomachs digest food and our bodies break it into nutrients that fuel movements both conscious and unconscious. But for things that we need to do consciously like find food and move our limbs, and lay down to sleep our bodies have a very sophisticated built-in wiring system intricately connected with our brains. And if we become attuned to that wiring system, we can learn so much about what our bodies need.

So many of us have learned to be frustrated by the fact that our bodies get hungry. But I for one, am deeply grateful for it. I am a busy person who is easily distracted. Were it not for hunger, I think I might find myself stranded on the side of the road somewhere completely out of fuel and without roadside assistance. Luckily, I get hungry often and in no uncertain terms. So even if I find it really annoying, I find that I have to take the time to find food on the regular. What’s more, I find that if I take the time to listen, my body is pretty specific about what food it wants. The more carefully I listen to my body, the more attuned I am to what nutrients I am lacking and what foods might best top off my nutritional tank. Sometimes my body craves carrots and sometimes (well most of the time) it craves chocolate. And it seems the more carefully that I follow my body’s menu choices (rather than my brain’s dictates about what I should eat) the better I feel. And when I really listen to what my body wants to eat, and give in by eating precisely as much of those things as my body wants, I am rewarded. My body feels warm, wonderful and satisfied.

Another area where I’m learning to finally listen to my loud-talking body is in movement. Our bodies are capable of amazing abilities to move through space. Not only can we walk across a room or catch a ball without thinking about it, but we can also hike and swim in the ocean and dance. And this is another place where the highly sophisticated wiring in our bodies has a lot to tell us. If I sit too long, my body protests. My back and knees stiffen. I feel pain in my head and neck. On the other hand, if I move too much or too long or in a way that is too intense for my current fitness level, my body sends me messages of pain and fatigue. Now just like hunger, pain and fatigue can be deeply annoying. My schedule may convince my conscious mind that it does not want to get up and move or it may not want to stop moving or it may find it extremely inconvenient to sleep. Thankfully, my body sends signals that are difficult to ignore and I try to find ways to meet my body’s demands by moving or resting or sleeping. And when I get this right, my body rewards me. I feel a lightness in my limbs and a glowing sense of energy when I am well-exercised and well rested.

Our bodies strive for something that is so difficult for us to achieve in modern life–balance. Our bodies tell us when we are eating more food than we need or not enough. Our bodies tell us when we need more broccoli, and when we need buns. Our bodies tell us when to leap and when to laugh and when to rest and when to run. And when I listen, truly listen, to my body, it sings. The energy flows through me and I feel a hum that runs from my toes to the top of my head. That’s what it feels like to be in a loving relationship with my body. It feels wonderful. It’s enough to make me strive to make every day love my body day.

Love,

Jeanette (AKA The Fat Chick)

Stupid F@#!ing Injuries

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Medic!

If you’ve done any sort of exercise for any length of time you’ve probably experienced some sort of pain or injury. I know. I feel ya. I’ve experienced injuries of many shapes and sizes and they all, unequivocally suck. But of all injuries I’ve faced, I have to admit that I’ve had the hardest time coping with the stupid f*$%ing injuries.

If you’re wondering what I mean, let me explain. There are injuries that sound justified or even tough. Like, “I got a stress fracture training for that Ironman race”. Then there are stupid f##$ing injureis like, “I tripped over my own shoelace and now I’m going to be in traction for a month.” It doesn’t sound sexy. Nobody’s thinking, “wow what dedication and stuff, the guy walked in SHOES, with LACES. And they came untied and he just KEPT GOING!” Nobody is making YouTube videos with inspiring music behind them documenting your “tripping over your shoelaces” comeback. Like I said, it just sucks. Because as much as your knee or your back or your shoulder is hurting, you also have to deal with the agonizing blow to your pride.

I had a reminder of this just this past week. I hurt my back, working on the remodel of our house. Okay, that doesn’t sound too bad, right. Oh, did I mention I was SWEEPING at the time? Yup, all I was doing was sweeping and my external obliques let out a rebel yell:

OMG it was so embarassing. My husband asked me what was wrong. And I replied that I had just experienced the dumbest injury in history. He told me to take some Advil and go lay down. At first I told him, no–that I didn’t have time to lay down. And in his infinite awesomeness he replied,

“Jeanette, tweaking your back is not the dumbest injury in history. That kind of stuff happens to everybody. But if you don’t take the time now to lay down and you make this worse and you allow a little injury to become a massive, got to lay in back for a week injury, now THAT would be pretty dumb.”

God, I love my husband–that is when I’m not trying to kill him for being annoyingly correct all the time. But you know what? He had a point. I wish I could say that the injuries I suffered were some sort of sexy battle scars from the hard core exercise wars, but the truth is, the worst injuries I’ve ever had have been stupid !@#$ing injuries. Including:

1. Meniscus tear from jumping up on some exercise mats to get some exercise equipment for one of my classes. Result: 4 weeks on crutches, massive physical therapy.

2. Torn ligament in the sole of my foot from catching my sandal on a single cement step at my parents house. Result: 6 weeks on crutches, massive physical therapy.

3. Tweaking my back from sweeping. AAAAARGH!

Look there’s a point to all this and here it is. We alllllllllll experience stupid f!$%ing injuries from time to time. It happens to everybody. Get over it. The only thing that you can control is how you cope with it after it happens. You can rest, get diagnosis, and get treatment OR you can ignore it and allow a small f#$%ing injury to become a MASSIVE f!#$%ing injury. And as my husband says, that’s the dumbest kind of injury of all.

Hang in there!

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

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A Sensible Approach to Healthy Kids

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Folks of ALL ages dancing their hearts out!

I have to admit that the blog post I did on Monday broke my heart. The idea that it is even possible that a six-year-old girl may have died because of weight stigma is just so sad. I need to reiterate, that none of us can know precisely what that doctor was thinking. But the testimony she gave at her own trial makes me more than a little suspicious.

And you know what? It doesn’t have to be this way.

There are far simpler ways to help kids be healthy. Not the least of which is simply helping them find safe places to play and joyful places to move their bodies. Because one of the best things we can do to help kids be healthy is offer them fun ways to get exercise. Yet another study came out this week that indicates that cognitive abilities among kids have a lot more to do with fitness levels than BMI. But this fact, doesn’t seem to deter those who feel the best way to help kids be healthy is to send home a BMI report card. Despite the fact that BMI is very loosely correlated with health in young children, and that focusing on BMI makes kids more likely to develop eating disorders, and that focusing on BMI tends to lead to shame in kids which not only makes them develop other bad health behaviors, but also tends to make them gain weight, we are STILL PERPETRATING THIS NONSENSE IN SCHOOLS. Let’s focus on helping kids be healthy without increasing the risk from eating disorders. Remember this chart?

Helping kids be healthy can be positive and fun. This past weekend I led some fitness demonstrations at a local event. The City of Hope hosted its Foothill Fitness Challenge event here in Duarte and over 1,200 people showed up. It was so much fun! I led two fun dance demonstrations and was so excited to see moms and dads and kids all dancing together and having a good time. Check it out:

It made my heart so happy. Little kids and big kids and grandmas were all dancing together. If we want to help kids be happy, LET’S DO THAT! Let’s find some kids, put on some music and dance with them. Sure maybe it’s simplistic, but it’s also fun and is likely to do no harm.

So what do you say? I challenge you to connect with a kid and go out and play this week. Dance, bike, throw a ball around–whatever makes you (and them) happy.

Love,

Jeanette (AKA The Fat Chick)

Six Year Old Girl Dies–Diagnosed as Fat?

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Sorry to start your week out with such a sad story, but I think it needs to be told. Late last week I became aware of the story of Claudialee, a six-year-old girl who passed away after being misdiagnosed with type 2 diabetes, when she actually had type 1 diabetes. There is a very detailed account of the story here.

I’m not going to go into every detail of this story, but I did want to point out a few things that stand out for me. One is that Claudialee has a family history of diabetes. Another is that the doctor diagnosed Claudialee as obese. It is clear that the doctor was deeply concerned about the young child’s weight–prescribing diet and exercise in an effort to get her to lose weight. It is also clear that the mother closely followed the doctor’s recommendations–carefully monitoring what Claudialee ate and making sure she got plenty of exercise.

What is not clear is why the doctor felt so strongly that this child had Type 2 Diabetes as opposed to Type 1. According to a source cited in the article (The National Institute of Health) at that age group, Type 1 Diabetes has an incidence of about 20 in every 100,000 kids, whereas Type 2 Diabetes has an incidence of .4 in every 100,000 kids or 1 in every 250,000 kids. What’s more, at that age, Type 1 Diabetes is a far more urgent problem than Type 2 Diabetes. So what led to the doctor’s misdiagnosis?

We may never know for sure. But it does invite one to speculate whether the child’s weight was a factor. Clearly, getting Claudialee’s weight down was a prime part of the prescription to the parent. And as the child’s weight went down, the doctor neglected to do some of the critical follow-up blood tests that would have indicated that something was drastically wrong.

The article states:

Because Mercado [the doctor] had locked in on type 2, she did not monitor her patient’s blood. She did not tell Irma [the child’s mother] to purchase a $20 blood sugar meter from the drugstore. She did not ask Irma about the frequency with which her daughter drank and urinated. And neither she nor Cabatic [another doctor] described to Irma the danger signs to look out for.

When asked in court, why the doctor seemed so certain that the child had type 2 diabetes when type 1 diabetes was so much more prevalent among children that age, she stood by her original diagnosis:

“How many type 2 infant diabetics have you treated?” a lawyer asked her.

“A lot,” she replied. “Maybe it’s geographical, because I work at Brooklyn as an assistant professor and also in wellness program where there are a lot of obese children, so we diagnose a lot of children with type 2 diabetes.”

Clearly there may have been other issues at play here. Claudialee was on Medicaid and doctors are paid significantly less for treating patients on Medicaid than they are for those with private insurance. The doctor was not board-certified, and the article points out that finding board certified physicians willing to work in clinics that take Medicaid can be difficult. And this is a single case where a single doctor has been convicted of malpractice. We will never know exactly what was in the doctor’s mind.

I but I personally found myself wondering if this doctor had ever previously considered that she may have a bias against fat patients–and maybe even fat children with low SES in particular. I wonder, had this doctor considered the potential for her own bias in this arena, would that child still be alive? Would Claudialee still be running around and playing today?

We certainly have plenty of evidence for a seeming “hysteria” around the issue of childhood Type 2 diabetes. A simple google search of “childhood diabetes epidemic” yields hundreds and hundreds of articles. This hysteria has spawned a number of shaming techniques aimed at children despite the fact that shame has been proven over and over again to be ineffective at treating obesity at any age, that shame is more likely to make kids engage in unhealthy behaviors, and that eating disorders are much, MUCH more prevalent among children than diabetes of any kind.

All I know for sure, is that stories like that of Claudialee get me even more fired up to fight against weight stigma in medicine. And that passion leads me to come to you with a plea. The Association for Size Diversity And Health and the Size Diversity Task force have embarked on a documentary film project to help doctors see and understand weight stigma and weight bias in medicine. This project is called the Resolved project. But this project needs a little bit of help from you. We are raising funds to finish the documentary on Go Fund Me here. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Even if you can only give a few dollars, that will help. And if you don’t have a few dollars to spend, would you consider sharing this with your friends and asking them to help? Let’s see if we can end weight stigma and weight bias in the healthcare industry for good. And maybe, just maybe we won’t have stories like Claudialee’s any more.

Love,

Jeanette (The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want to stay up to date on my projects and appearances? Just opt in RIGHT HERE!

I’m Back! (With a New Video)

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Maybe we all need to do a little more dancing…

Okay kids, I’m a little bit tardy (2 days) but I am back with a renewed desire to offer you juicy blogging goodness. And I’m back with a brand new video showing just a little bit of what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks.

On September 18, we held our second annual Hot Flash Mob in Justin Herman Plaza on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. The weather was GLORIOUS! Our initial turnout was small, but after some rapid recruiting among those enjoying the fabulous San Francisco sunshine we got a crowd together and did our dance…

This crowd was a great mix! There were men and women. There were older people, younger people and in-betweenies. There were thin people and fat people and people with amazing hair and even a cameo from one of San Francisco’s street population. We all had a wonderful time.

And all of this makes me more determined THAN EVER to get groups of people together and get them dancing. Because dancing is sort of like a magic catalyst. It crosses line of age, shape, gender, class, language, economic status and more. And even if you can’t do the moves just like I do, we can all find and share the beat together and boogie down.

It this time of serious strife and division, where I almost can’t bear to look at the news and hear the latest details about the complete breakdown of civility and communications, I think it is more important than ever to just dance.

Maybe that’s what we need to do. Just get all the politicians in the world together to dance:

Then again, maybe not…

Love,

Jeanette

P.S. Want to get access to FREE STUFF? Just opt in RIGHT HERE!

Sharing Some Boogie Time

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Folks of all ages whoop it up at Summerfest!

As you may or may not know, I grew up near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I grew up in a state known for cows and cheese. And as much as I dearly love, well, cheese anyways, I have to confess that one of the things I miss most about Wisconsin is the dancing.

I don’t know how it is in other parts of the country, but it seems like folks here in California don’t get together and shake their groove things in the same way as I remember from my childhood. There are many clubs, and they are tray sheek* and stuff. And you can get dressed up and stand in a line for the opportunity to spend 4 hours pay on an inch of wine in the bottom of an enormous glass. Or you can go to burning man and smear on mud and body paint and dance in the bloody desert. But I’m talking about a different kind of dancing.

In Wisconsin we had a party for virtually everybody down by the lake. We had Summerfest and Polish Fest and Irish Fest and October Fest and Festa Italiana, and Greek Fest and Afro Fest and Indian Summer and the Lakefront Festival of the Arts and so on, and so on. And what we did was get plastic cups full of beer, listen to amazing music and dance our little hearts out. We danced on blankets. We danced on picnic tables. We danced with our girlfriends and our boyfriends. We danced with folks we didn’t even know.

I miss it.

But I do get to enjoy dancing with the students in my classes several times a week. And I do dearly love trying out new forms of music. And I am so excited to be dancing in the street again for our upcoming Hot Flash Mob in San Francisco on September 18 at around noon. I hope any of you who are near the Bay Area will join us. Just RSVP with the meetup and we’ll make sure you get all the latest details about where and when. Or just send me an email at jeanette at the fat chick dot com and I’ll make sure to mail you the deets personally. And I’d love it if you would share this info with anybody else you know who might be interested.

Because, frankly, I can’t WAIT to dance with you again.

Oh and stay tuned for a very special surprise in my next blog post!

Love,

The Fat Chick

*Fronsch for verreh, verreh sexy.

Like my posts? You’ll love my stuff!

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What fitness looks like*

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Today I was tagged in a post by the super awesome Kimber Simpkins pointing me to a gorgeous new slideshow on Mind Body Green entitled I Am A Yogi. It was posted by photographer Robert Sturman as the first entry in what he hopes to be a big group of photos on Instagram portraying yogis of all shapes, sizes, ages, races, creeds and situations. Sturman says:

Whether you’re a CEO, serving a life sentence in prison, living with cerebral palsy, living with breast cancer, a full-figured human being, a burn victim, living with HIV, living at the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, 95 years old, or are just plain human, I invite you to post a picture on Instagram — just one per person, please! — and say a little something about yourself. Use the hashtag #iamayogicelebration and tag @robertsturman any time through the end of September.

I am pretty excited about these slides as I think it gets at a very important part of the work I and other allies like Ragen Chastain do in the fitness industry. This work includes helping the world widen their visual definition of how fitness looks.

This so important and so necessary in a world where fitness, especially fitness for women has turned into a code word meaning, “any and all activities necessary to make your body fit my culturally predetermined definition of somebody I would like to have sex with.*” Blogger Kevin Moore had a lot to say on his scathing teardown of the “strong is the new sexy meme” here.

Strong isn’t really replacing skinny; being skinny is no longer enough. Now, ladies, you need to be skinny and ripped. It’s an additional layer of self-loathing (perfectly suited for hypergymnasiacs), just in case people had started to get desensitized to the omnipresent and psychologically crippling display of corpse-thin women in the media.

I’m not saying that the women in these ads are not fit. I’m also not saying that they are not sexy. I AM saying that they don’t get to be the only visual definitions for the words “fit” or “strong” or “sexy”–at least not in my vocabulary.

Sure, sexy can look like those women, or it can look like these folks who performed with me at the More Cabaret Gimme More! Show this past Sunday. (All taken by the amazing photographer Robert Ray.)

That is an important part of the work that Ragen Chastain and I do with the Fit Fatties Forum where we have over 300 images of men and women of all sizes getting out there and having a glorious good time being fit and enjoying the skin they’re in.

I really think if we’re going to define the “new sexy” or the “new fit” that definition needs to be (ahem) a little broader.

Love,

The Fat Chick

*I know I’m ending a sentence with a proposition. So for the grammarians out there just add “…” and a word that you would like me to use to describe you. For example–“This is what fitness looks like…smarty-pants.”

Like my posts? You’ll love my stuff!

Buy my book: The Fat Chick Works Out! (Fitness that is Fun and Feasible for Folks of All Ages, Shapes Sizes and Abilities)–available in softcover and e-book versions

Buy my DVD: The Fat Chick Works Out! (A Safe, Easy and Fun Workout for Klutzes, Wimps and Absolute Beginners!)

Buy a book or a DVD for a friend and save $5! Just enter FRIENDBLFT in the discount code box!

Check out my Training Programs–both in person and via Skype (Starting at just $25!)

Book me to speak at your special event!