Fat rant.

Trigger warning, I have opinions.  I wanna talk about weight. 

When I Google-imaged plus size model,
this is the first image that came up.

A little background info:  My mom’s side of the family (and my sis) have always been skinny people with willowy bodies.  Not that they haven’t had to do work along the way, but their resting state is kind of Olive Oyl.  My dad’s side and I have not.  We're more Bluto.  I don't think I was obese as a child exactly, but I did get made fun 

of at camp for carrying around a spare tire.  I was in Jenny Craig in 4^th grade—and I liiiiiiied to those people about what I ate, I lied so hard.  I liked to eat, I loved ice cream, and you could rip the rest of the cheeseburger from my cold, dead hands.

I always thought I was problematically fat.  I wasn’t skinny, though I was skinnier than people I know who are like, you don’t even know what overweight is.  I want to be respectful of that.  

So for my experience, I was chunky but I’m not talking about even how I looked in a mirror, or what I weighed. I’m talking about what I believed.  My pediatrician told me I was going to be

Do you know what that word means?
I suggest googling the definition,
but here's a sample of the Google-images.
It's weird, too, cuz I was never that skinny...

lascivious.  I didn’t know what that word meant, but looking it up as an adult makes me feel…some type of way.  I was like 10, and to be honest, at the time, his tone meant I wasn’t gross and I didn’t need to panic, and I found it comforting.  We live in a hell of a world.  Anyway, I just knew I was overweight, period, and I knew that wasn’t a good thing to be.  I was never a sporty child (because don’t tell me what to do, and your costumes are dumb), though I did basically live in the woods until the great spider infestation.  I would do the mile run at school, or join the track team—and I’d do it, I’d run.  Slowly, but I would finish.  I was not competing with anyone.  But I still liked to eat, and a runner’s body is not what I had.

This girl is a badass, but her body is v different from any I've ever had.

I have a clear memory of a friend of mine, a girl I adored in middle school, who was maybe not the skinniest person on the planet either though perfectly healthy—my doctor would have called her inappropriate names too—and among other things, we bonded over that.  Also over having big old boobs, which came in early and hard and I had no idea what to do with.  

We left normal behind in like...6th grade.  We ran a mile+ every week in P.E.
 in middle school and I didn’t even have a bra,
much less a sports bra.
I *did* develop some killer stretch marks, though.

And one year for her birthday (for her effing birthday, Reader), I, me, this girl right here, orchestrated our friends group stuffing her locker to celebrate—and I got her nothing but diet snacks.  Low fat weight loss everything.  I remember that I got her a lot cuz she was like my best friend.   I remember walking by her, in front of her locker as we were all on our way to first period, and she was sobbing.  I remember she said to me, her friend, “Look what they did!” and I was like, “HA HA RIGHT?!……Wait…” and only then did I realize that I was a garbage person.  Also, because I was a dumb garbage person, did I apologize?  Not that I remember.  I remember being ashamed so never wanting to talk about it again.  Garbage.

Seventh grade is 12 yo. 
I Googled 12  yo and this
was the first thing that
happened and it makes
me want to burn the world
down.

I had thought I was funny, and edgy, and bonding,
(I seriously thought I was bonding, what is wrong with me) and I made her cry on her birthday, because we should all just accept that this is our lot as people with some jiggle in our middle circa seventh grade.  It is an appropriate topic of conversation.  It is what we deserve.  It is fine—chin up or put down the pie.  At least you’re lucidious.  (There is a chance he said lubricious—I was young and didn’t know the word—but adult-googling-me roots for the former, not the latter.)

Speaking of, when I got boobs, I started showing them off.  I have…never?...known how to dress, and certainly not for my body type.  This is the style of shirt that is in, I will wear it.  The style of shirt that is "in" has never been made for people with big boobs and a spare tire.  I wore it anyway.  I thought it was how to be pretty, meanwhile I was ashamed every time I looked in a mirror, and btw just showing off all my business.  In modern days, I have been known to shop at modesty stores online,

It is amazing what some sexual assault
will do for your desire to go unnoticed
as a female person in possession of a body!

because what I got is none of your business, and God forbid I get a comment or even catch you looking, because you will go to the hospital and I will go to jail and with a couple simple ensemble choices, I can avoid the whole situation for both our sakes.  

And while I have always been on the runs-to-fat side, with the time-proven capacity to achieve that state, I am not hugely over weight.  Have people asked me when my baby is due at, say, the auto parts store?  Yes.  When I gain weight (which I do, on and off, to a greater or lesser extent) it all moooostly goes to my gut.  Part of this is because the term “beer belly” isn’t just cutely alliterative.  Part of this is genetics.  We are barrel shaped, on my side of the family.  But also when I decide to start paying attention, I can get healthier—I can run, slowly, but for long periods of time, and not hate it.  I can maintain caloric intake goals, and lose weight.  So my story is, sure, real and valid or whatever, but doesn’t begin to represent the experiences of people who have struggled much more with their weight and the weight society adds to it for their lives.

But we're still calling *this* plus sized.

All of which leads us to what I wanted to talk about today, Reader, in this, the unfunniest of posts.  Obesity is not a character flaw.

Obesity is not a character flaw.

Obesity is not a character flaw.

I have been suuuuper rabbit holed on my microbiome research, and learned some interesting things relevant to this point.  Once you have a gut colony set up that processes food in such a way that it

I highly recommend
this book.

stores more fat and wants more sugar, it is hard to change.  Turning the boat takes long term, concerted effort.  Your gut bacteria tell you to be hungry, and what to crave.  They do or do not process the food you eat well.  Obese mice and lean mice, given a fecal transplant (the easiest way to quickly change your interior ecology) will change how they process their food.  That means lean mice, given an obese mouse’s gut bacteria, will gain weight based on the colony that lives inside them, not just the food they eat.  The way to bring them back to baseline depends on what you feed them—but not just the calories.  The same calories, in different formats, will cause them to lose or gain weight.  It’s about the gut bacteria you allow to thrive, versus the ones you starve out. 

Which sounds like something you could do, right?   But what do you do?  Keto, gluten free, paleo, South Beach?  Just starve yourself?  Don’t ask your doctor—most physicians spend years and years in doctor training, and of that, they get less than 20 hours of diet and nutrition training.  You can go to a nutritionist, but your insurance won't cover that-- or not much.  A couple visits.  Are you going to ask the internet how to properly lose weight?  Cuz the opinions—there are many, and they are loud.  Everyone’s answer is The Right Answer.  Not that there is no answer, not that it’s impossible to do, but finding the way that works for you, and your life.  Is.  Not.  Simple.  

It is not that GD simple.

Plus as you starve those bacteria out, they feel like they’re starving, and they have ways of making you feel like you’re starving too, that have nothing to do with how many calories you actually consume.  I think this is an especially heavy burden if those particular microbes are taking up a lion's share of the space in your gut.  My point is, we treat weight control like it’s a simple will power check, when it is much more than that.

Does this mean that the only answer is microbiology?  I wish, because I love that stuff.  

Fecal transfers for everyone!

But no, of course—calories in v calories out makes a difference.   

It’s just not a cut and dry difference—my experience of losing weight is not the same as the experience of someone else, esp someone struggling with more obesity than me, and not because I’m just sooo good at making good choices.  I hardly ever make good choices.  And for many of us, those choices were made for us, way before we understood what was going on, or after we were already in

But I still knew I was fat tho.

 a situation where “I know this processed high calorie meal isn’t the best but it’s cheap and available and satisfies me and making my own bread and buying better quality cheese is not going to happen because life.”  My mom put me in Jenny Craig but when life happened, it was Dominoes’ for dinner cuz that’s just where we were. 

In mainstream (and to be clear, I mean white; I can’t speak to POC) society, we absolutely treat overweight people like they are slobs in their character as well as their habits.  We do double takes when we see skinny people with fat plus-ones, because—I mean she can do better than that, right?  He must just be weirdly into that…right?  We say, don’t make me see that, your body, and we mooostly are talking about women, though men come under the societal-judgement-gun as well and it cuts deep too. 

I’m not saying obesity is healthy, that’s not the argument I am trying to make.  Being overweight or obese has all sorts of very real negative health outcomes.  I promise you, every overweight person knows this. 

We got you this. 
It's from everyone.

I’m saying the conversation we are having usually isn’t a conversation about health.  I know thick people that are healthier than the skinny people I know.  They have spent their lives thinking about the nutritional content of their dinner, and tracking their exercise.  I know plenty of skinny people who are so focused on how “you can never be too thin” that every time I see them, all I can think is that they need to eat a pizza.  We judge fat people—even me, even jiggly, fat, asked-if-I’m-pregnant me!—and it’s not about health, it’s about shame.  We don't side eye people eating lunch because we're trying to help them.  I think if we were more focused on health, then your doctor might have more to say to you than “lose some weight and exercise” (which by the way, the insurance companies make them say to you no matter how your labs come back) and there would be better marked trails to get from overweight to ideal weight.  It’s not so easy to find your way, alone and judged and not sure it’ll make any difference anyway.

Also healthy, sustainable weight loss is slow af and you can be right in the middle of a years long process, feeling like you are starving,  and STILL have strangers tell you you’re fundamentally a wrongbad person or be shocked to know you possess a single healthy habit.  

I read articles that talk about bigger people working real hard not to eat in public, because they’ve ridden that ride and they know how people look at them, the “helpful” comments they get.  I see grown-ass competent smart people starving themselves not because health, but because they internalize that fat is a character flaw.  I see loving family members interrupting celebrational dinners to ask—should you be eating that?  And I listen to my own internal monologue, which says things like, you’re too fat to be pretty, or your appearance doesn’t matter, because if it did, you’d be in trouble. 

I look back at childhood me, making my best friend cry. 

It's messed up.  It's fundamentally messed up, not to mention counterproductive to the goals we think we have of general decency or actually helping each other or btw some basic stuff like can you be thick and sexy.

Let Lizzo be your lodestar.

So that's it.  I’ll be funnier next time.  In the meantime, live your best life—your healthiest, kindest (to yourself and others), most genuine life.  The struggle is real, maybe we can at least acknowledge that fact. 

Rant over.