Maybe it *is* a choice, after all.
It seems that any mention of a cause for fatness other than sitting on your ass eating McDonald’s all day is seen as an “excuse.” “Stop playing the victim; you choose to be fat.”
You know what? Maybe I do choose to be fat.
I choose to do things like study, read, sew, and spend time with my friends instead of exercising for 3-4 hours a day.
I choose to eat when I’m hungry instead of ignoring my body’s needs.
I choose to treat my asthma with a medication that causes weight gain instead of having trouble getting around because of my breathing problems.
I choose to eat food that tastes good instead of replacing it with half-assed substitutes.
I choose to have a job where I can sit comfortably instead of searching for one where I’d have to hurt my knees and back by standing.
I choose to take the bus instead of walking somewhere if it’s cold, or I’m tired, or I just don’t feel like it.
I choose to not mutilate my digestive system and possibly risk my life for what is essentially cosmetic surgery.
I choose to reject the notion that because I have “bad genes,” I must simply “work harder” to fit into someone else’s standard of beauty.
I choose to feel happy with my body the way it is.
So sure, I choose to be fat. And you know what? I’m okay with that.
I love this. Thank you.
So true… I’m not going to sacrifice my life to pursuing someone else’s aesthetic standards, I want to live it.
Rock on!
Word.
Yee Ha! You got it!
Beautiful! Well written
Thank you. You have managed to say clearly and succinctly what I wish I could remember to say when family and friends try to talk me into getting into the “diet death race” with them.
AMEN.
Yes.
And the stupidest thing is when the calorie fascists say “WELL YOU DON’T SEE ANY FAT PEOPLE IN PRISON CAMPS” and I say “Well, you don’t see any healthy people there, either, now do you?”
But having the temerity to choose the fuel you need for energy and activity over inanition and starvation is a revolutionary act.
Beautiful. Just beautiful. Thank you for writing this.
And the stupidest thing is when the calorie fascists say “WELL YOU DON’T SEE ANY FAT PEOPLE IN PRISON CAMPS”
*blink*
Really? I’m glad I’ve never heard that one before.
Great post, thank you for sharing it.
And the stupidest thing is when the calorie fascists say “WELL YOU DON’T SEE ANY FAT PEOPLE IN PRISON CAMPS”
I’m gonna have to say i don’t spent much time – well, any, to be honest – in prison camps.
The more i think about that one, the more i can come up with a whole lot of responses to it. Some of them have potential to feed more negative stereotypes (”so you’re saying that fat people are able to run away from the cops better than thin people?”), but i think the best response is just a blank stare and a whole lot of blinking.
I have seen people pull the “no fat holocaust survivors” bit before. Most of the time i just don’t have enough sanity points available to respond to that sort of thing.
Amen!!!
I’m astonished some of you haven’t seen the “WELL YOU DON’T SEE ANY FAT PEOPLE IN {prison camps/concentration camps/famine-ridden areas}” argument before. It seems to be ubiquitous on the Internets.
And it is almost always advanced by people who are all “OH FAT PEOPLE SHOULD LOSE WEIGHT FOR THEIR HEALTH” until you point out that many fat people live the kind of lifestyle they’re describing as “healthy” and remain fat. Then they go right to “IT’S CALORIES IN/CALORIES OUT! YOU DON’T SEE ANY FAT PEOPLE IN {dire situation} NOW DO YOU!”
Nope. And you don’t see any healthy people there, either.
i grew up jewish, in a community with many holocost survivors, and i can actually recall talking about their experiences with them. mr. morris, who was an amazing man, vividly recalled a time when they were picking who would be gassed based on how much of their butt they still had. he and his friend survived because they were (litterally and comparativly) fat asses, and were assumed to be able to keep working on almost no food because they still had some stores to burn. should i some day, gods forbid, be in a similar situation i should be so lucky. saved by my fat ass. gallows humor, i know. but there it is.
And…even if you did all that stuff — work out relentlessly, be hypervigilant about everything you put in your mouth — you still might not be thin, depending on genetics, dieting and medical history, etc.
I heard Pat Lyons, a nurse who works with eating disorder patients, speak once, and she said there were women in her practice who remained “obese” even on four hundred calories a day. That fits in with the finding that even most people who have gastric bypass surgery don’t ever reach the “normal” weight range, despite eating only a few spoonfuls of food a day and barely being able to keep down that much.
@Meowser: But I should be trying, you know. It’s my duty, or something. (So say the troll comments.)
Hah! Thanks for the post, it made my night. I’ve never really looked into the demographics of a prison camp so I’ll just take it on faith that there aren’t any fat people there.
As long as they don’t regulate what foods people can eat the food police can just keep babbling…I’m not listening.
Someday I’m gonna have enough cajones to say this kind of thing and make a stand…someday…
Haha, this is classic. And what people also fail to realize is that when you diet, your metabolism slows down so you eventually gain that weight back. :P
I concur with your blog
you go girl! why should we all be cookie cutter models of the media’s version of perfection if it means we can’t eat the cookies? haha
I appreciate your sentiment, but I agree with Meowser, what you say is not only not guaranteed to work, it for a lot of people simply isn’t doable. By that I mean they provoke intolerable symptoms of their own.
Even quite extreme pain and discomfort would not be enough to put people off exercising.
Lindsay, someone actually told you there were no fat Holocaust survivors? They lied. One of my favorite teacher in high school was (is? it’s been close to 30 years now) a survivor, and she was far from skinny. Somehow, I doubt that she’s the only person who plumped up after a bout of starvation.
Awesome post, though I do loooooooooove mashed cauliflower to bits (it’s even better if you mix roasted cauliflower in at the end). Sometimes tasty things come out of weirdo diet fads.
Great blog. I could almost hear this being shouted out of a megaphone with thousands of people cheering after every line. We need more celebrities with this type of attitude.
Can you hear the sound of my whoops and hollers!? Shout it from the rooftops, girl!
Wow. What a fantastic site!
I wish I could be happy with my body the way it is. But I can’t. The more weight I put on, the more I stress my damaged joints and the more pain I’m in, and the worse I feel about myself. Every day I fight not to return to bulimia, but every day my body image gets a little less comfortable… I admire you for being happy in your own skin.
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Meowser does make the important observation here. We certainly can and should make all of those choices. But we’re still not choosing to be fat, because in truth there is no real choice to be thin. The overwhelming majority of fat people actively hate their bodies and are actively engaged in all of those choices to be thin. They are still fat. Its less that we don’t choose to be fat so much as we can’t choose to be thin. That choice is a lie. We can either choose to keep trying anyway, and structure our life around being unhappy with our bodies, or we can choose to live our lives in peace and harmony with all that we are. And that is a beautiful choice to make.
[...] http://waistlines.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/maybe-it-is-a-choice-after-all/ [...]
[...] 12, 2009 at 8:06 am (Random) (Dieting, Food) I freakin’ love this blog post about choosing to be [...]
It’s great so many people are able to be happy with their own skin.However please consider those that due to mental health issues(anorexia/bulimia)strive for the extreme and often have ongoing internal battles with their body image.Desperatley wanting to eat what ever you wish, when you wish can often be such a mountain to acheive.
A genuine dysmorphic body image of oneself can be all consuming
I agree with you, Sue, but I don’t see where I’ve contradicted this idea at all.