The road to fat acceptance nirvana is a long and arduous one
Trigger warning: I will be talking about weight loss concepts. If this triggers, look away now.
As a fat activist I often think that people look at me and think I have hit fat nirvana. That place where I’m always happy with my body and I never think about losing weight and never wish I was a different shape. That place where I am confident and happy in my skin all the time and I’m always ready for the enslaught of negative media and social pressure because I’m there, man. I’m at total nirvana.
WRONG!
I struggle on a daily basis with my body. I sometimes think that my body would be better, and I would be happier, if I lost a couple of kilos or if my gut wasn’t so big or if this or if that. I sometimes think that life would be so much easier if I could lose some weight. Not all my weight mind you, because I’m a fat activist and therefore I’m happy being fat. Just not this fat.
So as you can see, even I can fall into the trap of negative body talk and body shaming and thinking I’d be so much happier if. Just if. Thankfully I also know that really my body weight doesn’t affect my happiness and that my body is at this weight because that’s where it is happy to be and no amount of moving or eating less or whatever else is going to change that.
I also have issues with my level of fitness. I can at least disconnect this from weight and realise that I can be very fit and still fat. I just know that at the moment my fitness isn’t as good as I want it to be. I think recognising that is perfectly fine and nothing to be ashamed of.
Something I have started doing as well is decanting larger packs of snacks into smaller ones to take to work. A few reasons I do this—the first is that I can just grab a couple of packets of whatever in the morning when pulling together my lunch stuff and put it in my bag; it’s much cheaper than buying other stuff when I’m at work; if I took the whole packet of nuts/chocolate bullets/whatever to work I’d eat the lot in the first day and be left with nothing by the end of the week.
I recognise that when it comes to certain things I really will eat them until they are gone. Chocolate, snacky things like those muti-coloured soy flavoured rice cracker things, nuts and other assorted snacks just go very quickly. What I have found though is that I generally feel quite sick afterwards. Since I have reflux, I have to have smaller amounts of food more often. Since I often don’t feel that fullness feeling, I go for what works for me – bagging up serves.
Some people will consider this problematic because I’m controlling my food intake and I’m one step away from a diet. Even I’m a little conflicted when I think about it. But I do think that it is ok to do this. Firstly I could just buy smaller sized snack packs, but they are so much more expensive than doing it myself. Secondly it’s hard to find wholesome foods in these snackpacks – I don’t need a packet of chips at work (it’ll just give m e reflux anyway). Anyway, quite often I’ll grab two or three bags and have them all at once because that’s what I feel like.
But I am still actively controlling my food by doing this, so I see that it might be seen as problematic by some. At the end of the day, this is what works for me. I think we all have some foods that we know can be an issue and there are ways in which we incorporate them into our life without them taking control.
What I would love to know though is what you think. At the end of the day I’m on a steep learning curve in fat acceptance land. So your input is always welcomed. Whether I change my ways though is totally up to me.
Loading ...
