This is the question I grapple with the most lately. I still have the same aversion to seeing Yahoo! News ("news") postings about The Biggest Loser and it's latest round of winners (er, losers?). Although, if I'm being honest, a perverse part of me always wants to look at the before and after pictures, much the same way I'll be at the salon and flip through the "I've Kept It Off For a Year!" issue of People while my hair cooks.
After reading the offending post in Two Whole Cakes last week, I felt so incensed by what felt like judgement towards those formerly/fat people who diet in the same way judgement gets thrown at fatties for NOT dieting. Must we turn on eachother? Can't we all just get along?
I was always one of those people who judged those who diet... maybe not in any sort of hard core outwardly-judgey way, but definitely in the sense that I'd think a disapproving "Mmmm-hmmm, whatever" in my head when dealing with the offending dieters talking about their diets. Balance in everything, though, and I still feel that big "whatever" when dieters can only seem to talk about how they're perpetually dieting and how many calories that chocolate bar has and how they "need to lose ten pounds in a week before the trip to France because all those women over there are so super-duper tiny!" (The latter is something directly from a coworker's mouth just last week, causing many internal eyerolls in the moment and, well, since.) The only difference now is that I can slightly relate to it. I'm 33 days into calorie-tracking and the novelty of how many calories refried beans have and how many calories circuit training burns has thankfully worn off a bit.
I woke up this morning and thought again about the TWC piece, albeit in much less indignant fashion. What struck me today was that the blogger even chose to rebuttal to that particular article. Granted, I only read what TWC quoted and most of the first page of the actual piece, but I kept thinking, Why would you choose to tear a person down who published something extremely vulnerable about having been fat? It just seems a bit cold.
Of course, I just read page two of the article and had to stop because the eye rolling began. It's not as pro-fat as I thought. I could see how it's perfect fodder for TWC, although I still don't agree with the snarky way TWC decided to rebut. Again: balance. I could see some good in the article, I could see some bad. In the end it's just one person's account of her own personal journey, along with her own associated opinions. None of us are perfect.
I keep wondering if there is an inevitable change in fat acceptance headspace when one who never-ever wanted to diet starts to lose weight, a la the author of the Alternet article. Is there a tipping point where you start to hate your own fat and want it off your body, which propels you to keep losing? I'll admit I've felt this several times over the course of the last month. Instead of pushing forward with trying to love my body as it is, I've felt irritated by it. This has had an especially unfortunate effect on my sex life, as now I don't feel like I can completely enjoy being naked. Again, instead of pushing through and either trying to love my body as it looks now, or at the very least completely ignore that I even have a body, I'm now hyper-conscious. That's not cool.
Here's the part where my scale tips back the other way, no pun intended. If at first I had to eschew the fat acceptance movement a bit to make some progress, and it had to eschew me for eschewing it, now I feel like I need to come back to my acceptance roots if I have any hope of making further progress without being miserable. I do need to remember to love my body for how it is today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on and so forth. I need to remember that fat - and diversity - is beautiful, not inherently dangerous. I need to remember that striving to lose weight is a choice that I've made, not a mandate I must follow. I need to remember those thoughts and several others, too, as this holiday season progresses.
Speaking of which, I'm going to my parents house to celebrate Christmas... the land of a million sweets and no exercise. I doubt there's a scale in their house, and NO I'm not going to bring mine with me. It'll be weird to take a break from climbing onto that scale every morning after my shower. It'll be weird to take a break from my careful breakfasts and lunches, and to have yet another balls-out holiday dinner. I'm holding out hope that I can sneak in just one workout in four days time and maybe even maintain the poundage I've lost. But, something tells me I'm gonna need the proverbial bigger boat. We'll see what happens.
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