Disclaimer: I discuss disordered eating, intentional weight loss and body types in this post. I am currently morbidly obese (mid fat), in my fifties, and suffering. I am working on turning this around and adding years (back) to my life. I believe in body autonomy—your body, your choice, 100%. I also believe that all bodies can be beautiful: fat, thin, fully abled, disabled, and everywhere in between. I don’t look at people fatter than me and think “less” of them. I don’t think more of someone because they’re super jacked, ripped, or even straight-sized. People are people; we don’t know anyone until we know their minds, hearts, dreams, and souls. But I have a huge problem with any evangelical movement that influences or shames people into being just like them, spreads pseudoscientific disinformation, absolves themselves of personal responsibility, and plays the perpetual victim. That’s my issue with the majority of the fat activists on the internet, especially on TikTok. Now, then, on with the post! ~J.
Intentional Weight Loss, Pt. 1 | Photo Credit: Adobe Stock
The cornerstone of the fat acceptance movement is wrapping your entire identity, your entire sense of self in a body type. Today, I am here to shed that skin—it needs to happen in my mind before it can happen to my body.
When it comes to getting healthy and losing weight, this step is possibly even more important than a balanced, nutritious diet, moving more, and participating in life like an active person because it is all about mindset. As much as I despise what self-help “Gurus” and “manifestation babes” have done with the word “mindset” these days, it doesn’t negate how important the psychology behind disordered eating, food addiction, and obesity truly is.
Fat acceptance enabled me to give up on myself, full stop.
From Plateau to Downward Spiral
I remember exactly when I did it. I had been on Weight Watchers and at a weight loss plateau for a while—it was frustrating. Anyone on a weight loss journey understands the pain of a plateau. Sadly, at the time, I hadn’t known that plateaus are a discouragingly normal and vital part of the process. Plateaus indicate that the body is doing its job correctly. Damn it.
I got sucked into the fat activism movement the day I attended my last ever in-person Weight Watchers meeting. On this day, I was ripe for the picking because, much like any cultlike movement, FA preys on the vulnerable. In most cases, what they call “freedom” or “body liberation” is more like giving up on yourself. But after counting calories or points for so long, “just eat the damn donuts—and pizza, and cookies, and everything ultra-tasty you can get your hands on” feels liberating in the moment. It’s like the drug dealer giving you that first hit for free. Feels great at first, but the downward spiral is inevitable.
When you enter the healthy at every size (HAES), fat acceptance, (toxic) body positivity rabbit hole, you encounter all sorts of pseudoscientific nonsense that a beaten down, worn-out, frustrated chronic dieter is more than willing to buy as fact. Such as how being in a caloric deficit damages your metabolism. Spoiler alert: when it comes to fat bodies, it doesn’t. When you’ve been in an extreme caloric surplus for a long time, you need the caloric deficit to find balance again. If anything, the excess amount of weight and the havoc it wreaks on your hormones is more likely to cause metabolic issues than being in a caloric deficit.
Fat activists and HAES preachers also claim—one of their biggest talking points—that it’s impossible to lose weight and keep it off. No, it’s not impossible. It may not be easy, but it’s not impossible.
Virgie Tovar Demonstrating Her “Liberation” | Source: Rebel Eaters Club™️
Critical Thinking = Debunking Yourself! (And Shady Influencers, “Science” & Gurus)
Sadly, at the time when I’d decided, f*ck this shit, I’m out, I didn’t have the resources to learn, know, or do any better. Or at least those resources weren’t as readily available as they are now. This was back in the early 2000s when you had to write your Points™️ down in a physical book, and not a single food was “free.” No wonder I got so diet-fatigued! At least phone apps make accountability feel more like a fascinating n=1 experiment—hello, Cronometer, you sexy, scientific thang. 🤓
YouTube hadn’t been a Thing™️ then either—not like it is now. Also, the ability to look up studies on PubMed or other credible scientific journals would have only been available to people working in nutrition science, health, or the medical industries. Now, anyone can research studies from credible sources. You can debunk a lot. You can myth-bust yourself—or a shady, grifting influencer/guru. But just like losing weight, it takes some due diligence and work to find studies that weren’t created to draw circles around the bullseye of confirmation bias and ulterior motives.
Intentional Weight Loss, Pt. 2 | Photo Credit: Adobe Stock
Entering Body Positivity MODE
The day I decided to give up on losing weight, I went to a Barnes and Noble down the street from my Weight Watchers. I got a coffee, hit the magazine stands, and there it was, my new identity waiting on the cover of Mode Magazine. Mode was the first publication dedicated solely to plus-sized women and fashion. I remember looking at the cover model—I believe it had been Kate Dillon—and thinking, this is refreshing because standard magazine covers were full of emaciated, skeletal bodies all my life. That isn’t healthy, either, so to this day, I feel like Mode Magazine was a great discovery for me. Interestingly, today, the bodies in Mode would be considered “mid-fat.” Actual healthy plus-sized bodies. I don’t think you would have seen anyone 5x+ in that magazine, certainly not a “death fat.” So even then, the plus-sized beauty standards were still found in healthy, curvy bodies. They had set body-positive examples without making me want to give up and eat everything in sight.
Kate Dillon: This Was Plus-Sized 24 Years Ago | Photo Credit: Vogue
After leafing through the issue, I’d said, “F*ck it. This is who I am now. I am a fat woman.”
I’d bought the magazine and searched everywhere to find more of what I saw there, generally a healthy body positivity level. But over the years, I wound up in toxic body positivity, fat activism, and hashtagging Tess Holliday’s #effyourbeautystandards—something that, at face value, seemed refreshing and positive. But the further down the rabbit hole I went, the more that downward spiral led to mental and physical illness and a still-horrible relationship with food.
The day I’d decided to say, “This is who I am now,” was the day that getting out of a fat body would become highly f*cking unlikely. And I’ve been at war with myself ever since. Not my body, but my mind. The way food has had such a hold on me, I have become confined in a prison of my own making in a body that can’t keep up with my soul, my dreams, my goals—all of those things that truly define me.
Think about it healthily: if you identify as an athlete, it’s harder not to be an athlete. If you identify as a marathon runner, that is something you do regularly to back up the identity—to live the life of who you want to be. Even professionally, I identify as—let me flex my skills on you—a Telly Award-winning video producer and editor. Therefore, owning those accolades makes me improve my game and do excellent work.
Repeatedly saying, “This is who I am now—a fat person,” is where everything in my brain changed. My body had no choice but to follow.
Lifting the Veil, Leaving the Cult
Even though I’ve been on a weight loss journey many times over since that day, and even as I deconstruct from fat activism, being fat turned into an identity I hadn’t realized I wasn’t leaving behind. I could eat healthy, exercise, and believe in the real science; as long as I identified as that body type, my body wasn’t about to change, at least not permanently.
Forty Six & 2 Ahead of Me
So here I am, releasing myself from that fat identity. I am not a body type. I do not want to be a fat person anymore. I am in a state of disease, a medical condition called obesity. The donuts were not worth it. Using food as a coping mechanism was not helping me at all. I am here to shed that skin, release that old mindset, and start fresh.
Hi, I’m Jaye, and I am not a fat person. I’m in a fat body right now, but this is temporary. This, too, shall pass. I commit to living as a fit, active, and healthy person. I will make choices that align with being fit, active, and healthy. It won’t be perfect; I am human, and tasty food is not evil or wrong. But the kind of person I am now doesn’t eat half a dozen donuts or a large pizza in one day; the way I choose to eat now aligns with my core values of being around for a long time, being strong for my loved ones, and being as able-bodied as I can be for world domination the love and life of my dreams.
Remembering Who I Am
We are all uniquely wondrous creatures. It’s time to leave movements behind and become individuals again. That’s where the magic is: remembering who you are, not living how a movement tells you to live.
Thank you for listening, being here, and giving me a place to get this stuff out of my head and into the stars.
With all my heart,
~J. 💖
Please tell me how you feel! Is this a triggering post for you, or is it liberating? Do you identify as a body type? Do you want out? Declare who you want to be and how you want to live in the comments. And by the way, if being fat makes you happy, that’s all right by me! It just didn’t work out for me. I would love to know your thoughts. Thank you so much! Please consider subscribing to my YouTube Channel, Substack, and please come back here again for more weighty blog posts at JayeWeighsIn.com!
0 Comments