Fat and Stuff

I've been thinking about a post about the Fat Acceptance movement for a while now, because there is something that has bothered me about a lot of things associated with that movement. Reading stuff in the Big Fat Carnival makes me feel that now-familar feeling that I must be missing something, that I need to read more about it and listen more to that community, because I must just not get it.

But then I read this post over at peggynature's blog, and a lot of my implicit concerns get spelled out and even solved, really, by her insights:

Thing is, there are extremely fat and healthy people out there. That's how the fucking bell curve works. No, you cannot be healthy at every size. But we can. Here's how:

You eat well. This is not a moralistic determination, nor is it the same from person to person. There are general suggestions that most people can safely follow, but the most important is to learn to listen to your gut. Try to resuscitate the cues that a lifetime of dieting and an eating-disordered culture have probably killed. If you can't do it on your own -- and many can't; it's hard -- get someone to help you. Size-friendly therapists and dietitians exist, and many of them believe in an empowering philosophy of health promotion, which in English means: you get to make your own choices. You get to figure out what is best for you. Because even scientists can't tell you how much goddamn calcium you need.

You move well. This is also hard to figure out, and I'm currently doing battle with it myself. Kell has some good ideas. Like we all have an appetite for food, I think we all have an appetite for movement. Think back to the way you might've played as a kid, the times you got restless from sitting still for too long. Try to remember a time when being sweaty and out of breath meant you were having a fucking awesome time (if you're lucky enough to have such memories.) Think back on those times, and try to come up with creative ways to have fun now. REAL fun, like the kind of fun you had when all you needed was a hot day and a sprinkler in the yard, or a jump-rope, or a piece of chalk and a stretch of concrete. When did adult movement become so boring and medicinal? Who says you need to have 'proper footwear' or a gym membership or all sorts of ugly spandex clothing in order to get a little hot and sweaty? If you're into that kind of thing, cool; you have that many more options than the rest of us who hate all that shit. And if you hate it, take heart: so do I. But I won't be disingenuous and pretend that physical activity has no bearing on our well-being. Neither will I deny that it's more than possible to go out and find ourselves a bit of fun.

Third, you learn to deal with your body. Whatever size it's at, whatever health conditions you might be facing, whatever colour it is, however big your butt is, or small your tits are, or anything. You take what God fucking gave you, and you make the best of it. You do the treatment for any health problems by focusing directly on the problem itself, not by buying into the cultural fantasy that, if you lose weight, you'll magically lose any physical and/or mental illnesses along with it.

What I like about this isn't just that she explains pretty clearly why thinking that one could be healthy at any weight is just as silly as thinking that one is automatically helathier if one has less fat on one's body than previously. It's also her enthusiasm for health, in its various guises. It's pretty contagious, frankly.


Filed under:Health

Complexities of the Body

So, the working out continues--as does the evolution of body image(s). It's strange how many things I have to think about regarding self and the like. This, of course, isn't that big of a suprise--I like thinking about myself, and probably search out things to think about. But I think the past year has been a little bit of a rude awakening for me regarding life and love and my future--aging and being alone in my old age and all that good stuff seems more real now. Some of that has to do with 'The Breakup'(tm), but, as is becoming more and more clear, that the breakup is somewhat just a lens with which to focus my attention on the greater sphere of my life in general.

The facts are these: I don't want children, and my prospects for long-term partners in love and life seem sort of dim at the moment. But not just at the moment--and I'm not being pessimistic here, I think, but rather realistic and pragmatic. Thing is, I'm not so in need of having significant others, the older I get--and in a way I never was. I mean, I think that I can be a person who really wants and needs that, but I also think I can be a person who doesn't need or want that--given that I still have some friends. It's not a simple choice or anything, but it is a choice of a sort. So, there's that. But also: I don't want kids. As such, when I get very much older (or sooner!), and friends start dying off or whatever, I'll be very much alone. And that is truthfully very hard to face. But no so hard that I'm willing to give up very much of what I want now (i.e. somebody who loves me for both who I am and who I can become, etc.) for the possibility of having that later. (Combined with the fact that the chances of somebody falling out of love with me or my falling out of love with them seems pretty high, given my experience.)

Love and Biceps
And what does all of this have to do with body image? Well, it has to do with this: At least some of my motivation for doing more exercise is to be more attractive to potential loves. This is hard for me to admit, because it sort of feels like one of the wrong reasons for exercising--especially since it seems to be the case that I'm more interested in being/looking healthy/athletic since being broken up with...why wasn't I more concerned with looking/feeling hot for my lover when I had one? A lot of my motivation for exercising more, to be clear, doesn't have to do with how I look to others--it has to do with wanting to fight depression, enjoying feeling more energetic and healthier and the like. But that doesn't mean I should ignore the other stuff. Another problem with this sort of motivation is it lends credit to something that is pretty patently false--that if I had been in better shape or some such, that I woulnd't have to have suffered a breakup. (Of course I think about this in the mental and emotional arenas, too--if I had been more healthy emotionally for instance...etc.) And (given the situation as well as what was told to me upon being broken up with) this just isn't the case. So I ought to be avoiding thinking in these ways, consciously or unconsciously.

There's noting inherently wrong with wanting to look healthy/hot, I think. I get that. But I don't want it to be my primary motivation, because I think that's really a bad trap--we all get old, most of us will get ill, and we'll all die. So attractiveness can't (and isn't, in my experience) be just about the physical. Still, it's probably also important to keep in mind that it is probably going to be somewhat about the physical, for me. But sometimes, just now, it feels like it's just about the physical.

What it comes down to is this: I would much rather think to myself, as I run or lift weights or bike, "God, this feels good," than think to myself, "I hope this gets me love/gets me laid." (Again, I don't find myself explicitly thinking any of these thoughts--but they may be there in the background.)

Or perhaps I just have to work on thinking both of those at the same time.


Filed under:
Health

Wanting the World to Be a Better Place...for Me!

One of the things that came up in my first therapy session was that I have a lot of what might be simplisticly (but truthfully?) called white middle-class hetero male guilt. There are at least two senses that this sort of thing makes sense. First off, I can say that about myself (or somebody else) as a kind of dig--the implication being that if I, say, speak up for some feminist/anti-racist/anti-sexist/etc. causes, I may be acting from a place of trying to make myself feel better, rather than trying to further the cause. This is what makes me feel sorta like Charlie Brown:



On the other hand, another sense that 'white middle-class hetero male guilt' might have is the notion that, as a middle-class (sorta) white hetero guy, I have to keep sort of ever-vigilant not only about the world around me, but of my own actual/perceived power in the various realms that I get power by default.

Taking these two senses together, what I end up with is that I have to recognize where I might have power by default and I have to recognize that sometimes I might be acting out of trying to make my life better, rather than trying to make the world a better place for everybody (keeping in mind that a lot of the time, of course, I can do both). Both of these things are incredibly complex, however. I'll try to think/talk about the former some other time--the basic problems being blind spots regarding where I have power and what to do about abdicating the power I do have 'by default'. The latter is a bit more approachable, and that's what I'd like to discuss here.

Well-Placed Guilt and Not-So-Well-Placed Feelings of Rejection
Back to therapy. The reason I starting talking about my 'wmchmg' is that some of my general anger actually comes, I think, from being rejected as a middle-class hetero white guy. That is, one of the great things about dating S was that, while she was supportive as far as my feminist/anti-racist/etc. efforts, she would often also call bullshit when she thought I was being sexist/racist/classist. I want to make it very clear that this is something I valued in our relationship, and something that I value in friends in general. Now that we aren't friends (again, currently--not sure what the future holds), even, it's sometimes hard for me to remember the supportive side of things--my mind tends to fixate on the criticism; given that I have a hard time not focusing just on that, I find myself feeling more rejected and on some deeper levels than I might. That is, I feel like part of us not being friends has to do with her thinking that I'm a racist/sexist/classist jerk. (To be clear, I feel this way not because she has caused me to feel this way--she isn't in the wrong in any way in this regard--but because of my buttons.) That I feel this way is not her fault in any way, really. While there isn't any definitive way to know (because we're not friends now), there's lots of evidence that she doesn't think I am, generally, any of these things.

Fear and Loathing in Jeffland
The thing is, I'm just projecting my own fears about myself onto her when I imagine she thinks of me as this racist/sexist/classist jerk. On some deep levels, I am afraid that I am all of these things.

And of course that's not a completely unfounded fear, is it? I am a white, middle-class (sorta) hetero male, and as such I have been steeped in the racist/classist/sexist elements of culture just as much as the next white, middle-class hetero guy. I think on some levels it's right for me to fear this...I need to keep track of myself in this regard, because living in this culture is the place from where I have to begin.

But I also need to learn to better give myself some slack, sometimes, I think. As my therapist pointed out--asking oneself if one is a sexist is at the very least a very good first step toward not being as sexist as one could be. It's perhaps not enough, but it is an important something.

Not quite sure how to do that, just yet.

Filed under:Health and
Therapy

Nutrition is...well, sorta just like everything else

Great post over at peggynature's livejournal about nutrition, fad diets, and motivating factors regarding having a healthier diet. My favorite part is this, which mirrors my (much more limited) experience of learning about nutrition:

"After all the euphoria over the ideas of mysterious enzymes and food combinations, or conspiracies to keep the information about low-carb out of the public's deserving hands, it was a bit of a let-down, and more than a bit of relief. Like everything else in life, it seemed, the truth about nutrition boiled down to the moderate, the conditional, the totally boring every-day grey of science-nerd shit. In order to find inspiration in it, you'd have to cock your head and squint a little, the way you do on those rare occasions when something like rain or a freshly-washed glass on the drainboard gives you pause to consider its modest loveliness."


Filed under: Health