The Weight

This post is sort of a culmination of the last two posts, but I have been tiptoeing around this part.

I mentioned last week that it should be clear that there were lots of different possible health goals. What I hope was also clear was that there are reasons to be optimistic. For as many potential issues as there are, there are also many potential solutions.

I never mentioned weight loss, which may make it obvious going back that weight loss is the common goal that has been bugging me.

I held off on mentioning it directly, knowing that criticizing weight loss goals will make some people feel very defensive. 

It will also be easy to discount what I say. After all, I am fat; perhaps criticizing weight loss goals is merely self-serving. 

(Though I can also imagine a thin person criticizing weight loss goal, and a fat person replying that it is easy for them to say; they're not the ones walking down the street and being mooed at.)

What I say, I say as someone who has not only read a lot but lived a lot. I speak from knowledge and experience, with love and with honesty.

Trying to lose weight is based on worldly standards. It is most likely to harm you, physically and mentally. Also, giving up on weight loss is not neglecting your health.

We have built up in our minds that weight loss is the answer to everything. That is destructive to health. Patients have been ordered to lose weight, when the weight was a tumor assumed to be fat. Sometimes the difference was discovered too late.

Patients who have been in need of medication or surgery for various, non-weight related reasons have been put off, and people with severe, life-threatening eating disorders have been complimented for their figures.

No, those examples are probably not you, but here is something that is: over 90% of diets fail.

The studies give numbers anywhere from 91% to 99%, but generally there is not significant weight loss. When there is, 80% of people fail to keep it off for more than a year.

Usually it comes back with some extra. If you are told that the most important thing you can do for your health and acceptance by society, and for your attractiveness and worthiness, is something at which you will not only fail but end up in a worse state after trying... that is just a cruelty.

We do all the time.

The new strategy is to call things lifestyle changes instead of diets. That does nothing for their success rate.

One of the things that supports the cruelties of capitalism is this idea that the down side is not really for us. I have heard it expressed as us being a country of temporarily embarrassed millionaires, a paraphrase of a quote from Steinbeck. The point is that the problems of the exploited are separate from you; you are going to get out of that soon. If other people can't, well you are smarter or stronger or more determined... you are not like everyone else.

I think we have similar issues with fat-shaming. Those people really are lazy and slothful and eating too much, but I am going to conquer it this time. There is always something available for a new "this time".

In junior high I tried a 1000 calorie a day diet that came from the doctor's office. It was for my mother, not for me, but still, it seemed reasonable. There was Slim-fast, Nutri-system, 8 minute abs, 30 minutes for slimming your stomach, a blood type diet, the fat-burning furnace... I am sure I do not remember them all. The ones I remember are embarrassing enough in terms of my gullibility, but if being fat is such a horrible thing, why wouldn't I jump at the chance to not be fat?

Except that I only got fatter.

"Weight loss" is so poorly defined anyway. I once lost thirty pounds in a few days due to extreme dehydration; I was not healthier. (That was not intentional, I was really sick.)

I also once gained forty pounds of water weight in a month due to a bad reaction to a new medication. That was not healthy, but it took me longer than it should have to figure out what was going on with the medication because I was so mortified, and trying so hard to figure out what I was doing wrong with my eating.

Focusing on fat made it harder for me to appreciate the health I did have, and to maintain it. Attempting to lose fat was not good for my health.

Please check out this article:

https://closeronline.co.uk/celebrity/news/exercise-weight-loss-contributed-carrie-fisher-death/ 

There is information on how weight fluctuations can be harmful, but also notice the reluctance to really admit that dieting is wrong or that it can be healthier to maintain a heavier weight (there is science backing that up), or even the acceptance on Carrie Fisher's part that she should have to go through the training and dieting again.

Please understand what I am not saying.

I am not saying that I don't get the pressure. I totally do.

I am not saying that there might not be ways in which you should change your activities or eating; that is a definite possibility.

I am not saying that all body mass is genetic either. We should think about class correlations as well, but there is another memory that sticks with me. I was listening to a talk in church, about something that would hold you back in some way. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I remember thinking that I still was able to do it, and the voice coming to me "And it only took you 200 extra pounds."

I do not deny that some of my bulk is related to issues with my father and never feeling loved and accepted, and then exacerbated by focusing on losing weight as the key to that love and acceptance, so pursuing weight loss and finding it offset by weight gain every time.

Yes, that probably accounts for part of my size, but the healing and growth that I have made since then do not mean that I can just take it off now. I need to work on being healthy with the body I have.

I did not come to that right away. I remember at one point realizing that I needed to be able to accept being fat before I could lose weight. Even then, I still thought it was a means to an end; some day I was still going to lose weight and that would fix everything.

There was a way in which that helped me. Because I believed that the weight loss would come, and then everything would be better, it made it possible to survive the things that were bad. However, it also kept me from fully engaging with the things that were good, and the love that was there.

Important things were lost.

When I say that I am more relaxed now, and learning what matters and what doesn't, it's mainly about getting over the need to lose weight to have my life be worth anything. It has also involved letting go of the idea that getting married and having kids would make me feel worthwhile, but that was also tied into the weight.

For your own sake, I encourage you to get off that merry-go-round. Don't expect it of others. Don't expect it of yourself.

Don't set yourself up for failure by focusing on that one thing that is almost impossible.

Even if you did succeed, as unlikely as it is, the self-loathing would still be there.

Related posts:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/01/mighty-in-prayer.html

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/01/setting-health-goals.html