Standing Up for Yourself

I came across an article on Shine from Yahoo titled "Overweight and Proud : Standing up For Myself." I'll admit I wasn't looking for anything having to do with weight loss or plus sizes, a link from a Blake Lively photo shoot took me to the site and I just happened to find the other article.

I'm not going to recap the whole article for you, but the gist of it is that this writer, an overweight woman, was ridiculed at the grocery store for being overweight. Specifically, someone yelled "Lose some weight," as they passed by in the parking lot. The writer decided to confront the shouter and the article basically concludes with the idea that she was proud for standing up for herself.

So I got to thinking about how I felt regarding this situation. Luckily, the only time I was ever ridiculed for my weight was during one of those weekend long super important football games in college, by a very intoxicated sorority girl who then proceded to fall in the middle of the bar and get kicked out. So I can't say that I have ever felt the rage that this writer must have felt towards the stranger who embarrassed her. Skimming the comments in this article makes me see that we still have a long way to go with fat discrimination and that standing up for yourself, no matter what you look like, is something you can and should be proud of.

Many of the commenters in the above article are saying things like, "Yeah, that woman was rude, but you shouldn't be proud to be overweight, it's unhealthy." Well, what do they know? How do they know that this extra weight is actually unhealthy on her frame? How do they know she's not already working out, already eating healthy? And so what if she's not doing any of that? What if she is choosing to be the size she is?

Why do people assume that because you are overweight you are ashamed of it? I know exactly what contributes to my extra weight. It's my love for ice cream. And everytime I go to the doctor I ask if I need to lose weight and they tell me not if I'm exercising already, which I am. So, why should I convince myself that I'm not ok when everything points to that I am fine?

If you saw someone with pink hair covered in tattoos, would you feel compelled to yell something at them? If you saw someone dressed in religious clothing you were unfamiliar with, would you feel compelled to ridicule them? Hopefully most of you are thinking that you wouldn't, but the woman who yelled at the writer of this article probably does all of that. Some people just can't tolerate anything different from what they consider to me the norm. The fact of the matter is that this intolerance doesn't only have to do with your weight. It goes much deeper and expands much broader. Intolerance is ugly. It makes you much uglier than 15 extra pounds. If I have to choose between being intolerant and skinny and the way I am now, I'll take an extra scoop of ice cream tonight.

To Eat or Not to Eat?

I am smack dab in the middle of one of the busiest work weeks of the year. We are getting ready for a large convention and for about two solid weeks it means lots of late nights and lunches at my desk.

Since every one I work with is so busy we haven't had many organized lunches, not even in our little break room. But when I was heating up some lunch to take back to my desk the other day I realized something odd. I hadn't seen most of the women I work with eating lunch at all over the last week. Not even something quick at their desk. A few conversations with them confirmed that, yes, they have been skipping lunch for about a week and a half now and eating nothing.

Now, you may think that we really are just to busy to stop and eat, but I can tell you that's not true. We have one or two local cafes bring carts of food for purchase over every single day. There are at least a handful of places that will deliver with a very low minimum delivery order. And we have a full size refrigerator and freezer to store food brought from home. I haven't had very long lunches lately, 15 minutes tops, but it's still something.

So I got to listening to the women who weren't eating. They talk about it constantly. It seems like to them it's a badge, like they were able to make it throughout the whole day without food and feel proud of it. They also mention about how it's good for weight loss.

Now, I absolutely hate being the "fatty" in the office who wont skip a meal. But I know that we all work better with fuel in our bodies. How can these women actually think this is good for them? If this were happening once or twice I wouldn't think anything of it, but most of them are saying they haven't had lunch all week long.

It makes me realize (again) that just because someone has a thin body doesn't mean they are healthy. And it sure as hell doesn't mean they have a healthy relationship with food. Our bodies need fuel. Think of it as a car. There are many different kinds of gas you can put in a car, some better than others. Some cars can only operate on a certain kind of gas, while most others can take any kind. But no kind of car can run on no gas. Well, maybe the electric ones, but we're not going to get into that until you can show me a human who can run on electricity instead of food.

I have to switch my brain over to rational thinking when things like this happen because it's very easy to get emotional. It's easy to think that they will see me as a fat person who, of course, isn't going to skip a meal. But when it comes down to it I'm eating normal size lunches, with respectable calorie counts and I don't have a crash at 3:00 in the afternoon. And I don't feel ravenous when I get home for dinner either.

Ask any nutritionist out there, skipping meals is not really the way to go. And it certainly isn't some great new diet that you've found, either. It will catch up to you and you probably wont like the results. Eat, girls, eat! Your body wants you to!