Alice in Hungerland

For an entire lifetime of almost 70 years, I’ve put tremendous effort into getting my body to, and keeping my body at an “acceptably normal size”. Following every conceivable diet, and every conceivable “non-diet” to achieve this has often seemed like falling down the rabbit hole with Alice, into the deep black hole of Hungerland.

If I have any wisdom at all to share, … something that has worked for me in my lifetime … it would be:

........................Stop waiting for another body to show up...........................

Ragen Chastain of danceswithfat makes some very good points about this in her recent article,
Fat Lives On Hold. She says:

"My life changed drastically and dramatically for the better the day I decided to stop waiting for another body to show up and just take the body I had out for a spin.

I arrived at that decision when, having yo-yo dieted for years, I decided to do the research and find the best diet.  After reading every study I could find about weight loss, I was shocked to find that  there wasn’t a single study where more than a tiny percentage of people had lost weight, and “success” was typically defined as having lost 2-5 pounds.

Based on the research (rather than the constant drumbeat of “everybody knows,“) the truth was (and is) that being thin will probably never happen for me, or most fat people.  So was I supposed to live a joyless life subjected to constant bullying, stigma, stereotypes and oppression all of which I should accept because I deserve it for being fat, hiding my body in shame, putting my life on permanent hold?  Screw that.

I’m here today to suggest this:  If you are putting your life, or aspects of your life, on hold until you lose weight, then whether you decide to practice Size Acceptance and/or Health at Every Size, or try to manipulate your body size for whatever reason, consider taking your life off hold, starting right now. 

Start today!  Do something that you’ve been waiting to do.  Or start planning to do something that you’ve been waiting to do. 

Or start asking questions – like:

• where you got the message that you should wait to do things that you want to do until your body looks different (was it by any chance from people who are profiting from that message?);

• if those messages serve you; and

• if you want to keep buying into that."