I talk about the fact that my metabolic health indicators are all really good and so I get asked a lot “What if you get diabetes/heart disease/sick?” This is known as the Role Model Problem – the idea that if we hold someone up as a “role model” – proof that fat people can be healthy – then if that person gets sick it’s proof that fat people can’t be healthy.

The truth is that neither statement is true.  The fact that I am healthy is not proof that all fat people can be healthy.  If I were to get every obesity related disease tomorrow it would not be proof that no fat people can be healthy.  There are healthy and unhealthy people of every size.

The problem as I see it is that in our culture we’ve completed confused the concepts of weight and health. Somehow we’ve forgotten that body size is NOT a diagnosis.

There are exactly two things that you can tell from the size of someone’s body:

1. What size they are.
2. What your own prejudices and preconceived notions about that size are.

Health is multi-dimensional and not all facets are within our control: current behaviors, past behaviors, environment, stress, genetics, and access – including access to nourishing foods, movement options that are safe and enjoyable, and good health care which we know can be an issue for fat people.

Our numbers aren’t entirely the result of our behavior, in some cases they are primarily the result of factors outside of our control. We know that marathoners can drop dead of heart attacks.  Again – there are healthy and unhealthy people of every shape and size.

To answer the question, if I were to have a health issue then I would treat it from a health perspective. Somewhat unbelievably to me, that would likely be a controversial choice.  Consider this:

Typically if a 120 pound woman goes to the doctor with high blood sugar, she is given health interventions that are known to control blood sugar, then in subsequent visits her blood sugar will be measured to test the efficacy of the treatment.  The treatments that she is given will be proven effective before they are prescribed to her and if they fail her case will be re-evaluated and new interventions prescribed.

If a 300 pound woman goes to the doctor with high blood sugar, she is told to lose weight, and in subsequent visits her weight will be measured to determine her success.  Based on all available research this treatment fails 95% of the time.  If the treatment fails she will be blamed for not doing it right and assigned the same treatment again.

How does that make sense?  Why is a thin person given interventions that are related to their health problems, but a fat person is given interventions related to their size?  If a thin person can have diabetes then being thin can’t be the cure. Confusing weight and health does a disservice to everyone.

So if I get sick I’ll look for interventions that have a likelihood of making me well.  But for now, thin people aren’t required to prove that they will never get sick in order to celebrate their current good health and I won’t live by a double standard.  I’m 34, fat and healthy.  Yay!  Someday I will be dead.  In between I’ll do the best I can with my circumstances and my body.

I’m back from my trip to Los Angeles, it was amazing.  I got to meet a new friend (Hi Julianne!)  I also got to spend time with the awesome Jeanette DePatie (aka The Fat Chick and if you don’t know her you should totally check her out!) I walked on the beach and played in the water.  I now have some pretty severe beach envy.

I spent an afternoon with the always fun Darryl Roberts finishing up the filming for my part in his new movie – America the Beautiful II – The Thin Commandments. As part of that we climbed the famous Santa Monica Stairs.  This was made extra interesting because I was wearing a dress and some slip on shoes.  (This isn’t me in the picture, as soon as I have a picture I’ll be posting it):

I am a huge fan of Darryl’s work and I’m super excited about this film and the number of people who are going to be exposed to the idea of Health at Every Size because of it.

The trip was topped off by a talk at USC for their Love Your Body Week which was great fun and made me even more excited about the possibility of a Dances with Fat World Tour!

Now to the meat of the topic today.  One question that came up a bunch of times this weekend was “But wouldn’t your life be easier if you were thin?”

First, I really reject this question on it’s face.  There are a lot of things that might make my life easier – if I were taller some things would be easier (reaching stuff) but some things would be more difficult (standing up on a plane).  There are plenty of ways that I could change that would make my life easier but that doesn’t mean I should make those changes.  They may or may not be possible, easier doesn’t necessarily mean better, and there are typically trade-offs. For example, there is a freedom that comes from living completely outside the cultural beauty norm that I really enjoy.

But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the answer is “yes” – that my life would be easier if I did not have to live under the constant stigma that comes from not conforming (or trying to conform) to the social stereotype of beauty.  This is still highly problematic:

First, even if being thin would make my life easier, nobody has any proven method to get it done.  Currently the best that science can offer me is a 5% chance for success and a 95% chance of failure including ending up heavier and less healthy than when I started.  I’m going to pass on that.

But it goes beyond that for me.  Even if it was proven possible, the cure for social stigma is NOT  for the stigmatized group to change and gain provisional acceptance. To me respect for all sizes is absolutely a civil rights issue.  As a fat woman there are two layers to this.  The first is my realization that I’m never going to be thin.  I don’t believe that’s a choice for me – just a matter of facing reality. The second is the decision to stop trying to be thin. That is a choice and a difficult one because it takes me out of the “Good Fatty” category (people who are trying to be thin and therefore get some modicum of approval from the stigmatizing group), and puts me firmly in the “Bad Fatty” category- someone who opts out of the diet culture completely and so is subjected to the full vitriol of the stigmatizing group.  So although my life might be easier if I were thin, or if I were at least seen as trying to be thin, I’m not interested.

Because where does it end?  If someone else gets to tell me what my body should look like, what else do they get to decide for me?  What other power do I have to give away?  I got a fortune in a cookie once that said “The person who trims themself to suit everyone soon whittles away to nothing.”  I think that if I want social change (and I do) then the first step is to stand up and say

No. I won’t do what you want me to do just to gain your begrudging, conditional respect and humane treatment, that I will only enjoy until you want me to change myself again to suit you. I will demand my civil rights now, as I am, and if you don’t give them to me then I will fight for them.

And you don’t want to mess with me because I can climb a whole bunch of stairs in a dress.

Tomorrow I’ll be on my way to Los Angeles.  We’re wrapping up filming of my part of America the Beautiful II – The Thin Commandments (The trailer is at the bottom of this post, I’m the one dancing),  and I’m giving a talk at the University of Southern California about options for health, happiness and self-esteem. In thinking about giving that talk I was reflecting on how I got to where I am when I remembered this:

I posted this to my LiveJournal on 10/12/2005 (the day after my birthday, making this the best birthday present I’ve ever given myself). At the time I had just quit a weight loss program and, in trying to get me to stay, and employee had asked me “Aren’t you tired of hating your body?” I realized that I was tired of hating my body and so I went to see a counselor for some help. This is the day that my destination became clear.  I didn’t know that path yet (it turns out that the Health at Every Size (r) method is what worked for me) but on 10/12/2005 I realized that who I was, was who I wanted to be. The post was titled “Hot Hottie Manifesto” and here is is:

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

I had the most amazing life experience today. For a long time I’ve been struggling with issues surrounding my inability to lose weight. I started working with a new counselor and I was lamenting about my problems and suggesting reasons why I was holding onto extra weight etc. She looked at me almost quizzically for a few seconds and then said “Truth – do you love your body?” And the answer was right there. Yes, I do. I totally love my body.  In that one moment it was  clear – the shame issues that I’ve been dealing with are about loving my body when other people think that I should be ashamed of it or trying to change it or that I must be unhealthy.  They have nothing to do with the way that I actually feel about by body.

So, a bit shocked, I told her that yes, I totally love my body. She said that she was surprised that I thought I had issues with my weight because her sense of me immediately upon meeting me was that I love my body in a way that few people are ever able to. I can’t describe how delightfully happy I am about this. I’m not sure where I’ll go from here but this is what I know a few things.

Truth:
I fucking LOVE my body.  My body is amazing. I would totally shag me. There is nothing conceited about this and I hope someday I can help other people feel this way about their bodies.

Truth:
I am badass dancer in the exact body that I’m in. End of story.

Truth:
The whole dieting, trying to lose weight thing is over. I’m going to support my body on its path.

Truth:
I’ll not be having anymore discussions with my dance coach or anybody else about changing my weight or size.

Truth:
I have been taking on other people’s issues about weight as if they were mine. I won’t be doing that anymore.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

So that’s it.  My big epiphany day and thanks to LiveJournal I can remember exactly how I was feeling.  I think it’s the most important thing that I’ve ever done for my health and my quality of life – it’s the day I opted out of the story that the diet industry was telling me and opted into a decision to find a way to acknowledge my amazing body and find a path that supported it, instead of punishing it and hating it. I was a difficult road to get here and some days the path is still rocky but I would not change it for anything and I will never go back.

Here’s the premiere for the documentary (trigger warning – there is eating disorder talk and pictures as well as some non fat-friendly speech).

There are some things about weight and health in our culture that confuse me:

Why is it accepted that some people who eat a ton of food can stay thin, but not accepted that some people who eat a small amount of food can be fat?

Since thin people get diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, why is becoming thin suggested as a cure?

Why bother using BMI as a substitute for metabolic health measures when we can easily test metabolic health measures?

Doctors treat thin people for joint pain with options other than weight loss, why don’t they give fat people those same treatments?

Why do we believe that doing unhealthy things (liquid diet, smoking, urine injections coupled with starvation, stomach amputation) will lead to a healthy body?

If the diet industry’s product actually “cured fatness”, wouldn’t their profits be going down instead of up as more and more people were permanently thin?

Isn’t it medically unethical to prescribe something without telling your patients that it works less than 5% of the time with a much greater chance at leaving you heavier and less healthy than when you started?

Why do people continue to think that shaming people will lead them to health?

Why do we accept wide variations in things like foot and hand size, nose and lip shape etc. but expect every body to fit into a very narrow proportion of height and weight?

If weight gain isn’t proven to cause diabetes, high blood pressure etc., why would weight loss be recommended as a cure?

Since weight loss ads have to carry a “results not typical” warning, shouldn’t doctors have to give patients a similar warning?

Why do people take the time to come to my blog and make death threats?

Does anyone really succeed at hating themselves healthy? If so is it worth it?

If we’ve been prescribing dieting since the 1800s and still can’t prove that it works, shouldn’t we be trying something else?

How is it possible that suggesting that healthy habits are the best chance for a healthy body is controversial?

I’m sure I’ve forgotten some but that seems like enough nonsense for now. Obviously some of these are oversimplified, but so is the relationship of health and weight in current culture and medical practice.  Sometimes things just aren’t simple. And at some point it’s time to say that what we’ve been trying is wrong, and it’s time to look at other options. It seems to me that it’s about time for some of that.

I was having a meeting with a publicist to talk about the possibility of a Dances with Fat World Tour (which nobody knows about yet because it’s super secret, shhhhhh!) and she asked me who I would like to debate in public appearances.  I said that while I was open to that I would prefer to have the opportunity to tell my story.  She thought that was odd and asked me why.

Well, it has a lot to do with Harvey Milk.

Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to a major office (San Francisco City Supervisor) and he was assassinated in his first year. His story was told recently in the movie “Milk” which I highly recommend.  In the special features one of the men closest to him in his campaigning years said “He was a regular guy.  His personal life was often in disarray, he wasn’t a genius and he died penniless.  But he changed the world.”  I think that’s real power.  He understood that the work he did wasn’t about him or his ego, but was about the movement.

While in office he brought together women, unions, senior citizens and the GLBT communities in San Francisco.  After his assassination over 10,000 people held a candlelight vigil for him.  In my favorite of his speeches he said:

Without hope the us’s give up. I know that you can’t live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you, and you, and you, and you have got to give them hope.

Harvey Milk is absolutely one of my life heroes and, as a bisexual woman, he is a reminder that people died for the rights that I enjoy today.  But Harvey’s main work wasn’t what he did to change the minds of those who disagreed with him – it was what he did to galvanize the community.  He made people realize that they had the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to which their adversaries laid claim.  He helped people realize that the treatment that they were receiving was not ok and that they deserved better and could fight for what they deserved. He gave them hope that their situation would be better someday.

I get e-mails from readers saying that it seems so hopeless that they’ll ever know a life lived outside of constant cultural stigmatization.  It gets hard sometimes for me too, some days I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel and then I get a bunch of death threat e-mails and suddenly it seems that the light is probably an oncoming train.

This is why, while I love a good debate, it’s not my first choice for a public appearance.  Because I’m not so concerned that Meme Roth or Jamie Oliver or internet trolls think fat people deserve to be treated well; and I’m much more concerned that fat people know that they deserve to be treated well.  It’s tough to lead a civil rights movement of people who aren’t sure that they deserve civil rights. And my goal is to let as many people as possible know that Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size are options so that they can make an informed choice.

You deserve to be treated well right now, whether or not you are trying to conform to the cultural stereotype of beauty.  You deserve respect, and you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Right now. In the body in which you currently reside.  Even if you want to eat differently or move more or whatever, I’m asking that you consider the possibility that your body is amazing and deserving of love and respect right this minute.  Remember that no matter what your body looks like, there’s an extremely decent chance that you are the standard of beauty in some culture somewhere.  Consider that the cure for social stigma is not weight loss, it’s ending social stigma.

One of Harvey Milk’s main political tools was getting people to come out of the closet to their friends and family.  It turns out the more out gay people someone knows, the more likely they are to see us as humans, deserving of equal eights. Obviously there’s no need for us to come out as fat, but I think that there is another coming out that we can do.  We can come out as fat and happy.  Allow me to demonstrate:

My name is Ragen Chastain and I am fat and happy.  I love my life, and I love my body.  I eat to nourish my body a lot of the time, and sometimes I eat because I like orange sherbet.  I went to the gym tonight for the pure joy of moving my body and I didn’t even consider weighing myself because I don’t care.  If you don’t like my body and/or want to make unsolicited suggestions about how I should treat it, then may I suggest you practice the ancient art of looking in another direction while keeping your mouth shut.  ~Ragen Chastain, Happy Fatty

I believe that in my lifetime I’ll know what it’s like to live in my body, in this culture, without constant societal stigmatization. But even if I don’t, I believe in doing whatever I can to move us as far down the path as possible in the time that I have.  I was 2 years old when Harvey Milk was shot and killed and I’ll bet he wouldn’t believe all the progress that has been made in queer rights.  So even if it looks bleak now, we have no idea what the landscape will look like 20 or 30 years from now.

There are people out there who hate their bodies solely because they don’t think that there’s another choice. They think that their shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness starts 50 pounds from now.  Somewhere there’s an 8 year old girl about to start her first diet because Michelle Obama is waging a War on her.

Those of us who have made it to the other side of all the hate and stigma can help.  We can let people know about the Health at Every Size (r) option.  We can debunk ridiculous studies that try to say that obesity costs the US elebenty gabillion dollars every two minutes. We can be an example of standing up for ourselves. We can let them know that if you are struggling with your relationship with your body it can get better.  There are options that will allow you to love your body more right now.  (Might as well try, if you find that you don’t enjoy loving your body you can always go back to hating it if you want.)

We gotta give them hope.  We gotta give each other hope. There’s a light at the end of this crazy cultural stigma and shame tunnel it’s NOT a train!

Here’s a video of the entire Harvey Milk speech. I can’t put into words how grateful I am for this man’s courage and what it has done for my life:

At some point last week is seeped through to my conscious mind that my gym was PLASTERED with weight loss propaganda. There’s a huge scale in the ladies locker room and several times a year they try to get me to buy personal training to help “jump start my weight loss”.

At first I assumed that every gym is probably this way, but I decided to look into it just to be sure. Enter Planet Fitness (no, they aren’t giving me anything for saying this).

There are no scales.  There are no weight loss mantras.

There are tootsie rolls at the front counter

There’s Mountain Dew and Rockstar with the Gatorade

There’s a Lunk Alarm in the free weight area

There are pizza nights once a month.

Above the front desk is a sign that says that they are creating a space where “anyone and we mean anyone can be comfortable working out”.

It’s also really cheap, my old gym was almost $300 initiation fee and $40 per month.  This place has memberships from 10-20 per month some of which have no initiation fee.

This is what I’m talking about when I talk about giving everyone access to healthy options.  This gym is focused on health, not weight, and is trying to remove economic barriers as well as challenging stereotypes about a gym and modeling a balanced lifestyle where health is not about being obsessive, hating ones current body, or trying to achieve a specific height/weight ratio.  How kick ass is that? The gym is populated by an amazingly diverse group of people and everyone so far has been super friendly.

This gives me tremendous hope!  I think that we need more of exactly this.  What if every gym, every Zumba class, every yoga class tried to be as accessible as possible and modeled health as balanced choices (not a body size) that can include tootsie rolls and squats and pizza and treadmills and fun?  To me, this is what Health at Every Size is about.  Health is multi-dimensional – it includes behaviors, genetics, stress, environment and access.  Obviously some of those things are partially or completely out of our control and health is never guaranteed.  Access is even trickier because it’s not always within our control.  Some people only have access to gyms  that are clinging to the antiquated paradigm that thin and healthy are the same thing.  Some people only have access to gyms that aren’t affordable.  Some people, for whatever reason, don’t have access to a gym at all. Or to whatever movement option they enjoy.  So I think that a gym that tries to remove as many barriers as possible is a huge step in the right direction!

I was talking to a friend of mine who had asked permission to ask me a question that would “probably piss me off”.  This is always a good time.  I actually don’t mind at all, I’d rather people ask me their fat people questions than just wonder.

Sure, what’s on your mind…

“I eat ok but I have dessert and french fries.  And I exercise sometimes but not a lot. I’ve never dieted but I stay within the recommended BMI, so it seems like most fat people would just have to eat a little better and exercise a little more and they would be thin.”

There are about a hundred things wrong with this and I’ll break it down in a second but I think that it’s indicative of the way that some naturally thin people feel about fat people.

There’s a saying “Born on third, thinks he hit a triple”.  It refers to someone who has made the mistake of thinking that their behaviors are completely  responsible for where they are in life, especially if it’s obvious that person had distinct advantages.  I think that this is what happens with a lot of naturally thin people.  Often they don’t mean it intentionally – they don’t even realize that they are doing it, but they make the assumption that what keeps them thin would keep everyone thin.  And that brings us to our quote breakdown:

“I eat ok but I have dessert and french fries sometimes.  And I exercise sometimes but not a lot. I’ve never dieted and I stay within the recommended BMI, so it seems like most fat people would just have to eat a little better and exercise a little more and they would be thin.”

First, she is assuming that all bodies react to foods the same, and that anyone bigger than she is must be eating more and exercising less than she does.  It’s just not true.  Two people can have the same diet and very different body sizes.  Two other people can have vastly different diets and the same body size.

Second, even if it was true that all people bigger than her are eating more and exercising less, it assumes that eating less and exercising more will result in long-term weight loss.  Based on all the available science, intentional weight loss based on caloric restriction and increased activity has an abysmal long-term success rate.

This kind of attitude also assumes that fat people haven’t tried these things already. That always kills me – people who suggest that I add exercise as if there’s no way I could have heard of it before.  Most of the fat people I know have spent a huge portion of their lives dieting.  Which brings me to my final point:  I think that the key sentence here is “I’ve never dieted”.  We know that food deprivation (aka dieting) changes people psychologically and physically. And it appears that the earlier it starts, the more it affects us. Since this woman’s parents didn’t put her on diets at 8, she probably had a better chance at being whatever size her body is meant to be naturally – in her case thin.

If being thin comes easily to you you might want to consider that you were born on third, not that the rest of us haven’t swung that bat.  Regardless, it doesn’t matter what behaviors someone credits with their body size – that doesn’t obligate anyone else to do the same thing.  Personal responsibility doesn’t mean that I’m personally responsible to do what someone else thinks I should do or to look like someone else thinks I should look.

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I had coffee yesterday with the amazing Jenni Schaefer.  She wrote the books Life Without ED and Goodbye Ed, Hello Me (both about overcoming Eating Disorders). She is a hero to many of the women with eating disorders who I’ve  worked with (and therefore a hero of mine) and I remember how much buzz there was that she was going to be moving here.  I was so excited to sit down with her and she was just as awesome as you might imagine.  We got onto the subject of online dating.  (If you’re a long-time reader you already know about some of my misadventures in dating, and with online dating in particular.)

This conversation focused on the “check the box body type” box that is typically required when setting up a profile (ie:  thin, average, athletic, voluptuous, curvy, BBW).

The one I want to talk about is “athletic”.  My understanding of the perception of athletic (as verified by two of my heterosexual male friends)  is “thin, possibly with muscles, definitely small boobs”.   But the idea is obviously problematic.  I’m an athlete but if I checked the box for “athletic body”, the person I ended up on a date with would likely feel that I had been disingenuous.

Cheryl Haworth is an Olympic medal-winning heavyweight weightlifter. In a typical workout she lifts as much as 25 tons – the weight of an F-15 fighter jet. Cheryl holds a record for clean and jerk of 355 pounds.  That means that I could hold a 71 pound weight and then Cheryl could push me and the weight OVER HER HEAD.  Who would like to tell Cheryl Haworth that she does not have an athletic body, please step forward…

That’s what I thought.

Then there’s my BMI double Refrigerator Perry,  and my hero Po from Kung Fu Panda.

When did being an athlete become more about how a body looks and less about what it can do?  And who gets to dole out the title of athlete.  I’ve met plenty of people who thinks it’s their right, but none of them had a sash or a gavel or anything. These are probably the same idiots who say that I don’t have a dancer’s body. Bite me.

Why are there requirements to call yourself an athlete?  Why does the title of athlete need to be protected?  If every person in the world thought of themselves as an athlete, what bad thing would happen?  It doesn’t make anyone’s work less valuable because other people are doing different work.  If you feel that you lose something because someone else gets to identify as an athlete too, then you’ve missed the point.

If you haven’t seen it, check out the Athletes of Every Size Flickr account and add your pictures if you are so moved!

I believe that you are an athlete if you believe you are, and your body is athletic if you say it is.  Athletes come in every shape and size.