Reader Dan sent me an article from Huffington Post called “CrossFit Bashers, Can You Be More Constructive?”  The piece is written by a Eva Selhub, a “Medical Doctor, executive coach, motivational speaker,” who does crossfit, in response to those who believe that there are issues with the safety and efficacy of crossfit (like this, for example).

Unfortunately the first point that the she chooses to make is “I’ve been practicing medicine for close to 20 years and none of us have figured out a way not only to get people motivated to exercise and get fit, but to stick to it. CrossFit is not the problem folks, obesity is.”

Then, as is usually the case when “obesity” gets used this way, she goes on to quote a bunch of “everybody knows” statistics that aren’t supported by actual evidence.   I’m going to go go a bit off topic because this is just a terrible argument – first of all crossfit isn’t the first workout with a – let’s call it enthusiastic – following and it won’t be the last. In the past she might have written the same thing about Step, Spinning, Tae Bo, Zumba and any number of other fitness trends and yet fat people still exist, including those of us who did, do, taught or teach those workouts including crossfit.  Crossfit is hardly the only type of workout that people find motivating.  Not for nothing but maybe if doctors stopped lying to people and telling us that movement will lead to a specific body size, and that if we’re not getting thinner we’re not getting healthier, people might be less likely to only engage in activity to try to manipulate their body size and quit when they don’t get thin but that’s a whole other blog.)

People are allowed to do crossfit, I haven’t researched it extensively and I’m not making an argument for it either way.  That’s not my issue with this.  The problem is that “obesity” is not the opposite of “crossfit”, and “obesity” is not the opposite of “longterm motivation and fitness” and responding to arguments from fitness professionals about issues they perceive with the safety and efficacy of crossfit by pointing and yelling “BUT FAT PEOPLE!” is irresponsible, illogical, and does nothing but try to distract readers by calling upon, and adding to, the tremendous amount of stigma that a group of people face in society for how we look.  

If the detractors of crossfit to whom Dr. Selhub is directing her piece are correct that there are issues with the safety and efficacy of crossfit, no number of fat people who exist will change that.  There is no number of “obese” people, that is people whose weight in pounds times their height in inches squared times 703 is greater than 30, that will change the safety and efficacy of crossfit.  The existence of fat people does not justify a workout that isn’t safe and/or effective.

It’s not just this misguided doctor and her article defending a workout that she likes.  This is the same logic that’s used to justify recommending intentional weight loss to fat people, even though the research shows that it has the opposite of the intended effect the majority of the time.  It’s the same argument that’s used as justification to force completely untested interventions on kids to try to manipulate their body size.  Sometimes it’s done for profit, sometimes for power, sometimes for justification, sometimes for bullying, sometimes all four and more, but it’s always bullshit.

To co-opt an adage, many people seem to have decided that when the facts are on their side, they argue the facts. When logic is on their side, they argue logic.  When the facts aren’t on their side and logic isn’t on their side,  they shriek “I SEE FAT PEOPLE, THEY’RE EVERYWHERE” and hope everyone forgets that they don’t actually have a cogent argument. Fat people have the right to exist without shame, stigma, bullying, oppression or being used as a distraction, including and especially by people who lack a cogent argument.

Activism Opportunity:  You can comment on the piece here if you would like.

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What do member fees support?  I get hundreds of requests a day (not including hatemail) from academic to deeply personal. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (and let me just give a huge THANK YOU to my members, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Here’s more cool stuff:

Are you looking for a way to do some fun movement this summer (and get prizes for it?)  Consider a Fit Fatty Virtual Summer Vacation!

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for detail

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my selling things on this site, you are invited to check out this post

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is suggesting that the NHS send fat people to so-called “lifestyle weight management programs” like  Weight Watchers. They claim that it will save money because people who are overweight or obese can enjoy “significant health benefits” by losing 3% of their weight.

Right.

Carol Weir, guidance developer for Nice and head of nutrition and dietetics at Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust, said “Obviously, if you need to lose weight, the more weight you lose the better, and the health benefits derive from that, but even a 3% loss, kept up long term, is beneficial and that is why we are recommending sensible changes that can be sustained life long.”

Sigh.

Too bad she doesn’t have any actual evidence to back up her claims.  This is one of the consistent problems with health professionals and weight loss, they are happy to say that sustained weight loss is possible despite the fact that there is no study that exists that shows that significant weight loss can be sustained for more than five years for more than a tiny fraction of people.  They are also happy to claim that weight loss leads to health improvements even though there is no evidence for that either.

Even the Look AHEAD study, which included fat people with Type 2 Diabetes, and managed to get those people to maintain a 5% weight loss for four years was cancelled for futility because of the lack of cardiovascular health improvements.  Mann and Tomiyma’s 2013 study also failed to find a causal link between weight loss and health improvements.

The idea that there is a percentage of weight loss that will lead to better health for all fat people is a long perpetuated farce. As Mann and Tomiyama point out in a great article about this,  the claim started with very specific height weight ratio, but people failed to diet into those categories, then:

In the absence of more effective diets to recommend, researchers simply changed the definition of success. Their new standard was to lose 20 percent of one’s starting weight. However, a review of diets from that era found that only 5 percent of obese dieters succeeded even by that definition. The solution? Change the definition again.

Eventually, the medical community settled on the current standard of losing just 5 percent of one’s starting weight, despite having no scientifically-supported medical reason for doing so. As a result, dieters can be deemed successful without achieving notable amounts of weight loss or, as in the Look AHEAD trial, meaningful improvements in cardiovascular health. And remember that the majority of dieters do not even lose enough weight to meet this ineffectual standard.

Now we’re down to 3%.  So it turns out that going from 284 pounds to 275.48 pounds is probably not the key to my long term health, color me absolutely not surprised.

In addition to the irresponsible and misguided recommendation of diets to improve health, NICE recommends the irresponsible and misguided use of Body Mass Index (BMI) by doctors to determine eligibility.  It’s like they are trying to prove that they aren’t competent to make these recommendations.  If it means anything to you NICE, I believe that you’re incompetent, you can stop trying so hard to prove it.

What NICE is doing amounts to recommending a treatment that nobody has proven is possible for a reason nobody has proven is valid. If we’re going to do that, then might I suggest once again that they just give every fat person a pony – it has the same chance of leading to thinness or health (two separate things) as NICE’s recommendation, but when it doesn’t work, the fat people will still have a pony. Or maybe a pet of their choice?  Or maybe just not having to attend Weight Watcher’s meetings is enough.

This has to stop.  Doctors have to stop confusing body size with health and they absolutely MUST stop recommending what is at best experimental treatment to fat people as if it’s a proven intervention, denying us both evidence-based medicine and informed consent.  If they are going to do that I’d much rather they just give me a pony and be done with it.

Like the blog?  Consider becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.

What do member fees support?  I get hundreds of requests a day (not including hatemail) from academic to deeply personal. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (and let me just give a huge THANK YOU to my members, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Here’s more cool stuff:

Are you looking for a way to do some fun movement this summer (and get prizes for it?)  Consider a Fit Fatty Virtual Summer Vacation!

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for detail

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my selling things on this site, you are invited to check out this post

 

 

As I give talks with Q&A  and read e-mails and blog comments that are trying to convince me that my choices around Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size are wrong, there are some arguments that just keep coming up, so I thought I would tackle them together today.

5.  The fat person who tells me “I don’t think it’s right that you say  Weight Watchers (or Jenny Craig, or Nutrisystem or whatever) doesn’t work.  I’ve done it 6 times and it worked every time.”

Um… yeah…Ok – let’s talk about the definition of “worked”.  One of the main reasons I think the diet industry continues to be so successful is that most people lose weight in the short term but gain it back in the long term. The diet companies they have found a way to take credit for the short term results of dieting, but blame the client for the  long term results. They know that almost everyone can lose some weight in the short term on almost any diet.  They also know that their 5 year success rate is less than 5% but somehow they managed to convince people that the other 95% just didn’t doing it right, and should buy their product again.  And we do!  If 50 years of studies showed that Viagra only worked 5% of the time and that it had the OPPOSITE effect more than two-thirds of the time, would be be telling guys to keep taking it but try harder?

What if your birth control worked for the first year but then you had an almost 100% chance of getting pregnant in years 2-5 even if you keep taking it correctly?

If I paid Weight Watchers six times and I’m still fat, then unless my goal was to lose weight for a year and then gain it back (possibly plus more) six times, Weight Watchers didn’t work at all. Of course that’s exactly what the evidence told me would happen so I probably shouldn’t be surprised.

4.  You’re only doing this to justify your fatness.

Ok, dude – my body needs no justification.  It is amazing and that’s not contingent upon anybody or anything else.  How over-exaggerated must these people’s sense of self-importance be to think that we need to justify ourselves to them? That is some ego run amok right there.  We aren’t seeking the approval of anyone  – we are giving them the opportunity to see that they are operating under prejudice, bigotry and stereotypes, and to stop doing that. They have so thoroughly missed the point that I’m worried about their reasoning abilities. If you are one of these people and you are reading this, let me break it down:  We are saying “I Stand for the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for myself and others” not “I kneel for your approval”.  Where you got the idea that anybody needs to justify anything to you I don’t know, but wow are you barking up the wrong fat girl.

3.  Your body is my business because you cost me tax and healthcare dollars.

I’m not trying to justify my fatness, but it seems like these people are trying to justify their fat bigotry. As far as taxes go, unless you can whip out your itemized list of everything your tax dollars pay for, broken down into what you do and do not want to pay for,  including a list of the interventions that you are involved in for every single item that you’re not happy about, then let’s just call this what it is:  weight bullying and stereotyping plain and simple.

Healthcare is even more ridiculous since everyone from economists to the Congressional Budget Office has made it clear that fat people are barely a blip on the healthcare expense radar. Here’s a handy graph to clear things up.  Every disease that is correlated with obesity is included in the blue section.  For more details head to this post.

2.  I know eat less/exercise more works because my sister’s cousin’s babysitter’s friend’s aunt’s co-worker’s daughter’s school bus driver lost 20 pounds and kept it off for 5 years.

When his parachute refused to open and his reserve parachute got tangled, Michael Holmes fell 12,000 feet and lived.  So does that mean that anyone who tries hard enough can fall 12,000 feet and live?  Are you going to go jump out of a plane?  “Anecdotal evidence” is mostly anecdote, very little evidence. There is a vast difference between 20 pounds and 200.  There is a vast difference between a statistical anomaly and proof of concept. That’s why we have studies.  Which lead us to…

1.  I get that weight loss fails almost all of the time, but that’s no reason not to try!

That’s only if we assume that there are no negative consequences to a failed attempt. To fully evaluate the decision intelligently we need to factor in downside risk. The worst case scenario for weight loss is that it I fail, I end up heavier than I started and subject to the dangers of weight cycling (aka yo-yo dieting) which include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, depression and cardiovascular disease.  I am a fan of evidence and math, so my decision not to diet is based both on an analysis of the likelihood of success (taking into account that there isn’t a single study in which “success” in terms of weight loss was causally linked to better health) and an analysis of the risk of failure of which there is an almost 100% chance.  Yoda tells us “Do or do not, there is no try.”  When it comes to dieting, I think it’s a Do Not situation.

I hope that clears some things up.  For the record, I truly don’t mind when people legitimately ask questions about these or anything else, I do mind when people use them as if they are legitimate arguments.

In my blog last week I talked about the fact that my first marathon took way longer than I expected.  There are a bunch of reasons, I’ll talk about them more below but one of the major ones was that the Seattle hills just whooped my ass.  I simply hadn’t trained properly for the hills. Though the LA Marathon is very different, I’m determine to own the hills this time around.  Enter hill workouts, there are three different types that I’m doing:

Plain Old Hill Repeats:  Go up the hill, come down.  Repeat.  Sometimes it’s a number of times, sometimes it’s a length of time.

Mile and Back Hill Repeats: start at the base of a hill, run/walk a one mile out and back, go up the hill and come down, then turn around and go up and down the hill,  then run/walk a mile out and back. Repeat full cycle 4 times (increasing the number of times as training increases)

Screw These Hill Repeats:  (I’m sure this isn’t the official name but it’s what I call them)  Set number of hill repeats (I started with 6) Try to do each one faster than you did the last one, try really hard not to die.

“Luckily” I live by Signal Hill (pictured above) so I have easy access to a hill to go up and down. Yay!

Hill work can seriously suck but, I’m betting, not as much as not being ready for the hills sucked.

A lot of people have asked what happened to make my last marathon go on for four hours longer than I planned (I trained for 8.5 hours and it took almost 13.)  I’ve written a bit about it but gone back and forth on writing extensively – on one side there is plenty of helpful information about what not to do in the telling of it,  on the other I don’t want to appear to be “making excuses” for something which needs no excuse (despite the insistence of the haters who like to e-mail me their opinions as if I actually care what they think.) In the interest of telling the whole story, here’s what happened:

I started out over hydrated and nervously excited and so at mile 2 I seriously had to pee.  Unfortunately I was far from the only person in this condition and thus the lines at the port-a-potties were super long.  I took me over 20 minutes in line. (Of course my haters couldn’t figure out that my 25 minute bathroom break was almost all standing in line – likely because none of them has ever done a marathon –  so there are threads online with literally hundreds of posts speculating about my gastrointestinal health and bloviating about fat people’s gastrointestinal health in general.  One of the most hilarious things that has ever happened to me was discovering that there are people spending a ton of their free time discussing my poo.)  So that was 25 extra minutes.

When they re-opened the roads (two hours earlier than the signs said they were going to) they put us on a dirt trail that winds along the water, and also forced us to run up and down a steep, often muddy embankment as the trail had stops and starts. It was way slower than just walking in the middle of the road.  We also had to stop for traffic lights, and traffic where there were no lights, and go into restaurants to use the restroom after the port-o-potties were pulled off course.  Toward the end we were walking in a heavily wooded area in the dark, again – it was much slower than walking in the middle of the road in the day time.  With all of the winding and off-roading, we also walked over a mile extra.

I wasn’t ready for the conditions – I trained in Southern California usually in 70-80 degree weather.  At the marathon it was 40 degrees and I was freezing my ass off. I had never trained in wind like that (up to 20mph), and as previously mentioned, there were the hills.  I was happy with the preparation I had done, except that I should have done a better job of preparing for the conditions.

I trained entirely on my own, but walked the marathon with my Best Friend.  So instead of listening to music with nothing to break the complete boredom but obsessively checking my pace and keeping up my hydration and nutrition strategy, we talked as we walked and I didn’t keep track as I normally would. (To be perfectly clear, this is entirely on me – it was not in any way Kel’s fault).   I just didn’t stick to my plan. Also the closing down of the aid stations after mile 11 didn’t help and we were out there four hours longer than we had water or nutrition for.

So that’s it – I made tons of mistakes, they cost me and Kelrick a lot of time. I set out to complete 26.2 miles in one go, it was absolutely horrible but I did not quit and I finished 26.2 miles in one go. Success, however sucky. I’m eternally grateful to Kelrick for doing it with me and, dare I say, I’m actually kind of excited about doing it again.

Days until Marathon:  287
Current Level of Confidence:  9
Fun I’m having on a 1-10 scale:  9

Like the blog?  Consider becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.

What do member fees support?  I get hundreds of requests a day (not including hatemail) from academic to deeply personal. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (and let me just give a huge THANK YOU to my members, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Here’s more cool stuff:

Are you looking for a way to do some fun movement this summer (and get prizes for it?)  Consider a Fit Fatty Virtual Summer Vacation!

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for detail

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my selling things on this site, you are invited to check out this post

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most common questions that I get is “I want to love my body/myself, but how do I do it?”  I’m going to give some ideas but I’m really hoping that people reading this will leave their own ideas in the comments.

There are some things I want to acknowledge before I get too far into this.  First, it’s totally cool if people aren’t interested in the concept of loving their body. As always my goal is to provide options, not obligations.  I also want to be clear that we live in an environment that is absolutely toxic when it comes to loving our bodies – convincing us to hate ourselves has become incredibly profitable for industries including the diet industry, the beauty industry, plastic surgery etc. so people who are gifted at crafting persuasive messages get paid tons of money to convince us to see ourselves as flawed.  Because we are constantly bombarded with this messaging, at least from my perspective, loving ourselves is an ongoing process.

Finally, with any of these ideas your mileage may vary. I can only speak to my own experience which includes a lot of privileges – white, currently able-bodied and neurotypical, queer with passing privilege, cisgender, and good fatty privilege because of the activities that I enjoy, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some.  Each of us comes to this with our own areas of privilege and oppression, and our own histories so I think it’s about trying different stuff and seeing what works.

My own process started with four realizations.

The first was that I had no problem with the bodies of other fat women – in fact I could find beauty in every body but mine –  and that was my first inkling that, if I didn’t hate their bodies, maybe I didn’t have to hate my body either.

The second realization was that I was the only person who could decide how I felt about my body (this also ties into the privilege of neurotypicality). That was a powerful realization for me because it meant that I could change the way that I felt about myself.  Again, I didn’t have a plan, but I did have a strong believe that it was possible.

The third realization was that I treated my friends way better than I treated myself.  This led me to shift my perspective to thinking of my body as somewhat separate – as a friend and partner.  It was easy for me to make good decisions for my body when I thought of it as a friend

The fourth realization was that I had spent so many years hating my body for not looking like a stereotype of beauty that I hadn’t had even a minute’s worth of appreciation for everything that my body did for me.  That was the realization that shocked me into action.  I went home and took out a notebook and started writing down everything that I could think of that my body did for me and that I liked about my body (I got granular – breathing, blinking, heartbeat, my curly hair, my eyes that change color) it was a pretty long list.  Then I worked to notice negative thoughts I had about my body and when I noticed them I would interrupt them and replace them with gratitude for something (anything!) on the list. It took about three months but at the end of that time I had profoundly changed my relationship with my body.

At the same time I made a point of noticing something beautiful about every body that I saw.  When something about someone caught my eye because it was outside the stereotype of beauty, I focused on what was amazing about it.  When I had negative thoughts I reminded myself that I had been spoon-fed these ideas by industries that profit from my thinking them; and that if they didn’t serve me or didn’t feel authentic, then I was free to replace those thoughts with thoughts that I came up with on my own that did serve me and felt authentic.

I went on the only successful “diet” of my life – I went on a strict “no negative body talk” diet.  I stopped engaging in body snarking of any kind, and I either interrupted it or walked away when other people did it around me.  I stopped clicking on “best and worst bodies” and “who wore it better” articles, I stopped looking at magazines that had content or advertising that was likely to be body negative.  I created a nifty mantra to think immediately when I saw a commercial or ad or billboard or anything that had negative body talk – the mantra was “That’s Bullshit!”  I know, it’s really subtle – you may want to choose something more direct!

I realized how completely bombarded I had been with pictures of a single type of body and I actively sought out pictures of diverse bodies.  Some places I can recommend for this are:

Fat People of Color  (check out the great posts and help three of the members get the Detroit to present at the Allied Media Conference.)

The Adipositivity Project (NSFW unless your W is extra awesome)

Full Figure Entertainment Gallery

The Fit Fatties Forum Photo Gallery

The Visible Belly Outline Tumbler

Know others?  Put ’em in the comments!

And I had a lot of compassion for myself.  Changing thoughts and patterns that are ingrained and reinforced by the culture is really hard work.  It took time, there were often backslides and mistakes, and I found that the best ways to NOT succeed was not having compassion for myself in the learning process, not having patience, and trying to rush it along.  Patience, persistence, and belief that I would get there were the keys to my success.

As an epilogue, after I learned to love my body I faced challenges when I had injuries or illnesses so I’ll add a fifth realization – that in my experience the best way to handle this is to see it as me and my body against a problem rather than me against my body.

The bottom line for me is that my body is amazing, it does so many things for me and I believe that my body deserves nothing less than my full-throated support – whether it’s asking for an armless chair so that my butt can be comfortable, demanding good evidence-based healthcare, or standing up to societal stigma and bullying.  To me a big part of loving my body is making sure that I give my body the treatment it deserves.

So that’s me, I absolutely encourage other ideas in the comments – again, there is no “right” or “wrong” and this isn’t about convincing people that there is, it’s all about giving each other ideas and options!

UPCOMING ONLINE WORKSHOP: Making Activism A Self-Care Practice

There’s a lot of work to be done in the world. Activism can create needed change, but it can also create overwhelm, especially when we’re fighting against our own oppression. In this workshop we’ll discuss philosophies and real world strategies to turn some of that work from draining and potentially harmful, into a self-care practice that supports us and helps protect us from the effects of oppression.

Details and Registration: https://danceswithfat.org/monthly-online-workshops/ *This workshop is free for DancesWithFat members Did you find this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

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Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

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This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now. Price: $99.00 Click here to register ($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

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Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization (and I can do it remotely!) You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

At the age of 16 Taylor Townsend was the top ranked junior girls tennis player in the United States. At 15  she had beaten a player twice her age in her first pro win. She won the Australian Open juniors title in both singles and doubles, and the Wimbledon girls’ doubles title.  She was headed to the US Open when the United States Tennis Association pulled her funding and said that they wouldn’t fund any more tournaments until she lost weight because they were concerned about her fitness.  One would think the fact that she was the top ranked junior girl would be proof enough of her fitness, and maybe even help people to realize that fitness and body size are not the same thing, but not at the USTA.

Townsend’s mother paid her fees, Townsend finished in the quarter finals, and the public went into uproar.  USTA then changed their tune saying that it was all a “misunderstanding” (A misunderstanding that included not paying her fees, pulling her coaches and denying her a wild card into the main draw of the U.S. Open or its qualifying tournament.  Also, they have some ocean front property for sale in Arizona.)

Townsend’s story has a happy ending, well at this point a happy middle.  After the US Open debacle she left the USTA program and started working with former Wimbledon finalist Zina Garrison who said “The biggest thing was just getting her to understand that she’s fine. Everybody doesn’t have the same shape of our bodies. She’s very clear on that now.”  Damn skippy Zina!  Oh, and did I mention that Townsend is kicking some ass?  Because she so very much is. Of course there’s a lot I don’t know  here – I don’t know how Townsend identifies in terms of her size, nor do I  know what role racism played in the situation, and I don’t know all of her thoughts about it. I am sorry that USTA decided to politicize her body, and I’m happy that she is having such triumph in spite of being caught up in our cultural obsession with thin.

Let me also be super clear that no type of exercise, including being involved in sport, is an obligation or barometer of worthiness. My concern is about people who want to pursue athletics and are discouraged because they don’t have the “right body.”  Athletic performance is about strength, stamina, flexibility, and technique  – and  the results depend on a combination of what you’re born with and what you’re able to achieve through hard work. Things go very wrong when people get confused and think that these things, done “correctly”  will produce a certain type of body.  Townsend’s run in with this was very public but often it all happens behind the scenes.  It happens to kids when those who are interested in sports but don’t “look athletic” aren’t given time or attention from coaches.  It happens when fat athletes are encouraged to give up their sport until they look different regardless of their abilities. It happens when companies that make athletic gear use not making clothing for fat people as a point of pride and marketing strategy. It happens when fat people who dare to participate in sport are moo’d at, or have eggs thrown at us.   The lack of fat athletes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and is then used as proof that fat people can’t be athletic.

And it’s not just in athletics,  it’s part of a larger consequence of our society’s relentless obsession with thin, and the constant confusion of a stereotype of beauty with everything from health, to fitness, to talent, to morality.  A thin body is a requisite to have any other achievement recognized.  You’re the number one ranked tennis player in the country but are you thin? You’re a fantastic mother but are you thin?  You’re great at your job but are you thin?  You cured cancer but are you thin?

Nobody has any obligation to do activism around this or anything else, and I think it’s important to remember that  “If I can do it, anybody can!” is a massive lie. That said, one way to do activism is to follow our dreams, show up to do the things we want to do – whether that’s play tennis or competing in Scrabble tournaments or swimming at the local pool or whatever – unapologetically in fat bodies.

As fat people in a fatphobic society, refusing to hate ourselves is a defiant act of revolution.  So is showing up in our lives for the things we want to do – whether that’s playing tennis or competing in Scrabble tournaments or swimming at the local pool or whatever – unapologetically in fat bodies. So is refusing to bow to pressure from people who insist that owe them the body that their stereotypes and prejudices demand. The opposition we receive is proof both of the necessity, and the effectiveness of our activism.   It’s a risk of course, and not a risk that anyone is ever required to take.  For me, I believe that risk is the currency of revolution, I want a revolution, so I’ll take the risk.

Like the blog?  Consider becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.

What do member fees support?  I get hundreds of requests a day (not including hatemail) from academic to deeply personal. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (and let me just give a huge THANK YOU to my members, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Here’s more cool stuff:

Are you looking for a way to do some fun movement this summer (and get prizes for it?)  Consider a Fit Fatty Virtual Summer Vacation!

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for detail

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my selling things on this site, you are invited to check out this post

 

When Rachel Ebert heard that a company was creating amazing 3D printed leggings with designs by local artists, but not in plus sizes, she went to work. She contacted the company and they were very receptive – now they are expanding their line to include plus sizes.  They are working with Rachel and encouraging input from the plus size community.  (If you’re in Seattle you can help, can check out Rachel’s request here.)

I think that Rachel is awesome for asking, and I appreciate that the company was responsive to her request, I really do.  But I also want to know why she had to ask?  I there are so many fat people, why is making clothes for us an afterthought? I’ve been in a huge mall in LA where they did not sell a single shirt, dress, skirt, or pair of pants that fit me.  It’s not just clothes either, recently I tried to take my partner to a performance and the theater in LA said they didn’t have seats that would work for us, we couldn’t bring our own folding chair – I finally asked “what can we do so that I can give you my money and we can see this show?”  the manager responded “I’m sorry, this just isn’t something we accommodate.”

And lest you think that it’s just clothes and entertainment, in things as critical as healthcare the needs of fat people are often simply ignored.  Despite the fact that healthcare facilities are put in place to meet the needs of the community, and the community obviously includes fat people, they often build and stock them as if we don’t exist.  Basic healthcare tools that other people take for granted, like a chair that fits them, a blood pressure cuff that’s the right size etc., fat people have to stress about, pay for on our own, or do without.

Then there’s the idea that we take up “too much space” as if some people “deserve” a world that they fit into, but others don’t.  Too often fat people are treated as an inconvenience whether it’s  “Oh do fat people wear clothes?” or “How dare you expect the doctor’s office to have a chair and blood pressure cuff that fits you!” the idea is clear that being accommodated if I’m thin is a matter of course, being accommodated if I’m fat is a special request.  (And of course we’re worlds away from expecting many businesses to accommodate us without us having to ask.)

This idea of fat people being inconvenient can even be internalized.  In response to a blog about fat people on planes I received a comment for a fat reader “It is inconsiderate to inconvenience others due to our size. Please, lets not go too far demanding equality.”

This person has the right to think this but I’m not going along for that ride.  I think that if someone feels inconvenienced because another person achieves equality, then the first person was most likely benefiting from the inequality.  It does not follow that the person who was unequal should say “Sorry dude, my bad.  I’ll just go back to a life of oppression- nothing is more important than your convenience.”

It’s pretty hard to fit “Equality Now! I mean, as long as nobody is inconvenienced in any way”  on a protest sign.  Or try chanting: “What do we want?  Equality!  When do we want it? Only when it doesn’t inconvenience anyone!” It just doesn’t have that ring to it, you know?

To me this is about equal treatment, not special requests.  I am asking for exactly what other people who look different than I look already have.  And if people don’t want to give up the “conveniences” that are the end result of the stigma and oppression that fat people deal with, then as far as I’m concerned they are going to have to learn to live with disappointment.  The truth is that we’re not inconvenient, we’re inconvenienced – grossly, sometimes life-threateningly, inconvenienced –  and we have every right to ask for equal treatment.

Like the blog?  Consider becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.

What do member fees support?  I get hundreds of requests a day (not including hatemail) from academic to deeply personal. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (and let me just give a huge THANK YOU to my members, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Here’s more cool stuff:

Are you looking for a way to do some fun movement this summer (and get prizes for it?)  Consider a Fit Fatty Virtual Summer Vacation!

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for detail

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my selling things on this site, you are invited to check out this post

 

Just a friendly reminder that Sunday is marathon update day, we’ll be back to our usual Size Diversity stuff tomorrow!  A number of people have asked about my training plan for this marathon.  I have been working with experienced trainers on putting a program together to get me to the finish line in time.  As I mentioned before, this marathon is different from the last one because there’s a time limit involved.  I’ve decided on 26 weeks to build up mileage and then 16 weeks to increase speed.  Because my goal this time is more than finishing I’ll be including intervals of running and walking, speed work, more hill repeats etc.  I’ll also be cross training with swimming and cycling as well as doing Zumba and dance classes (West Coast Swing for starters) for a bit of fun and of course stuff for More Cabaret.

My training exists in an Excel spreadsheet with cells for each planned activity.  Then I get to color them in.  Green if I completed them, yellow if I completed but had to move them, and red if I didn’t complete them.  This helps motivate me by feeding directly into my desire to cross things off lists. I also keep a log of all my workouts including time, distance, miles per hour etc. so after I cross stuff off the list I get to enter and process data, another of my favorite past times.

The thing about a training program is that you want to have a lot of faith in it – that if you just do the workouts, you’ll reach your goal, I’ve heard other people call it an “insurance policy.”  The trouble with that is that it didn’t work last time. I did a 20 week program to walk a marathon, I was at my desired finished pace (8.5 hours) on every walk I took (except the 14 mile walk when I learned what hitting the wall was), up to 24 miles. Then the marathon took me almost 13 hours to complete.  I know why it happened but it still makes me a bit nervous – since this marathon has a time limit the idea that I could do all the work and then finish too late to get a medal is something I’d really rather not even contemplate.  The fact that my training last marathon so very much did not equate to performance on marathon day was not something I cared about before – since my goal was finishing and I did that – but now that there’s a time limit, the memory adds to that anxiety.

So all there is to do is to keep coloring my Excel spreadsheet with green, entering my data, and have faith in the program.

Days Until Marathon:  295
Current Level of Confidence:  9
Fun I’m having on a 1-10 scale:  9

Like the blog?  Consider becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.

What do member fees support?  I get hundreds of requests a day (not including hatemail) from academic to deeply personal. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (and let me just give a huge THANK YOU to my members, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Here’s more cool stuff:

Are you looking for a way to do some fun movement this summer (and get prizes for it?)  Consider a Fit Fatty Virtual Summer Vacation!

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for detail

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my selling things on this site, you are invited to check out this post

I’m working on a project, part of which will be a page for people to post their Size Diversity/Fat Activism successes.  This is part of a re-vamping of the Fat Activist History Project.   The revamping is geared to make the project more financially feasible as well as making it more diverse and inclusive.  I’ll be talking more about that later, right now the part of the project I am working on is a page that will tell activism success stories.

So if you have a story of Size Diversity/Fat Activism success I’d love to hear it – no success is too big or too small.  Whether you got your company to do a HAES-based fitness initiative rather than a “Biggest Loser” competition, or you got your mom to stop talking to you about your weight, or whatever your victory was, it’s important.  The idea is to create a place that we can go to see and celebrate our victories, knowing that there is always lots more work to do.  I am definitely interested in stories that are intersectional in nature, and stories from people who deal with multiple oppressions and/or are often under-represented in Size Acceptance Community (People of Color, Queer people, Trans* people, Disabled People/People with Disabilities, and anyone else who identifies as such.)  As always I am turning to my blog readers for the first round of awesome, of course I’ll be doing more reaching out soon, in the meantime please feel free to share this request, and/or share your ideas for making the project better!

You can share your stories below or e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org.  Make sure to let me know how to credit you (first and last name, first name, nickname, anonymous etc.)

Like the blog?  Consider becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.

What do member fees support?  I get hundreds of requests a day (not including hatemail) from academic to deeply personal. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (and let me just give a huge THANK YOU to my members, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Here’s more cool stuff:

Are you looking for a way to do some fun movement this summer (and get prizes for it?)  Consider a Fit Fatty Virtual Summer Vacation!

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for detail

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my selling things on this site, you are invited to check out this post

These amazing pictures of Marilyn Monroe and me were sent anonymously as a gift.  I wish I knew who to give the credit to, thank you whoever you are!  The pictures of me were taken as part of a photo shoot with Richard Sabel. EDIT:  I thought these were a gift but it turns out that they were made by haters to try to make fun of me.  And so if anyone ever asks you to define Epic Fail, you can send them here.

I. Love. These. Pictures.  I love that they show two people with very different bodies enjoying similar movement.  Of course, movement is not an obligation or a barometer of worthiness. and obviously I can’t speak for Ms. Monroe, but for me this picture is about my joy of embodiment.

I know that Marilyn Monroe is often used as an icon for the plus size movement, and there’s lots of controversy around what size she was and whether or not she’s really “plus size”.  I don’t participate in that at all.  First of all, I can’t ask her what she thinks about it.  But mostly, I don’t think that we should have to justify our existence in any way. People of all sizes have the right to exist, to love our bodies, and to live without being subjected to shame, stigma, bullying, or oppression whether Marilyn Monroe was “plus-sized” or not.

I don’t need Marilyn Monroe to be plus sized to love myself.  I don’t have to look, or move, or be anything like her to find both of our bodies amazing and both of us beautiful.  I know that there’s also a lot of controversy around the idea of beauty and the amount of power and importance it currently holds.  To me the ability to perceive beauty is a skill, so if I can’t find the beauty in someone else then I’m the problem – the issue is that I haven’t done enough work to develop my skill set, their intrinsic beauty is never be in question.  In my activism I work to destroy the social construct of beauty-as-power by suggesting that everyone is beautiful and the difference is in our choice of whether or not to recognize that.  Regardless beauty is something that we get to claim and own for ourselves if we want to.  I get that not everyone believes that or thinks about it that way and I think that’s totally cool as well.  What’s important in my life is that, when it comes to other people’s ideas of beauty or how I should look or move, in the words of Glinda the Good Witch, “you have no power here, be gone.”

Speaking of pictures with me in them, Toni Tails is creating a Body Positive Coloring Book and she asked me if she could make me a page.  Of course I agreed because, hey, coloring book!  You can check out the project here and if you’re feeling creative, you can click on the drawing to get a full-size version of her super cute drawing to color.

Like the blog?  Consider becoming a member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.

What do member fees support?  I get hundreds of requests a day (not including hatemail) from academic to deeply personal. I get paid for some of my speaking and writing (and do both on a sliding scale to keep it affordable), but a lot of the work I do isn’t paid so member support makes it possible (and let me just give a huge THANK YOU to my members, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!)   Click here for details

Here’s more cool stuff:

Are you looking for a way to do some fun movement this summer (and get prizes for it?)  Consider a Fit Fatty Virtual Summer Vacation!

My Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for detail

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

If you are uncomfortable with my selling things on this site, you are invited to check out this post