Once upon a time, I wrote a book about Pagans and body image, in which I discussed why we should love our bodies regardless of what size or shape they are.  And once upon a time, I really believed that.

I’m not sure what happened.  The culture we live in is so determined to sell us a perfect body (for just $29.99 plus shipping/handling!) and the alleged perfect life that comes with it (because there’s no such thing as miserable or unhealthy “beautiful” people), that learning to love your body not only takes years, it takes constant effort.  It’s a practice like meditation or yoga, a muscle you have to build up and then maintain or it atrophies.  Somewhere along the way, I stopped using my self-esteem muscles, and they went limp faster than an insecure ex-boyfriend.

Like so many people, I decided that my life would be magically better, and I would be magically different, if I lost weight.  To that end I joined Weight Watchers and, over the course of six months, lost about 40 pounds.  During that period I became even more neurotic about food, constantly comparing Points values in my head and thinking about nothing but the next meal, the next workout, and whether I’d get that little gold star for my bookmark this week.

Needless to say as soon as I realized how miserable I was, I gained it all back plus about thirty friends.  That was two years ago, and since then I’ve been in a spiral of self-loathing that whirled faster and faster the fatter I became.  My continued failures to lose weight became a reflection of my quality as a human being – I was a failure, a screwup, a lazy tub of lard, and so forth.

I made the mistake that those poor bastards on The Biggest Loser are basically abused into making:  believing that losing weight would give me self-esteem, and that my self-esteem would survive if the weight loss didn’t, which, statistically speaking, it won’t.  I’d feel elated when I lost, and then the minute the scale crept back up, I’d plummet, because that happiness was fixed on something external instead of arising from the cultivation of joy and love within.

The ironic thing is that this shame, which the media would like you to believe is necessary to make fat people “do something about it,” had the opposite effect on me.  I hated myself, and that drove me to make unhealthy decisions about food and exercise because I didn’t believe I deserved better than ill health and early death from diabetes/heart disease/whatever.  That made me gain even more weight, which made me hate myself more.

Perhaps it’s because my meds are finally working, or perhaps it’s because I finally looked at my life and the people around me and realized how absurd my obsession with fat had become, but recently my brain kind of turned itself inside out and I realized:  I can’t do this anymore.

The realization came when I was considering what I wanted to blog about next:  the idea that if you want to make positive changes in your health, you should only take up habits that you can see yourself keeping for the rest of your life.  Anything else is going to either make you crazy and send you into a shame cycle or simply fail, because an unsustainable life eventually collapses.  As I was considering this, I realized that the reason all my attempts at improved health have failed is because they were coming from a place of self-loathing that is as unsustainable as Big Oil.

I have a disordered relationship with food.  That much I’ve known for years.  But it wasn’t until I started actively trying to lose weight that that relationship became genuinely abusive.  Ever since then things have gotten worse.  All I think about is how much I hate being fat.  How many calories I’ve eaten.  How impossible the idea of being healthy is because of how fat I am.  I’m constantly surrounded with diet talk and fat shame and food guilt, just by virtue of living in America, but I chose at some point to internalize all of it…and it’s killing me.

Funnily enough, as my weight has increased, the actual indicators of health for my body have stayed blissfully fine.  If being obese was such a death sentence for me, then over the years as my weight has crept up, so should have numbers like blood pressure, blood sugar, liver/kidney function, cholesterol, et cetera.  This has not happened – not even a little bit in fourteen years.  What has happened is that I’ve become totally pathological about eating and exercise, am constantly stressed about my body, and have let the size of my ass dictate how happy I believe life could be.

Yes, I’m fat.  Obese.  Okay, fine.  Yes, my body weight has increased the pull on my bones and joints and causes me pain.  Yes, I have a hard time moving and getting around compared to how I used to.  There’s no guarantee that losing 150 pounds would magically make me healthy – when I was 40 pounds lighter I was eating absolute crap, just fewer calories of it, and my stress levels were through the roof – but I acknowledge that I passed the comfortable range of how fat I could be at my current level of strength a while ago.  I have always believed, and continue to insist, that each person has a range of size that is healthy for that individual, and that range has nothing to do with antiquated height/weight charts or BMI, but has everything to do with that person treating her body well and eating, moving, and breathing in ways that promote wellness for that person.  That’s why there are thin people who are terribly unhealthy, and fat people who are active and vital – it’s about balance and mindfulness, and one size does not fit all.

I have to get off the Fat Hate Train.  It’s speeding toward a cliff.

I am a bit embarrassed that it took me this long to realize it given my history as an author.  But it just goes to show you that anyone can fall into a body image trap.  I said in The Body Sacred that I wasn’t an expert and I wasn’t “over it,” because, as I said, self-love in this world is a continual practice, not a one-time epiphany.  At the time I knew this to be true, but now, I understand it in a way I didn’t before.

I’m tired of being ashamed and feeling guilty for what I eat (ice cream) or don’t eat (leafy greens).  If I’m going to live healthfully in my body and enjoy my life I have to relearn how to act based on the desire to feel better and encourage joy, not to force myself to shrink until my problems disappear.  Weight loss may be a result of self-acceptance and a turn toward wellness, but I can’t live my life under the tyranny of the scale.  It’s made me unhappier and, ironically, smaller as a person even though my physical size has increased.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on letting go – another thing I have a very problematic relationship with – and I understand now that I have to let go of the expectation that taking care of my body will lead to thinness which will lead to happiness.  I have to seek out happiness here, now, in this body.  Wearing smaller-sized jeans won’t do me the least bit of good if I hate myself.  It’ll just give me something else about myself to hate if I eat pie and gain a pound.  Life is too fucking short to live that way.

It’s also too short not to eat pie.

More to come.

I have no idea where this image came from, but it's awesome.

I’ve been on vacation for the last week – well, I’ve been off my day job working on my second novel – but now that life is back into its semblance of routine posts should be picking up a bit around here.

I don’t have any real content for you today but I’ve read some thought-provoking articles lately on the subjects of fat, health at any size, nutrition, and wearing a bathing suit in public that I wanted to share.

Submitted for your perusal:

How Not to Obsess About Looking Fat in a Swimsuit and F-ing Enjoy Yourself

as well as

The Real Biggest Loser, from Dances With Fat.  Ragen is the founder of the Body Positive Dance Company here in Austin and has a lot of great things to say about body-positive plus sized living.

Adipositivity is a site featuring gorgeous photography of plus-sized women.

Getting Good at Eating by Michelle at Fat Nutritionist

An entertaining article on Jamie Oliver’s well-meaning but ultimately pretty ridiculous attempt at changing the way fat people eat:  Save Me From Myself, Skinny Jesus Chef!

Truth, Assumptions, & Everything Inbetween by Golda at Body Love Wellness.

And last,

Fatties Have Sex With The Lights On Too; Your Naked Flesh Will Not Scare People Away from The Rotund.

Be sure, if you enjoy the articles, to comment to the authors themselves.  We bloggers thrive on happy comments.

(And also, just FYI, I don’t necessarily agree 100% with everything in every link; I just found each article interesting, and they resonated with me for one reason or another.)

Thank you, body.

Thank you for being strong enough to hold yourself together this long despite the way I’ve treated you.

Thank you heart that keeps beating even through an arrhythmia.

Thank you, muscles that have held me up at every size and helped walk me through Austin, Houston, Dallas, Portland, Denver, Nuevo Laredo, El Campo, and a dozen others.

Thank you, eyes, for your 20/20 vision; for showing me the redwood forest, the beach, the mountains through an airplane window, the words of hundreds of books and websites, leaves on trees, and everything.

Thank you ears for bringing me music and words.

Thank you hands—my writing moves through you, and with pretty amazing speed, especially considering you have essential tremors and carpal tunnel to contend with.

Thank you, blood, for your incredible ability to maintain balance.

Thank you, feet, for dancing, and for looking cute with painted toenails.

Thank you, tongue, for tasting the myriad flavors and textures of food that Mother Nature has gifted us with.

Thank you, spine, for working against gravity to keep me up.

Thank you, skin, for keeping it all together, and for being gorgeous.

Thank you, body.

I am grateful that aside from the obvious structural problems of being overweight, my body has managed to stay pretty healthy over the years.  I was shocked recently by my latest bloodwork—everything, from blood sugar to cholesterol to thyroid, was spot-on normal.  Nurses often seem surprised at how fabulous my blood pressure is after they’ve written down my weight.  And even though my heartbeat is irregular at times, a full run of tests several years ago showed my heart was in excellent shape.

I realize that an unhealthy lifestyle virtually guarantees that, eventually, these factors will change and could easily wind up with a host of lifestyle-based diseases, but still, you have to admit that it’s not a bad baseline to start from.  I can walk, I can bend, I can attend to basic hygiene, I can clean house.  I have a bad back, true, and my knees have been blown for years, but it could be so, so much worse.

It’s so easy to forget that for every thing that goes wrong with our bodies, a thousand things are going right, otherwise we’d be dead.  Our blood pumps, our neurons fire, our lungs inflate and deflate.

I’ve done a lot of wrong to my body.  We certainly have our issues.  But she’s the only one I get this time around, and I admire her tenacity, her dogged determination to stay alive no matter how whacked out my brain chemistry gets or how hard I try, through neglect and unhealthy choices, to do her in.

I’ve done a lot of reading about obesity and people’s relationships with food, and while facts and figures are well and good, it’s the personal stories that get to me.   Seeing how desperately sick we become, and how insane we get when it comes to eating, can be horrifying, but it also reminds me that I have a lot of those same issues but I have somehow avoided the more drastic consequences others have fallen prey to.  I’ve never been anorexic or bulimic; I’ve never lost a limb to amputation or lost my vision due to diabetes; I’ve never had to buy an extra seat on a plane.   I suffer due to my weight, but I am not disabled or seriously ill.

Not to mention, I have the incredible good fortune to live in a country where I’m far more likely to have way too much food than too little; and I have the luxury of choice when it comes to what, how much, and when to eat.  I have the freedom to consider the welfare of animals and the environment in my food choices instead of being forced to eat whatever I can find or kill.  And if something goes wrong with my body, I am currently insured and can go to a doctor.

(I won’t get into the overall state of American health care, but I know that I, as an individual in my present circumstances, am lucky enough to have access to care, and though I rant and rave about the cost of my prescriptions, at least I can afford to have them filled.)

So…thank you, body, for sticking with me all this time.  It’s going to take a while, maybe years, but I’m going to do better by you, and we’ll find our way to a healthier place together.  If you don’t give up on me, I won’t give up on you.  Deal?

Deal.

Thanks, I grew them myself.

This post will be first in a series about weight, health, spirituality, and food issues, which I am labeling after the title of my second book.  They’re not excerpts from that book, more like posts about how my views have changed, what my body life is like now, and what I am doing, thinking, and working on surrounding those issues that drove me to write The Body Sacred in the first place.

This will be the only time you get to see me in my undies, though, so enjoy it.

“Hello, my name is Dianne Sylvan, and I am morbidly obese.”

At time of writing I weigh 310 pounds and my BMI is something like 48. I don’t really trust either of those numbers as indicators of health–I wrote an entire book on the diet industry, spirituality, and body image, and I still believe at least 95% of every word I wrote.

The thing is, when I wrote that particular book, I was about 80 pounds lighter than I am now. And believe me when I tell you it’s a whole different world for me six years later.

I’ve been belittled, ignored, and openly mocked for my weight since I was in my early 20s and only topped out at about 220 pounds. Now, I find that I’m basically ignored, until my back is turned, whereupon I get eyerolls that people think I don’t catch in my peripheral vision. When I tell people I’m a vegetarian they look at me as if I’m a liar, and when I say that I dance, they almost have to stop themselves from saying, “Yeah, right.”

Here’s something I’d like all smaller people to remember, and not just for my sake.

When you see a morbidly obese person at the grocery store on her motorized cart trying to buy food, or get out of a car, or fit into a movie seat, sure, you see how hard she’s fighting to do normal things. Sure, you think of the misery, and the potential for disease and the incredibly hard wear she’s putting on her joints. Maybe you feel scorn, maybe pity. Maybe she reminds you of the people in your family–and I’d bet even money someone in your family qualifies–who have dealt with diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, all of which are easily treated, if not reversed, by a switch to a plant-based diet. Or maybe you think she’s lazy and nasty.

But don’t for one second, ever, ever assume that she’s not aware of it too.

There’s never any reason to give a stranger “tough love” about her health. There’s no reason at all to think that the woman you’re about to belittle for being too fat to go through a door without turning sideways is completely ignorant of the risks and pain. There’s no need to mock her or tell her she needs to lose weight, because she lives in America, for fuck’s sake. She already knows.

Have you ever met an American who had never, ever heard about Jesus Christ? Probably not, despite what the streetcorner evangelists cry. And you’ve never met anyone who hasn’t heard the Skinny Gospel either.It’s on every channel, in every magazine, all over the internet, on billboards, in grocery stores, doctor’s offices, the sides of buses, the radio.

We’ve all heard it. And chances are, we’ve all been trying.

For most of us, being obese comes with a high price tag. We’re uncomfortable, we’re hot and sweaty, we’re in pain, we have to plan our day based on limited mobility and trying to avoid huge crowds of assholes–and diet book authors–who think it’s all right to belittle someone and make them feel like a huge fat blob of worthlessness…for the sake of their health. You know, because they care so much about our health.   At no point are we ever not aware of how fat we are. We know, okay?

No matter how many books it sells for you, no matter how justified you may feel, repeat after me: YOU CANNOT HATE SOMEONE FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.

When you scorn the fat girl on the bus, you don’t know anything about the circumstances that led to her size. She might have already lost 200 pounds by nearly killing herself with anorexia. She might have gained the weight because she was gang raped and part of her coping mechanism was to insulate herself against the rage of men with a layer of fat. She might have been in therapy for years trying to resolve that. She might have just started the life changes that are going to help her achieve good health–and that health might not include being thin. She might have started out at 400 pounds, where even a year later of intense mindfulness training, exercise, and nutrition counseling she’s only gotten down to 325 because losing it slowly is healthier and more sustainable. She might have had bariatric surgery and now has to worry about malnutrition, blood clots, scar tissue, skin fold removal, and possible complications up to and including death. And she might be working her ass off, literally, day after day, overcoming psychological and social stigmas that amount to being considered worthless and disgusting simply because she has that fat ass.

So shut. The fuck. Up.

Leave us alone. If you’re our friends and you’re worried, say something, and talk about it rationally. Some of us might be really defensive, but it’s probably because of people who do what I was just talking about. But still, chances are, we know. We’ve tried. We’re still trying. But there’s so much more to it than calories in/calories out, despite what all the Weight Watchers/Jenny Craig/Nutri System “scientists” claim. If you’re not addressing the emotional issues that cause you to reach for food as a way to cope with life, then nothing is ever going to work: not Points, not premade meals laden with chemicals, not drugs, not gastric bypass. They’re all bandages for the wound that is still gaping year after year: a wounded and hurting spirit.

It all seems so straightforward to people who aren’t living with actual obesity. Calories in, calories out. But until you’ve been in this body with its constant back pain and aching knees, the inability to wear normal clothes, the fear of disease looming even after blood chemistry comes back 100% normal, and the whole world looking at you like some kind of fatty pariah, the reality of it is safe to laugh at from the other side of the TV screen or the other side of the restaurant.

Don’t assume you know what I’ve been through. Don’t assume you know what I eat. Don’t assume you know anything about my issues or what attempts I’ve made not to be what you consider a sexless, heartless object who is apparently also deaf.

I’ve noticed that people who are cruel to the obese also tend to use the same kind of tone and language when talking about farm animals, as if we’re only as smart as a hog because we look so much like a hog. That makes it okay to be cruel to a woman who reminds you of an animal it’s okay to be cruel to because hey, it’s not as if it’s a real person. All you can see is fat. When you try to give “advice” to someone from that mindset, you don’t really care about helping them. You care about assuaging your own fear that one day you’ll be in the same shape and everyone will hate you too.

I long maintained that being fat was not the death sentence that pharmaceutical company-funded studies wanted you to believe. And to a large degree I still believe that. I believe that it’s possible to be healthy at a wide range of sizes as long as you’re active and eat a healthy diet of whole foods, minimizing animal fats and proteins and emphasizing plants.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think there are limits. Each person has a sort of healthy zone of size, diet, and activity in which they function optimally without having to do anything extraordinary to maintain that health. Now, for athletes that might be different, since training and so forth might involve a different diet and workout regimen for however long the event goes on, but for most people, “wellness” is a green area (sounds healthier than “grey area”) in which you maintain a range of weights for your height based on your activity level, all fueled by the optimal eating habits for your body, not anyone else’s, not what some chart says, not what some celebrity says. You, and you alone, are in control of your overall health, and only you can decide what feeling healthy is. For you it might look very different from me. And that’s okay.

We’ve had it drilled into our heads that health means uniformity of size, muscle mass, and calories in/out, but that’s just not true, and to try and force ourselves to conform to someone else’s body is not only placing unfair pressure on them, but on ourselves, because we’re trying to do away with what makes us unique and beautiful…to become someone else. A copy of the original is never as beautiful. To paraphrase Margaret Cho, don’t fail as someone else. Succeed as yourself.

No, I am neither satisfied with nor comfortable with my obesity. I am taking steps to address it, but it takes time. Any solution for this condition that has a hope of succeeding over the long term is going to require two things: time, and change from the ground up. It’s not enough just to change what you eat or how often you jog. If you don’t address the underlying issues that got you to obesity in the first place, you’re going to end up right back where you are as soon as your enthusiasm fails, because those old patterns and beliefs are still in place waiting for a chance to whisper in your ear that you’re not worth it, that you can’t succeed, that you’re a loser who’s never been able to lose weight before…why should you now?

It’s not impossible.  But the world we live in does its damnedest to make it seem impossible.  If all you have to do is eat a healthy plant-based diet and get moderate exercise, then what would the weight management centers, bariatric surgeons, pharmaceutical companies, “diet” cola makers, “fat free” snack makers, “Biggest Loser” shows complete with DVD tie-ins, books, weight-loss bars and shakes, clothing, supplements, and branded water bottles and pedometers do to make money?  What about all those “healthy” fast food salads which end up having more calories and fat than a Big Mac?  If food were not the enemy, and our bodies not an ongoing war, then what about those desserts that claim “you deserve indulgence,” or the countless plastic surgery centers who claim getting pounds sucked out of your thighs is as easy as a manicure, or the TV personalities who sell exercise DVDs as well as their own personal line of weight loss bars and pills?

It’s so hard to pull back the bullshit curtain and see what’s underneath:  it’s just you and your body and a world full of food.  And I’m sure you, like me, have treated your body like a war zone for most of your life, and developed such a dysfunctional relationship with food and your flesh that it could be its own episode of Jerry Springer.

And while I don’t have any solid answers on how to make it all better, I can tell you with absolute conviction what can’t:  hatred.

Much of what we do to our bodies is violence.  We restrict and starve.  We binge until our stomachs hurt.  We go under the knife and have foreign objects implanted in our abdominal cavities.  We have fat sucked out.  We run and run and run on the treadmill until every muscle tears and we cry.  We eat processed, unsatisfying, chemical-laden food aiming for a certain number of calories or carbs without regard for taste or joy.  And we stand in front of the mirror screaming, “Why aren’t you thinner?  Why can’t you be beautiful?” as if we were at basic training in our own personal hell.

All of this in the name of health and beauty.

The basic choice for all of us is this:  Do I want to totally abnegate my physical form, gradually hacking parts off and starving it down and making it smaller and smaller until I have no body at all, living only in my head because I’m afraid to face the years of pain I’ve stored in my flesh?  Or do I want to live fully in this body, the only one I get this time around, and learn to live in healthful ways that make my heart and body both feel loved, cherished, and strong?  One choice is essentially death.  The other is life.  Live, or die: that’s what it comes down to in the end.

You can’t make that choice for anyone else and you can’t force it on them.  But when someone’s sword is pointed at her own throat, you can’t disarm them–it’s up to them to lay that sword down.

Meanwhile, try laying down your own…as I’ll try to lay down mine.