Lie #5: Fat is the worst possible thing you can ever be.

I've struggled with my weight my entire life.  Well, since around fourth or fifth grade we'll say.  About the time that I began steroids for my asthma.  Which made me gain weight.  And then I learned to self-medicate the discouragement I felt for being "fat" with more food.  And then kids are bullies, so then I ate more food to soothe those wounds... 

And then I lost the weight in high school.  And then there was mono my freshman year and I ballooned up again.  And then I lost the weight again in college.  And then there was my divorce and working three jobs while I was in grad school.  And then I lost weight yet again, even became a certified fitness instructor... and then this depression happened.  To be honest, I still have to fight the temptation to self-medicate using food.

As a society, we have certain assumptions about people we judge as overweight.  People tend to assume they eat all day with little to no exercise, and furthermore, that they're lazy and sloppy too.  But most people I know who would self-classify as "thick" are anything BUT those things.  They're active and hard-working.  They're self-disciplined and ambitious.  It's become really clear to me all the other factors involved in weight management since I've been learning to do intermittent fasting and reading The Obesity Code.  There may be some choice involved, but I dare say none of us has really chosen to be fat. 

One of my greatest obstacles to my self image (and associated feelings about my weight) in the past two years has been realizing that sometimes men just cannot see past the exterior, especially when their influences encourage them to get "stuck" in that shallow mode.  There are, and always have been, people who are judgmental and hurtful, short-sighted and critical.  I suppose people can change (and I don't mean this to sound like a "man-bashing" post), but I don't know if we're truly teaching our young men to properly manage their "visual stimulation". In other words, yes, there are beautiful people all around, and although I don't understand it, apparently that's very distracting to men... but society, culture, Hollywood, and pornography have supplied for us (for them) a very shallow lens of what it means to be beautiful and attractive.  And if you're fat, you can apparently forget it.  We women are often judged for our weight instead of our fitness and health, for the size of our jeans instead of the size of our hearts.  But as I once read, "her body won't raise your children.  Let's talk about her heart and outstanding work ethic," or something to that effect.  Even scripture warns us that beauty is fleeting (Prov. 31:30), but are we teaching our young men (and our young women) to see past that exterior?  Because some of the most attractive people I've ever seen seem to have terribly ugly souls.  And what about the couple who falls more and more in love and attracted to one another through the years?  It's not because they've become more beautiful by the world's standards.  

By these worldly standards, I quickly came to think that everything would be fine in my life if I were just thin, or thinner.  (Or apparently the "right" kind of fat... did you know there was a "right" kind of fat and a "wrong" kind?  Yeah, me neither until someone “enlightened” me.)  I wouldn't find a husband if I wasn't thin.  I couldn't enjoy my body and feel beautiful and sexy if I wasn't thin.  I couldn't celebrate my body's movement and God's wonderful creation if I wasn't thin.  This external standard for beauty began to make me crazy and obsessed.  It made me jealous of every woman around me.  It also turned me into the very thing that I hated so much in other people because I was constantly comparing myself to see if I was better/fitter/prettier/thinner/right-kind-of-fatter than the woman(women) around me.  I was no better than the men I would become so frustrated with for their double standards.  I too began to experience a double standard, especially in my professed values and what I was feeling in my heart and head.  I worked myself into a state of physical collapse - near breakdown - trying to achieve this "ideal" body.  And the end result?  I'm now even further away from that ideal than I was when I began because of the toll it took on my mental and physical health.

One of the real kickers is that even now I see women who I think are about my size or shape (one plus-size clothing model in particular comes to mind), and I can find them stunning, in spite of or even because of their bellies!  And then I look in the mirror and am disgusted with what I see.  I perceive her (the model’s) "fatness" as beautiful and radiant, and I perceive my own as "lazy, sloppy, etc."... all those things I mentioned earlier.  It's also confusing because around about the size I was 20 pounds ago (one dress size down) or so, I remember being cat-called on one of my first dates with my now-husband (not by him, but by some random guy that passed by us).  Yet, I've since been audibly made fun of (also by other people, not my husband) for my weight/size as I've/we’ve been out in public.  Do we really not have anything better else to do than to tear women down for their appearances?  Guess what... if you're not dating or married to her, your opinion shouldn't count!  Case closed, shut up... boy, bye!  

And yet, that societal disapproval hurts so badly.  I watched this video below and cried because I related to this brokenhearted woman.  While I'm not her size, should it matter?  Why are we this cruel to people?  I read something else the other day that I'll post below... if it can't be fixed in 10 seconds, keep your mouth SHUT! 

So now I am fighting the battle to find delight in my own body.  To know that women of all shapes and sizes can be and are beautiful; that "women" includes ME; and that my beauty isn't tied to my weight.  Perhaps most importantly, I'm trying to learn to believe my husband when he tells me I'm beautiful or attractive (or any other like-themed adjective).  In order to believe him though, I have to believe it myself.  I have to learn to treat my body like it belongs to someone I love... and that someone is ME!  There are SO many worse things that I could be than fat.  And it's also okay that I'm still learning to accept that.