Are you millimeters from crossing over to fat acceptance after years of struggling to lose weight?
Ready to take medical advice from non-doctors?
If you spend even 10 minutes on certain corners of TikTok or Instagram, you’ll hear it loud and clear:
- You’re perfect as you are.
- You don’t need to lose weight.
- Doctors are fatphobic; ignore them.
Self-Love Matters
But there’s a difference between accepting yourself and being talked out of caring for your health by strangers with zero medical training.
Self-care is NOT food freedom and giving up on intentional weight loss if you’re obese.
The term “self-care” comes up a lot in the fat acceptance community.
The self-harm of overconsumption of unhealthy foods is as far from good self-care as is smoking and heavy drinking. Don’t let buzzwords mess with your critical thinking skills.
Very few of the influencers who keep pumping out the message that “you don’t have to shrink yourself” are actual medical doctors.
A handful here and there may be dieticians or in the nursing field.
But overall, this demographic of influencers does not practice medicine, nor are they trained in eating disorders or metabolic disease.
They just have a ring light, a platform and opinions that sound comforting in the moment.
What feels great to hear?
That you don’t need to change at all; that after years of struggling to lose weight, that you no longer need to shrink yourself.
It’s interesting that they use the word “shrink.” It’s their attempt to disconnect your weight loss efforts – and their past fails – from medicine.
So they use a word that medical professionals never use in the realm of body weight: shrink.
A doctor never says, “You need to shrink.”
Kindergarten children might use this word to describe weight loss in their formerly obese mother.
But when adult influencers throw it around? Again, it’s their attempt to water down the very serious medical issue of obesity and make physicians and nurses look like fatphobic frauds.
The fat acceptance community can sound very inviting to someone who’s been judged way too often for their large size or stared at in public.
(By the way, one of the places where a fat individual will get the least amount of staring is at a gym, contrary to myth. Perhaps the most likely place they’ll get stared at is at an all-you-can-eat buffet or at the grocery store checkout. Gyms are sanctuaries for overweight people who feel judged.)
Safe. Familiar. Even Addicting
Loving your body doesn’t have to mean keeping it exactly the same forever or resigning to the delusion that you were meant to be fat.
Striving for a healthier, fitter, faster and stronger version of yourself is not betrayal. It’s growth.
Striving for a healthier, fitter, faster and stronger version of yourself is not betrayal. It’s growth.
Many influencers believe that ALL women who want to lose weight are seeking a skinny body.
And actually, some women really do want a thin body, even though they’re not overweight to begin with.
In fact, it seems that the women who want a thin body usually aren’t overweight, or if they are, it’s by 10 or 20 pounds.
But when I was a personal trainer, absolutely none of my obese clients named thinness as a goal.
Many said they wanted to get down to a size 14, or that “I’d be happy at a size 12.”
Some gave the number of pounds they wanted to lose, rather than a clothing size, and that number was never big enough to make them skinny.
For example, a 250 pound client would tell me she wanted to lose 80 pounds.
Or, one might’ve said, “I’d like to get down to 165 or so.”
This idea that the typical moderately obese or morbidly obese woman wants to shrink down to a size 4 is ludicrous.
But many fat acceptance influencers have framed their platform around this delusion.
Many heavy women aren’t looking for thinness; they just want improved mobility, energy, breath, less pain, better sleep and more verve to their body.
They want to know they can bolt after a young child who gets away from them at a crowded amusement park.
It’s okay to want change.
It’s okay to crave ease in your joints and stamina walking up stairs.
It’s perfectly fine to assert: “I deserve better than constantly feeling uncomfortable in my own body.”
It’s been said that your body is not a vessel that you step into in the morning and out of at bedtime.
This comes in response to fat acceptance influencers saying, “I live in a large body” — which is actually a sign of disconnect. You are your body; it’s not a vessel you get in and out of.
This disconnect indicates that deep down, they know the truth – and it hurts. They mask it with their social media platforms.
On the other hand, your body is like a vessel, in that it gets you from point A to point B. It moves you as your brain commands it to move. So in that sense, it is a vessel; it’s just that you don’t step in and out of it.
Being that it’s a vessel in that sense, why wouldn’t you want it to be the most efficient-operating vessel possible?
Science, Not Influencers
You deserve guidance rooted in science and proven medicine, not influencers telling you doctors are evil while selling “body positive” merchandise such as tee shirts that say “Bodies Change,” “Built Like a Goddess” (with an image of the very plump ancient Venus of Willendorf statue), and “All Bodies Are Good Bodies.”
Who knows your health? Not influencers. Not me (other than my knowledge of medical facts in that obesity rivals smoking as a leading cause of preventable premature death and chronic disease).
The person to ask about your current state of health and what your risks are for future chronic illness is your primary care physician; that’s where it all begins.
Don’t Let FA Influencers Take Away Your Hope
- You’re allowed goals.
- You’re allowed hope.
- You’re allowed to shrink (kindergarten term) – you’re permitted to lose excess body fat to improve your odds of a long healthy life and to definitely bring on short-term goals of more stamina, better mobility and less joint pain.
You are not weak for wanting change.
You are not a traitor to the broader body positivity movement for choosing health and fitness.
Do not cross that threshold into fat acceptance. Come back to reality; don’t escape into delusion.
