What would you say if I told you it’s not ok to be fat?
What is your first reaction?
I think a lot of people would say some of the following things:
You can’t use the word “fat.” That’s offensive.
Who are you to judge others?
We should love people no matter how much they weigh.
A person’s weight doesn’t equal their worth.
It’s ok to be fat as long as you get some exercise.
It’s ok to be fat as long as you are happy.
Any of those sound familiar?
I think I have used them all myself at one time or another, mainly to justify my own weight issues.
Nobody wants to feel like a loser. Nobody wants to feel like a failure. When we struggle with something, like our weight, we start to look for answers. Sometimes excuses can come disguised as answers. We latch on to these excuses, we find people who will also support these excuses, and we surround ourselves in lies.
Over time we start to believe our excuses.
But just because we believe something doesn’t mean it’s true.
We do all this in the name of making ourselves feel better. We reach for food to comfort ourselves. But comfort is not the same as being healthy. Those are two completely different things that we mistake for each other all too often.
The truth is being fat is a symptom. It is a very obvious sign that someone is spiritually sick. They are holding on to fear, resentment, and shame. They are seeking comfort from food instead of facing the truth. They are either addicted to food, have compulsions they can’t control or are in such a state of depression and denial they don’t see any other way to live.
Fat life is a very hopeless existence.
How do I know this? Because that was me for 40 years until I got into recovery.
Thinking that being fat was ok allowed me to get up to 505 pounds. It made me sick. I was on pharmacy store supply level of medications. I could barely walk. I was in constant pain. I was asthmatic. I was prediabetic. I was depressed. I was anxious. I was lonely.
I was dying.
It wasn’t until a couple close friends of mine told me the truth that I started to see how sick I was. The truth they told me was that they were afraid I was going to die soon. Hearing that from someone close to me hurt. It shook me to my core.
But it saved my life.
The truth is being fat is dangerous. Physically, mentally and spiritually. So now I am going to say something that used to be a very obvious statement, but it seems like nobody says it anymore…
Being fat is bad for your health.
We all know that, but we keep denying it in order to be nice. We don’t want to be mean so we say that being fat is ok. We don’t want to be looked at as a “shamer” so we go along with the crowd. We say the most ridiculous things in the name of being progressive or supportive. We find ourselves saying things like “As long as they are happy, then that’s fine with me.”
Here is a little secret that the Body Positivity Community won’t ever tell you:
There are no fat people who are happy.
Being fat means you are sick. It means your body can’t process everything you are putting into it which means it has to work harder. And that ultimately means it will crap out sooner and you will die younger. It also puts you at a much higher risk for diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
Doctors always say “puts you at a higher risk” because they can’t legally say that you WILL get one of these things. But the truth is, if you continue to beat your body up with food, it is only a matter of time before you will.
Being fat also means that you will have a lower quality of life while you are alive. You can lie to yourself all you want, but all my fellow fat people know that life is a million times harder when you are fat.
You constantly worry about your health. You constantly worry about having a heart attack or stroke. You don’t fit into airplane seats. You constantly worry about breaking furniture. You are always uncomfortable. You are scared to go anywhere because you don’t know if you will be able to be comfortable in that situation. Will they have a chair you can fit in? Will you fit into the Uber when they come to pick you up?
The truth is the Body Positivity Movement is killing people. It is telling people it is ok to be fat. It is telling parents it is ok to let your kids eat whatever they want and be fat. It is making us accept a deadly disease as normal. And that is why people are dying.
Approximately 300,000 people die due to obesity-related sickness every year.
Being fat is not ok.
Does that mean you should hate yourself if you are fat?
Of course not.
This is the line that people are so afraid to cross so we just make it ok to be fat instead of dealing with defining the line better. Self-hate will never get you anywhere. We need to be able to step back from our identity as a “fat person” and look at it objectively. We can say that we have a problem without hating ourselves. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. And ultimately we should love ourselves enough to see that we have a problem and we need help.
Does that mean we should tease fat people?
Of course not.
But what it does mean is we should love people enough to be honest with them, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Lying to a fat person and saying they look good or look healthy is not helping anyone. It is making you into a lier and it is making them feel ok about their destructive behavior.
What are we supposed to do?
Think about it. If you had a friend who was doing heroin, you wouldn’t say “Hey man, as long as you are happy do all the heroin you want!” You would be the world’s worst friend if you said that.
What you would probably say is “Hey man, I love you. And I hate to see you kill yourself. If there is anything I can do to help you, just say the word and I’m there.”
That is the exact same thing you need to say to your fat friend. You could save their life just like my friends helped save mine.
Justification is not love. Being progressive is not love. Being tolerant is not love.
Love is love.
And real love is being honest. We need to stop kidding ourselves to make ourselves feel better while sick people are dying.
P.S. I want to give a big shout out to my friend Greg. We have been talking a lot about this subject lately. His thoughts and ideas are a huge inspiration to me. I’m very thankful to have a friend who is willing to talk about real stuff. I am forever changed because of his friendship. I hope you have a friend like that in your life too.
