Fat-positive post coming up here. You’ve been warned.

So I took myself off of my diet this year because, well, I’ve been on a diet since I was 8 and it wasn’t doing me any good. Oh, and did I mention that I noticed that if I was doing what I was doing and I was skinny, it would’ve been an eating disorder? Because yep. Totally. Obsessing, eating nothing, exercising way too hard, and all for nothing. Nothing. My metabolism basically stopped. Yay.

At any rate, I stopped dieting and started thinking about being healthy and putting good food in my body that would keep it running optimally and help me to feel better. And I actually lost a little weight, not a ton, but it’s a process. And I’m working on not obsessing about weight anyway, because that’s a big part of the problem.

So last night at rehearsal, I was sitting next to this lady who tells me every year how she does this intermittent fasting thing (tried it, didn’t work), and how I should try it because it’s much easier at my age and if I don’t take care of my weight now, I’ll be sorry. I know she means well, but every year I try not to sit next to her because it just makes me crazy. But this year, well , this year she’s feeling a little, hmm...different. Yes, I’m a little smaller than I was last year, and yes, she’s a little larger than last year,  but she’s also fasting 18 hours a day. And seems kind of miserable because it’s not doing anything. So she tells me about it, and tells me her age and all of this stuff, and I’m thinking that if I’m starving myself 18 hours a day when I’m in my 70s, that is going to be extremely depressing.

So after rehearsal, I got in my car and was driving home, and I realized that labeling ourselves as “fat” is just another way we are grouping ourselves into tiny little clumps, instead of recognizing the fact that we’re all human. That’s it. And we have different characteristics, but we let “fat” take up so much space in our lives. As though it’s the be-all end-all of existence.

And it’s just not.

I’m fat, but I’m also tall, and I’m smart, and I’m strong, and I’m pretty darn healthy. I’m so many different adjectives that may or may not have a negative connotation at this point in time, that could just as well be positive in another circumstance, I have other women tell me all the time that they’d love to have my height, or my curly hair. Well, I’ve always wished I was tiny, and I think straight hair is much easier to deal with. Probably because I don’t have it.

The point is, why does that one adjective in its many forms take up so much of our personality profile? And people spend their entire lives trying to get rid of it, when they could be concentrating on being healthy (physically AND emotionally), and get better results and feel better inside.

People are dying from dieting. They’re killing themselves, and they’re hurting their own hearts, and they’re doing things to make their bodies work in ways they were never designed to work. It’s really an awful thing.

I’m not saying not to eat healthy and exercise. Bodies need good-quality fuel, and they need to move. But maybe the reasoning behind it matters. Maybe if you hate your body and starve it and do exercise in a way that makes it hurt, that’s not as helpful as you’d think.

Maybe recognize the fact that all bodies have fat, and all bodies have bone, and all bodies have muscle, and your body is a wonderful machine JUST THE WAY IT IS. Take care of it and treat it the way you would treat a mansion or the most expensive car in the world. It’s not replaceable. If you mistreat it, you can’t get a new one, and eating some nice vegetables and healthy, less processed things is a heck of a lot cheaper and easier than going to the doctor or being in the hospital.

Being kind to yourself isn’t something that comes naturally to a lot of us. Many of us feel like we need to whip these bodies into shape as a sort of punishment for not lookin the way we think we should look. But we can’t think like that. If you want to get in shape, that’s awesome! Your body will love the exercise, and you’ll probably end up a lot healthier. Just don’t do it as a punishment; you didn’t do anything wrong, and , if you did, you probably can’t exercise it away.

So, I guess the point of all of this is that I realized that maybe, after all, I’m on the right track for me. Dieting is just not a way I want to live anymore. Self-loathing is not a state of mind in which I feel like I need to spend time anymore. It’s probably going to take a while to get used to that, but I think it’s important.

Dramatic drive home, right?