Let's take the weekend off.

So, I think I've mentioned that I've been doing some new reading lately. I like to read "myth-busting" books, that break apart current cultural myths, and the current reading I'm doing falls right in this category. Namely, I'm reading Freakonomics and also The Diet Myth. Most relevant to this site, and the weight and health issues I've mostly focused on here, is of course, The Diet Myth.

Reading The Diet Myth has been transforming my thinking profoundly. In the book, Campos reveals how there are actually huge disagreements within the medicine and scientific communities that actually study weight and its effect on health. In particular, there is enormous disagreement over whether what is now defined as "overweight" and "obese" (recent definitions, mind you) actually have a negative health impact. To the contrary, the data cited by all the so-called experts in support of their theorem - that fat is unhealthy - actually seems to reveal the exact opposite conclusion - that is, that having what is now called "excess" weight is actually much healthier for you. And, indeed, being even 5 pounds "underweight" carries a much higher mortality rate than being, say, 75 pounds "overweight". And I am using quotation marks around these terms very, very intentionally, since of course these are arbitrary definitions.

Reading the many screaming media headlines about the so-called "obesity epidemic", you would never, never know or even suspect that such a disagreement existed, among the people most familiar with the data and the studies. You'd never suspect it!

What Campos points out is, that except at the extremes of weight, the categorization of certain weight as being "excess" is really, at bottom, a cosmetic one. It is only about how you look, and reflects the current cultural ideal of thinness being synonymous with virtue. Yet this purely cosmetic, aesthetic preference has been erroneously medicalized; people who find fat disgusting have propped that up, or hidden from that, with so-called concerns for fat people's health.

This is all just to give some idea of the concepts that I am mulling over right now, and how profoundly it is affecting how I view myself, food, my body, and weight loss attempts.

Campos points out that the number one health risk is smoking, that smoking alone will affect your mortality likelihood more than any other factor by far. After this, addictive use of substances is the most harmful thing you can do. Then, an active lifestyle is very important in keeping your body healthy, as is eating foods that give your body nutrition. Weight has little to nothing to do with it, except at the extremes. And, as Campos puts it, recognizing that thinner people seem to have slightly lower health risks, for some conditions (though heavier people have lower health risks for other conditions), and trying to attain those benefits by becoming thinner, is much like recognizing that bald men have higher health risks, and so giving them all hair implants to avoid those risks. That is, treating weight as its own problem is treating a symptom, at best. And if it is indeed a symptom, it is a symptom only of lack of physical activity and poor quality food. (And, of course, many people who eat poorly and are sedentary are naturally thin, but bear the exact same health risks as those who are heavier!) Changing the bad health habits may or may not lead to weight loss, but they will most definitely lead to increased health.

So this is the thumbnail sketch of where I am right now. It was a profound shock for me to realize that while I was hating my body at 180 pounds, my body was actually in a place of optimum health. Can you imagine? The body I feared and hated and loathed, was actually a well-equalized body. It just didn't match the thin ideal I had been conditioned to see as "better". Losing and gaining weight since then, however, has itself created health risks for me! Had I only known to appreciate my body, a little soft though it may have been, I would have never been lured into health-harmful behaviors! What a shock to think that what I loathed, and feared, and just knew wasn't good enough, was actually quite good for health and longevity, in large part because I ate pretty well and was really quite active then.

It was the fear and loathing of the fat that gave power to the food! It was the fear and loathing of fat that made exercise seem like a chore! It was the fear and loathing of an actually very healthful amount of fat that hid me from myself for many, many years. I have hated myself, people. Literally hated myself, simply because of my body size.

And now, that I have had my eyes opened a little bit, and seen that these so-called concerns for your health, which is really just a barely nicer way to say, "You're too fat!" Well, they are all lies. And I feel so relieved, and empowered. I have no reason to hate myself anymore! I'm not "deficient" after all! I'm fine they way I am. My body deserves care, not hatred. It deserves quality food, with nutrients in it, and regular exercise to keep things humming smoothly. Hating naturally occurring curves, though, only gets in the way of these things. If you hate your body, how could you possibly truly want to do right by it?

And now, I see that hatred of oneself and one's body practically leap off the screen at me in the different weight loss blogs I read. And so many bloggers recognize, they know they're hating themselves! Yet, they're so powerless to stop. I know, I've been there, I've spent years on that path, that path that simply acquiesces to the message that, if you have any "extra" flesh, you are disgusting. When you take a step back and think about that, it's really quite amazing. And more than a little disturbing.

So please, my fellow body-conscious folks, let's take the weekend off from looking at our bodies with angry, jealous eyes. I say as a budding artist, the chubby bodies, the "imperfect" faces, are actually so much more interesting to draw or paint! And, let's just try to quit seeing that junk food as some sort of treat, when it's really a trick: it looks like food, you eat it like food, but if you consider food as putting nutrition into your body, you realize that crap is not truly "food" at all. Your body deserves better! YOU deserve better! Your body deserves your love, and your care. Your body is beautiful, it serves you well, and what you see as flaws are really the things that make it interesting. Who the hell wants to spend their life simply conforming?? Give some love and respect to yourself and your body this weekend. Take the weekend off from finding fault with yourself and your body. Please!