Fatness isn't inherently bad. 

       I felt like I needed to say this, especially after all I've learned losing weight this last year. It's been a long, difficult journey that's been peppered with self-loathing and dealing with my own internal biases. I've recently discovered fat activism and it's changed my perspective on weight loss as well as health. There's a lot to unpack there, but I'll come back to it.

       In early 2018, I had a conversation with one of my doctors about my chronic pain condition, Fibromyalgia. She suggested that if I simply lost weight, I'd feel less pain. But I knew that wasn't right. Two years prior to that conversation, I weighed 70lbs less and was in the worst pain of my life. It was then that I was diagnosed. The extra weight had piled on from medications and being housebound because of the condition.  Still, this doctor insisted it would work and refused me other care options until I lost weight.

       I was enraged. Logically, her argument didn't make sense to me because I knew what my pain felt like at that lower weight. The fact that she didn't believe I knew my own body was so infuriating that I decided to do something about it. I would do as she asked, I would play by the medical system's rules, only so I could prove a point and finally be taken seriously for my pain.

       Losing weight was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Calorie counting is not easy, even though I made it seem that way in some of my earlier posts. I struggled, I cried, and I did feel like I was starving myself regularly. But, after 6 months of dieting, I lost a significant amount of weight. Guess what happened? My pain increased tenfold, just like I knew it would.

       That terrible chat with that biased doctor had broken me, and I put myself through hell to prove a stupid point. I never returned to see that specific physician (she was an unnecessary addition to my medical team at a time when my pain clinic had a discount on private care). Unfortunately, the damage her comments and suggestions made is still ongoing. I wrecked my metabolism just to access better care. The anti-fat bias doctors possess, that we all possess, has hurt me and will continue to hurt others until we make changes.

       As I said before, I discovered fat activism this year. There are some lovely people out there trying to make a difference and getting people to acknowledge their own biases. Here are a few awesome peeps on Twitter for you to follow:

• @meghantonjes
• @comfyfat
• @fatgirlfreedom
• @yrfatfriend

       Your Fat Friend also writes wonderful essays on Medium about the anti-fat bias that are really worth a look: How Healthcare Bias Harms Fat People. If you want more information, Your Fat Friend and the others I listed above are great resources and it's better to hear it from their point of view rather than myself as I am now a small fat after my weight loss.

       Anyways, if you would like my perspective: I think the main point of this cause is to get us to recognize our own biases and deal with them to hopefully stop demonizing fatness and fat people. It's not an easy task; many of us, even fat people themselves, harbour this extreme negativity towards fatness. We've internalized these biased views of society and for many of us who are or were fat, we've turned against ourselves because of it. I know I hated myself whenever I looked in the mirror, ever since I hit puberty. Even when I wasn't fat by any standard (age 10 or 11), I hated any bit of fatness on my body. When I did gain massive amounts of weight, I still looked the same in my eyes. I had always been fat, I was always going to be fat. When I did set out to lose the weight, it came from a place of self-loathing and I shamed myself through the entire experience.

       Even after I lost 50lbs, I still harboured those feelings. But you know what happened? Being thinner, and fitting into straight sizes (S-L, 0-14), made me feel beautiful and acceptable. It made me feel like I was better than people who were bigger than me, and that's terrible! This right here is my anti-fat bias at work. I'm not better than them and I can't let my bias make me think this kind of discrimination is okay.

       It takes a lot of self-talk and head-work to stop these internal judgements. Still, it must be done because I don't want my biases reflected in my actions. I don't want to treat people poorly, even subconsciously, because of their size. I know how awful it is to experience this kind of prejudice, and it's something that will take a lot of effort to eliminate from society. Anti-fat bias, in particular, is very tricky to root out because it's propped up by the medical system.

       Society insidiously imprints us with this negativity against fatness and fat people by using numbers under the guise of science to make the hatred seem okay. Clinically, I'm still 'obese' at a BMI of 32, down from 41 this time last year. Now, that word itself is not neutral and is often thrown around as a hateful term. I use it only to reference the specific medical measurements that have helped fuel society's hatred of fatness.

       The Body Mass Index is a strange scale that assigns numbers to determine what your 'healthy' weight is for your height. 'Overweight' starts at 25, 'obese' starts at 30 and 'morbidly obese' begins at 35. It's a simple mathematical equation to find out where you land, but it doesn't make sense. BMI doesn't account for muscle mass which means big burly athletes with no fat can be considered obese. It was also based on average weights during the early 1900s when food was not nearly as plentiful as it is now and people regularly starved themselves out of necessity. So, of course, you might be thinking, "Why haven't they updated the standard then?" Well, that's a good question with an unfortunate answer. The reason no one has updated the formula is that using the BMI scale simply conforms with our already existing biases against fatness. Why change something that helps confirm what society already believes?

Because hatred on a grand scale is wrong.

-Dana.


Have you ever felt medical professionals were biased against you because of your weight? Did you ever struggle with self-loathing because of your weight or your internal biases? Let me know in the comments down below!