Fat Acceptance Movement

chocolate_owl wrote: »

The_Original_Beauty wrote: »

chocolate_owl wrote: »

xmichaelyx wrote: »

The_Original_Beauty wrote: »

Why do I like HAES? Because it's learning to love your body as it is. It is about making the healthier choices, that it is okay if your diet isn't 100% perfect.

No one should be happy with how they look, even if they look great. No one should be happy with how "healthy" they are, even if they're super healthy.

We should all be working towards improvement in all things. Looking better, feeling better, treating others better, knowing more, being better educated, being better parents/spouses/children/citizens, being better at our jobs. Even if you're the best in the world at something, never accept that you're the best that you can be.

"I love my body the way it is" is an excuse to give up; "I love my body, and that's why I strive every day to improve it" is what we should all be thinking. And no one can "shame" you unless you already feel shame about something. So don't.

Excelsior!

As someone who has had an eating disorder and a lot of body issues, this is just so wrong to me. I would give anything to truly love my body the way it is and be happy with how I look. It would be so freeing to not having a voice nagging that what I see is bad, to accept being 25%BF instead of 20% and feel good about myself. Why would it be so wrong to be happy with my imperfect body? And why would being happy with my body keep me from improving it?

Sorry, this comment really depresses me Loving my body would be such an accomplishment, I don't see how it's "giving up."

Love, love this post!!! I had restrictive bulimia for 15 years, I wish I count one two hands how many times I had a feeding tube, or being in hospital. Sometimes we need to stop trying to improve, stop trying to fit into todays standards and gain acceptance and learning that we are good enough the way we are now.

*Hugs* Bulimia's a *kitten*. I hope you're getting to a better place

I'm mostly recovered anorexic binge/purge subtype. Still have body dysmorphia and fall sometimes into restrict-binge but absolutely no purging and mostly don't act on my negative self talk.

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

Ridiculous movement normalizing a preventable condition that has very real negative health impacts that affects our entire society. All done in the name of making sure we don't possibly hurt someone's feelings. PC nonsense.

I'm glad someone said it.

I'm not a fan of HAES and I think the idea that obesity is perfectly healthy and outside our control is nuts. But that said, I am curious about some things:

Elise4270 wrote: »

But I don't think it's okay to open the door to accepting unhealthy behaviors.

What are you concerned about happening that would result in "accepting unhealthy behaviors" more than we as a society always have (in that I'm not going to comment on what someone else chooses to eat, none of my business). Maybe it's different subcultures, but it definitely doesn't seem to me that it's considered preferable to be overweight or desirable at all or that anyone is being told (outside of non mainstream groups) that obesity is healthy. Quite the opposite -- when I was a kid being fat was a bad thing because people thought it was a size of laziness and unattractive, but I don't think people were nearly as conscious of it as a health issue.

I'm pretty unconcerned about obesity being encouraged or even not discouraged socially or by health professionals, so when people claim to be worried about this, I wonder what they mean.

Sure, a few pounds here or there isn't likely to cause adverse health effects, similarly a few drinks here and there aren't likely to cause adverse health effects. We should be supportive and be helping one another, no matter the challenges of their journey. No matter their hang ups.

What do you think we should be doing? It might be that we agree on that stuff (education or some such), but from what you say I can't tell if you think it would be useful to go up to random fat people in the grocery store or some such and tell them they eat too much, which -- as a formerly fat person -- I can't imagine being helpful at all.

Now if someone asks me about how I lost weight, sincerely, I'm always happy to be helpful and supportive, and as seeing others lose weight was inspiring to me I hope that my having done so and living an active life is maybe inspiring to some others.

We really need to be addressing for what it is, a disorder. Love the people, treat the disease.

Again, what do you mean by this?

No one is shaming large people. I think that's just political crap.

I've seen plenty of insults yelled at fat people and the like (was told I was fat and disgusting as a teen even though I objectively was not), and I see a lot of more subtle fat shaming (mocking people for being overweight, not directly to their face, discounting people for being fat).

It's okay to not take care of yourself physically, mentally or spirituality? Did the insurance companies come up with this?

Why would the insurance companies come up with it? Their motive is to charge you more if you are more of a health risk (i.e., fat), which isn't exactly like saying it's cool. And now that they can't, really, their motive is to cut costs by pressuring people to lose weight. If insurance companies or the medical establishment could figure out good ways to combat obesity, they'd be all over it. (My insurance plan, like many, has a health and wellness program that focuses a lot on weight -- even though it didn't change what I paid, I liked being able to score well on it and make improvements.)

Also, I never know what people mean when they say something is "not okay." I spent months sleeping far less than is recommended, for example, which is a health risk. Let's agree that's not okay (although I kind of think it's my business). What does that imply to you? That if you know it (since it's less visible than my weight and I don't have to admit to it) that you can come up to me and lecture me? What? I honestly don't understand what you are really saying here.

I don't think it's responsible to not follow the news or not know who the members of the Supreme Court are, or the Cabinet, or how our governmental system works, or basic history. Yet, from what I see, lots and lots of people don't care about that at all. I guess I kind of think that's not okay, that they are choosing to be ignorant and not taking care of their mental development or being a responsible citizen (heck, I think not reading books falls into this category, and yet again many people are in it). Should I proclaim that we all must accept that this is NOT OKAY? And if so, what should I demand?

zamphir66 wrote: »

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

Ah, I finally figured out my Googlefu. For anyone laboring under the illusion that there's any pretense of "health" in HAES, check this out:

https://www.sizediversityandhealth.org/content.asp?id=152

The Health At Every Size® Approach

The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) affirms a holistic definition of health, which cannot be characterized as simply the absence of physical or mental illness, limitation, or disease. Rather, health exists on a continuum that varies with time and circumstance for each individual. Health should be conceived as a resource or capacity available to all regardless of health condition or ability level, and not as an outcome or objective of living. Pursuing health is neither a moral imperative nor an individual obligation, and health status should never be used to judge, oppress, or determine the value of an individual.

The framing for a Health At Every Size (HAES®) approach comes out of discussions among healthcare workers, consumers, and activists who reject both the use of weight, size, or BMI as proxies for health, and the myth that weight is a choice. The HAES model is an approach to both policy and individual decision-making. It addresses broad forces that support health, such as safe and affordable access. It also helps people find sustainable practices that support individual and community well-being. The HAES approach honors the healing power of social connections, evolves in response to the experiences and needs of a diverse community, and grounds itself in a social justice framework.

This is among the most vapid nonsense I've read in forever, and I have an MA in English lit.

I tried reading it; I sincerely did.
However, I could not make it through the first three paragraphs, as I was suddenly blinded by my hand, due to all of the facepalming. It's ridiculous in ways that shouldn't even be possible.

canadianlbs wrote: »

i think there's a lot of visceral hate among anti-fat folks, to be honest. now that obesity has become an acceptable Thing to get all bent about, it's gained a set of terms and 'concerns' to dress itself in. but i still don't grok looking over the fence and giving a damn about somebody else and what they do, don't do, or are. so i think the hatred is there. and i think it's really the same thing that it always was.

the original fat acceptance movement was something i might have been around for, if what i saw in the later 90's was its inception. i liked it. it sought to get at the real, psychological sources of what 'fat' people deal with, and it sought to call the vilification for what it was in hopes that everybody would grow a little and some things would change. but isms usually evolve pretty fast to find ways around whatever is put up to block them ime. so since then the haters have gone sideways into this host of easily-accessed medical and social justifications. it seems like this particular group just wasn't mentally swift enough to resist the temptation to answer in kind. but so what? when the focus remains only on what the lunatic fringe are saying, then it's a closed loop, a static circle - just an endless cycle of hate revolving between two poles that are pretty much fixed.

it's still just two groups of toddlers calling each other poopyheads, to my mind.

The difference is that in the modern construct, you're required to help foot the bill for the bad choices made by said toddler poopyheads.

I think the fat acceptance movement means different things to different people. There are people who think it's OK to love themselves as they are at their current weight, but work toward bettering themselves. I don't think there's anything wrong with that and it's what I usually strive for. For example, when I go to yoga I have to accept that my body can't do certain poses the way they are intended and be OK with that, but I still work to get better at them and challenge myself.

What I do NOT think is ok are the people who take fat acceptance to an extreme and think their bodies should be celebrated just for existing. That's like giving out participation medals. You can celebrate your body for a new PR or something you worked to achieve but there's no reason to celebrate your body being a vessel for you to sit on the couch and eat cheesey poofs all day. I think these people tend to put others down who are trying to lose weight or be better. I read an article one of these folks posted about how dieting is always bad and you should never ever diet because you can't love yourself if you diet. That's ridiculous, you can want to diet to be healthy or even lose weight for reasons other than vanity, like if you want to run a marathon but you don't want that much weight on your knees. And then they blame stores for not selling clothing in their sizes (i mean like size 28) and they blame the store...I mean it seems like humans are not really supposed to be that big. Are these people hurting me? Well, no not directly, eventually I'm sure they will become a burden on the healthcare system, but if someone wants to chastise me for wanting to better myself, at the end of the day why should I care?

I couldn't care less what an individual decides to do as long as this does not impact others.

I begin to care when the money I earn is forcibly taken to fund the healthcare of those individuals leading unhealthy lifestyles.

canadianlbs wrote: »

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

The difference is that in the modern construct, you're required to help foot the bill for the bad choices made by said toddler poopyheads.

we all foot the bill for what each of us does. that's why this one makes no real sense to me. to me it just seems like an arbitrarily-picked scapegoat issue. and it seems to me like it's one that got picked because it's safe and it's so directly personal you can make targets of specific people, without having to think very hard or extrapolate very widely.

you could get yourself equally bent about all kinds of things, and i can see so many that make far more actual sense to me, in terms of having a better ethical justification to them and a better payoff for time spent wrt the topic of suffering. domestic violence and unhappiness cost society a fortune every year. racism does, poverty does . . . our kids and grandkids will pay for your neighbour's pretty green lawn in some way at some point down the road.

but nobody's peering sideways and gossiping and wittering to their more-evolved friends about what a weak-minded selfish schmuck your neighbour is for wasting gallons of water a day just to keep the neighbourhood friendly to him. nobody's deconstructing the subtle pressures and social forces that twisted his values that way. we could all be militant fanatics on the topic of cars - that one would really make sense. we could go rank on so many things that seem to me to be so much more worth the mental time spent.

but fat is an easy target because it's so concrete and immediate.

I think because it is visible and other ways of endangering your health (my sleep example, or being reckless in general) are not -- people can do them under the radar. I do agree that other things don't seem to engender the same reaction even so, though, which makes me think there is something else going on.