I’ve been down that path. It sucked…
I heard recently that there is link between telling girls they are fat and them becoming fat. Not girls who were already big or trending toward weight gain. Girls across the body spectrum were 60% more likely to become fat if they were told they were fat as children. And NOT because of their diet. It is through a cortisol path. Hormones. That the shame of being told this *literally* instructs the body to store energy as fat.
It is a self fulfilling prophecy that we blame the girls/women for.
I actually had heard about this many years ago from Gary Taubes, who wrote The Case Against Sugar. He said that “calories in calories out” isn’t true because some foods affect our hormones, and fat storage is essentially a job for hormones. He also noted that sugar, especially processed sugar, affects our hormones as much as it nourishes. This of course made perfect sense to me. Because after I stopped eating compulsively and quit sugar and grains, and I lost a lot of weight, those calories never added up. I ate SO MUCH FOOD! High calorie and decadent. And I was a skinny!
And then I quit smoking and gained 30 pounds eating less and lower calorie. Quantifiably less. (Remember, I weigh all of my food.) And the answer was that smoking also affects your hormones.
We have used weight as a moral issue for decades; centuries. By insisting it’s the actions of the individual alone that create fatness, without any understanding of why or how our bodies work. And we have brought it into being by shaming girls, any girl.
There is an uptick in anti-fat sentiment that promotes disordered eating right now. There is woman who posted a few months ago that if you weigh more than 160 pounds you don’t have the right to give her attitude. Ma’am, if I’m going to give you attitude, your opinion about my body is irrelevant to me. My attitude isn’t based on the holy vessel of another being. For you, it would be because you’re an ass.
(Also HOW BIG DOES THIS WOMAN THINK 160 POUNDS IS???? And any height? Like if she’s 6’ does that count? Where did she get this number? Is she 157????)
Then I saw a MAN get on the internet to say that size 14 is plus sized. Bitc- ahem, Sir! You are not part of this conversation. This is for women to decide where to shop. Not for you to morally dehumanize and degrade the majority of post-pubescent women. If your ideal partner had body is of a teen girl…well, there’s a term for that….
So here is your reminder that weight is not an indicator of health. That you cannot see what a person eats by the size or shape of their body. And that EVEN IF THEY ARE UNHEALTHY people still have the right to exist in peace and love in their beautiful fat bodies.
onceafatgirl 