Saturday, March 1, 2008

A Fat Rant

A friend sent me this video, i thought it was fantastic!


Check it out, definitely worth the 7 minutes :)




Joy's ultimate message: "Stop putting life on hold." This rings true for all of us. She talks about a phenomenon that i've seen way too often. Friends will talk excitedly to me about these amazing plans they have for when they drop X amount of pounds. They plan to find their soul mate, get better jobs, go on a tropical vacation (in bikinis!), start going out more, buying "cute" clothes, whatever. As if the only thing stopping them from doing those things is their weight. No. If you want to do all those things and more, do them NOW. Go swimming NOW, start dating again NOW, look for a new job NOW, buy that kick ass dress you've been scoping out NOW; not when you lose X number of pounds but NOW. Seriously. What are you waiting for?!


The reason it is so important to stop waiting and start living is two-fold:


1. Waiting for life to start when you drop the weight sets you up for failure. It leads you to believe that the only thing that can possibly be "wrong" with you is how you look and once you look a certain way things are going to magically fall into place. This is very much not the case. Thin people have issues too, lots of issues actually. Weight should SO not be the "issue" that stops you from living life. Life's too short and there are way too many other things out there to worry about. Being thin doesn't miraculously rid you of stuff you've been putting off because you thought your biggest problem was "fat." Also, being thin won't magically solve all your other problems. There's this crazy misconception that thin = happy. I know many unhappy thin people. Being thin won't solve the problems you've been avoiding because you thought they'd go away as soon as you shed those pounds... which brings me to my next point...


2. In the video Joy talks about people using "fat" as a constant ingrained excuse. I think she's right on and explains it much better than i could:


They're not gonna hire me, i'm fat. He'd never ask me out, i'm fat... As if that is the only thing that could possibly be wrong with me! How about i'm late all the time? How about i'm mean to people? I have this automatic excuse. I never have to work on any other aspects of my personality. The only thing that anyone could possibly have a problem with is the fact that i'm fat.


Joy goes on to say, "FAT is a descriptive physical characteristic. It's not an insult, or an obscenity, or a death sentence." And she's right. So stop putting life on hold. I don't care if you're fat, thin, whatever - stop using weight as an excuse, get out there and start living!

5 comments:

Smirking Cat said...

Or, stop assigning a moral value to weight...defining yourself as good or based on what you ate, what you resisted, what you weigh, what size you wear. If women put half as much energy into politics as they do groaning about weight, we'd have had a female president years ago.

Radical Reminders said...

Smirking Cat: I totally, 100%, whole-heartedly agree with you!

Unknown said...

OMG! She's so cute. I completely agree. I would have disagreed two babies ago. Just went to the spa. Made sure to buy a bathing suit that complemented my new body size. Feeling good. As I should.

Anonymous said...

I have just three words to say about this, and they are all "yes".

Yes.

Yes.

Yes!

Anonymous said...

There is a very big stigma against overweight people... and I really hate it.

I've actually had friends make off-hand comments about my weight. Usually involving like me needing to 'get out more' or whatever.

Im 5'6. 215lb, so yeah over weight.

But I am also a vegetarian on a fairly healthy diet (and don't mean some binge thing you 'go on' to try and loose weight...) and... I don't can't loose weight for the life of me. Just does not happen.

When you have both Hypothyroidism with too much Oestrogen, it really does not matter how active you are or what you eat.

Some times fat just happens, and I am not in any way ashamed of it.