Diets No More

The following is a response to a post that I'm not going to link to. The person who wrote the post shouldn't be attacked. The post was pro-dieting. Needless to say, that is not in alignment with the Health at Every Size paradigm.

My thoughts:

As someone who yo-yo dieted and struggled with eating disorders (still battling the eating disorder aspect) from the time I was 12 until the time I was 45, I refuse to ever jump on the diet bandwagon again. If I hadn’t discovered health at every size (everyone should google this) and size acceptance, I would be 51 years old, still hating my body (which is never going to be thin) and still calling myself names like fat pig, ugly cow, and worse.

Diets don’t work in the long term for most people. We can often lose weight short term only to regain it plus more. I literally had to stop dieting so I wouldn’t get fatter.

I refuse to go to my grave hating myself for my body. I’m fat, always will be fat unless I end up with a horrific disease such as acute myelogenous leukemia, which took my great grandmother from 300 pounds to 95 in the space of less than a year, and then killed her.

There are healthy people of all sizes. The so called diseases of obesity are actually diseases of aging. People of all sizes get them. These include hypertension (which isn’t a disease in and of itself), heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. One cannot eat oneself into diabetes, as it happens. One can only develop diabetes if one has the genetic trigger.

I have a tendency to get on my soapbox when I see pro-dieting posts, because Diet Culture caused me to despise myself for more than half my life. No more!

I hope those of you who are still struggling with hating your body, with trying to make your body look like the body of a perfect, photoshopped model; I hope that those of you who have a Wait Problem will look into Health at Every Size. I hope you will check out Ragen Chastain's blog, Dances With Fat. I hope that you will join me in a revolution to create a world where all body types are accepted and where body shaming is seen for what it is: shameful.

Love,

Cie