My Return to Size Acceptance

 My views have changed about size acceptance since the deconversion. Let's just kind of sum it up that religious fundamentalism which I deconverted from muddied the waters. There was always that cognitive dissonance for me, in standing up for fat and disability rights, in a religious system that seemed to preach against them at every step.  After all I was the "sinner" who deserved what I got, instead of questioning reality. There's a clash there. It's better to be in the place where I can stand up for myself freely without those religious boulders on my back.

The traditional diet and weight loss world takes a negative toll on psyches. Fat people are walking around with their heads down, shamed to the max and denied a place in society. Forget that!

I had a life time already of being invalidated about my hunger levels, exercise levels and physical problems when it came to eating. I did end up removing myself except for rare posts on the Lipedema boards. Why doesn't it occur to these folks, it does to some doctors and researchers, that fat hatred has worsened the treatment of Lipedema and is one reason so many of us remain undiagnosed for YEARS and our condition getting worse.

Imagine if I got the help I needed at stage one and where the co-morb autoimmune and endocrine problems could have been dealt with. Maybe I could have avoided full disability. Lay that one at the feet of fat bigotry. So when I see the Lipedema world tied to diets, I feel doubly and triple betrayed, they caused my problems to begin with. What's worse is when I described the very bad effects of Keto, and I have known other people having serious problems with it, having vision and digestion problems in my case, people are called liars and dismissed. Didn't we get enough treatment like that before when we were all told we were lying about not being able to lose weight?

The constant drum of self hatred and desire to conform among the far smaller lower stage Lipedema women took a toll on me. It was not healthy and I got away from it. Size acceptance or fat liberation simply was unknown in those circles except by a few.

I figure at this age, the weight loss dreams are over.  The candy days of being thin, will never exist in this life. The main goals are to maintain what mobility and nutrition I can.  I am looking into genetic testing, and have discovered there are groups researching this, though I worry about "big pharm",  it may bring me more answers. Hopefully I can get a doctor to sign off on one program I found for genetic testing. I am tired of apologizing just for existing. Size acceptance probably helped me on multiple levels where the fat haters of the world didn't crush me to nothing. I do regret my being trapped in the religious delusions, as I couldn't enjoy all of fat acceptance's benefits.

I know my body never worked like other people when it came to food or weight even beyond the Lipedema. My hunger levels are far higher. I eat meals like normal people. I know this body could easily return to 700lbs and do it fast. My metabolism makes absolutely no damn sense. I have had extreme fear of weight gain from Covid and basically being locked in my apartment, unable to walk around to shop or to do things. I do these exercise routines on Comcast TV, saying "workout" into the voice remote, and try to do 20 minutes combined, at least a few times a week. I have to do it today fearing more weight gain. Also if I don't move around enough I will get sick.

How would you feel if you have lungs from hell, and have to go out into the plague ridden world, avoiding people, just to keep your mobility?  Remember in my case if I catch Covid, that's it. I have severe COPD. One day due to a weather change, my lungs checked out, I couldn't even walk into the living room without extreme shortness of breath, I thought I had "caught it" but had no fever and cough and than realized "Oh it's my COPD, the temperature dropped by 40 degrees!" Sometimes I get angry that undertreatment for my COPD adversely affected my life. You all do realize, I couldn't even breathe right even to have the ABILITY to exercise before I was put on a strong nebulized COPD medicine around 3-4 years ago.

I know some women with similar health problems to me, who haven't dared leave their homes since March at all, and I understand, but in my case this means losing mobility and not be able to walk anymore. I have to go somewhere today to make myself walk somewhere and do an exercise routine as well. The other day, some woman stared at me from her car at a park, ambling around on some grass and lumpy ground on a walker but at least there weren't any humans to run from. I went out to parks, actually liking when it was a bit colder or rainy, knowing it would mean less people. If it were up to me, I would sell everything and leave the country just to be able to walk around and do things freely. I wonder why the theme of this life has always been being "locked down".

 All I managed to do was keep the weight on the same baseline [I am within 5-6lbs of what I weighed last year as of two weeks ago] but had this terror inside I could gain 50 or 100 locked down like this and lose mobility and that fear still exists.  I would wake up, and think things like "Don't eat!" but give in to the hunger. With Covid too, there's this issue of wanting to keep food stores, what if there is no food soon as society crashes or money runs out? I find myself wanting to hoard everything.

There's a point where you know you are fat and you know for life you will be fat, and maybe the better way of life would be dealing with it, the best you can. All fat people are told to live for the day they are "thin" but that's lie too.  The best you can do is do what you can for your health, and let the chips fall where they may.  Fat people shouldn't have to live in misery for their whole lives for not fitting in and being told because you are fat, and that you are supposed to suffer. The diet world was like religion full of endless false promises and lies. For me, none of it worked.

By the way I miss the gym, it did help my lungs, and for me to feel better. How can I ever rebuild that stamina back up? It took guts to show up to a gym on walker. Going to the gym was "fun" for me. Of course they took that away too. The gym is reopened but I am too afraid to go there as Covid is spreading like wildfire in my local community. I was able to enjoy the gym, separating it from weight loss. I know that sounds weird, but the exercise had benefits and brought happiness to my life. I miss lifting weights and the arm bicycler and grabbing that one rope to pull and using their hand weights.

So I have returned fully to the size acceptance world, even NAAFA seems like they have changed for the better, though their presence seems more online, than in any real world chapters. I even consider rejoining it. I have gone to a few webinars with fat activists and groups and have noticed among the young, there seems to be far more enlightenment. I didn't offend bringing up my issues with size acceptance and there is more intersectionality with issues of class, honesty about the impact of fat admirers, promotion of LBGTQ rights, and more. A lot has changed. Things got better. Free of the religious baggage, my mind did change on some issues and my view of size acceptance was majorly altered, that's the best way I can explain it.