Category Archives: body positivity

5 Tips For Coping With January’s Diet and Weight Loss Talk

It’s January, and we all know what that means: a total inundation of diet talk. It’s EVERYWHERE. TV advertising is filled with diet promotions, “healthy” eating, exercise equipment, gym memberships, and low fat yogurts (although hell, when do those NOT appear in the ad breaks?!). Friends, family, and colleagues are on a mission to lose weight, tone up, or get super heallllltthhyyyyyyy (god, pleeeeeease make it stop). “Lifestyle changes” are being broadcast from the rooftops (it’s still a diet, Susan, don’t kid yourself). It’s really difficult trying to deal with all this talk when you are trying to recover from an eating disorder or dieting, and/or are on a journey towards body acceptance. It can be downright triggering. So here are some tips on how to deal with the diet culture disaster that is January:

1. Set boundaries

I know that this can be really tough for a lot of people, but it is so important. If someone is talking to you about their diet/lifestyle change/new workout routine/how many pounds they’ve lost since only eating lettuce for the past two weeks, or god forbid are trying to offer you “advice”, tell them that it is making you uncomfortable. Hell, tell them that it downright harms you when you are trying so hard to explore a different path. Let them know that diet and exercise talk is not appropriate or helpful for you and that you would appreciate if you engaged in conversation about other topics instead. If they are commenting on your own body or eating habits, let them know it’s entirely not their business.

2. Use facts as a weapon against disordered thoughts

When you are feeling the insidious pull of temptation leading you towards to some sort of restriction, consider the facts:
* Diets don’t work. 95-97% of people who lose weight on diets regain the weight within 2-5 years (if not sooner). They also often end up gaining more weight due to the body trying to protect itself against “famine”.
* Chronic restriction can push people’s set points (their natural, healthy weight that is individual to each person) higher, because the body becomes damaged by getting less energy that it need, and can alter its set point in order to protect itself from harm.
* The metabolism slows as a response to not getting enough energy, and this makes it harder and harder to lose weight – which if you have an eating disorder or have ever been on a diet, you know already. Leptin levels also drop when our fat levels decrease. Leptin is a hormone produced by the fat cells in our bodies. It exists in the body in proportionate amounts to our weight. Our bodies want to compensate for this loss in leptin and respond by increasing hunger urges, which makes not eating enough super unpleasant – as you know already. Your body does not want to lose weight, and it is going to fight to keep it at its set point.
* Studies show that weight cycling (losing/gaining/losing/gaining) is much more unhealthy than just staying at a higher weight. It increases the risk of developing major illnesses such as cardiovascular disease.
* Restricting often leads to binging, and that’s a signal from your body that you are not getting enough energy on a regular basis. Binging also leads to emotions that are really not fun to experience, and can lead to even more unhealthy behaviours as compensation. Restriction also leads to obsessing over food, and that means less time for doing things that are important, productive, and enjoyable. In addition, restriction leads to increased cravings – again, not fun to feel, and again, often leads to binging.
* Any type of restriction is a slippery slope. It could easily turn into a full-blown relapse. Don’t risk it.
* Losing weight won’t make you happier. It won’t. We’ve all been there before, ladies and gentlemen. Who’s life was super awesome with an eating disorder/chronic dieting? I’m betting no one at all.
* Did I mention diets don’t work?

3. Unfollow or mute people on social media who are triggering you

This is advice for anytime of the year, but if people are going on about losing weight, cutting out certain foods, restricting their intake, or exercising then unfollow them. If anyone is making you feel bad about yourself, triggered, or is causing you to compare yourself to them, then unfollow them. If they are a friend or family member that you want to keep on your social media, you can mute their posts, or you can let the know that their posts are negatively impacting on your wellbeing (see tip number 1).

4. Fill your social media feeds with body positive and food positive people

This has helped me so much in the past few years, and is definitely one of the things that gives me ongoing support and a sense of community, hope, and positivity. Start following people who are body positive. Start following people who love food and have a healthy relationship with it. Start following people who are fat, trans, disabled, of other races than your own, etc. Fill your feed with people who are diverse. Fill your feed with people who look like YOU, and people who don’t. Just stop filling it with thin white women (or if you are a guy, muscly white men). Stop looking at people who you want to look like or be like, just because our diet culture told you that’s who you should look like or be like, and start looking at people who celebrate who they are. Start celebrating who you are.

5. Write down reminders of why you made the choice to try something other than dieting/restricting

There’s a reason that you are in recovery for an eating disorder or chronic dieting. There’s a reason you chose to try going down a new pathway; why you decided to give another option a try. I bet there are quite a few reasons. Write them down somewhere where you can always see them if you need to. If you need any help with thinking of reasons not to relapse, you can check out my blog post ‘Repel the Relapse: 8 Tips for Staying on Track in Recovery from an Eating Disorder‘ or watch my video ‘Reasons to Recover and Reasons Not To Relapse‘ on YouTube.

I know that it sucks to hear the constant chatter about diets, weightloss, exercise, and the body-shaming that comes with it, but you know it’s all for nothing. You know that diets don’t work. You know that it is extremely bad for your physical and mental health. You know it won’t improve your life, or make you happier. Remember remember remember. Grit your teeth, and do your best. You can do this.

Our Bodies and Us: The New Years Revolution

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Artwork by Marie Boiseau

It’s approaching the New Year (another one already?!), and a lot of people will be suffering with those all-too-familiar post-Christmas blues. And a lot of those negative emotions will be coming from the shame and guilt so many of us feel for eating what we wanted and eating more than we usually would. Our cupboards are filled with leftovers: chocolates; biscuits; crackers; cakes…not to mention the mountain of cheese in the fridge. We are slumped in front of the remaining Christmas TV and we are being inundated with advertisements. Diet advertisements. Like, seriously, they are really shoving it in our faces this year. Every time I turn on my TV there’s a woman with dead eyes smiling at me, talking about her calorie-controlled diet and how much weight she has lost. Her mouth says “this is great!” but her face says “help me I’m starving!”

The diet and weight loss industry raked in $66 billion in America in 2016, and in 2014 the British diet industry was worth £2 billion (and as far as I am aware that hasn’t changed). The UK has a £20 million laxative industry, and almost two thirds of Brits are on a diet “most of the time”, even though research has showed time and time and time again that diets do not work and that 95% of the time people regain the weight that they lost within 2-5 years (and frequently end up gaining more on top of that). In short, these corporate assholes are making money of our self-hatred, and they will feed into it (excuse the pun) as much as they can so they can continue bringing in the big bucks.

Their biggest secret? IT. DOESN’T. WORK. If it did, everyone who has been on a diet or restricted their intake (which if we are honest is pretty much all of us) would be thin, and we would be thin forever, because that is what a success is: reaching a goal and staying past the goal posts (obviously this is not what I view success as, but in that context that is what people on diets are aiming for). But we aren’t staying thin – if we even get there in the first place. Those who go on diets lose weight, then gain it back again, then find another diet to go on, and then regain the weight (and so on and so forth). Or they don’t lose weight at all. If we want to stay thin, we have to punish our bodies and our minds every single day; something that most people cannot sustain, and something that is extremely damaging. Those that can are nearly always the victims of torturous eating disorders – and some of us will die trying to reach an unattainable goal with ever-moving goalposts.

So this year, let’s go into the new year with a different motive. Let’s choose life. Let’s choose happiness. Let’s choose self-love, and body-acceptance. Let’s see food as just that – food. Let’s see how it brings us together. Let’s eliminate the use of labelling foods as “bad” and “good”, and let’s eradicate the words that send a shudder down my spine “I’m being good” or “I’m being naughty” (oh god I’m shuddering just typing it eaugh). Let’s choose to nourish our bodies with adequate and consistent energy. Let’s face our fear foods and overcome them. Let’s stand in front of the mirror and challenge all the negative things that we feel about our bodies. Let’s support our sisters and brothers in body positivity, and let’s make the promise to ourselves and each other not to waste time on diet and weight talk, and self-deprecating comments. It will take time, and it will be hard, but let’s make this not just a New Year’s Resolution, but a New Year’s Revolution. Let’s fight to end body hate, not be a part of it, even if that means taking it one small step at a time.

So Now We Have to Lose Weight to Get Surgery

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On Sunday I read the news that obese NHS patients will not get non-urgent surgery until they lose weight.

It made me want to cry. I’m a recovered anorexic who is very active and eats a varied and balanced diet and because of that I am both fit and healthy. I also happen to fall into the “obese” BMI category. In order to lose weight I would have to restrict my food and exercise to the extreme, leaving me both hungry and exhausted; pushing my body below the weight that it sits naturally at. This is unhealthy, and it would mean that my physical and mental health would be in decline. I would also end up spiralling back down into a very dark and dangerous place, with even more devastating and continual effects to my physical and mental health. If I required non-urgent surgery, I would therefore have to force my body into a place where it is not at its healthiest, experience distressing physical symptoms, and in the process would be triggered into a life-threatening mental illness that could leave my physical health in such a bad way that it could kill me – if the torture of living with an active and consuming eating disorder didn’t tempt me to end my life first. In short, I would be put in a life-threatening situation in order to get non-urgent surgery. For me, it wouldn’t be worth the risk.

Artwork by Francis Cannon

BMI is bullshit. All health professionals know this. And if they don’t, then they should: there’s been so much indisputable evidence that shows us that using a basic BMI chart to tell us whether we are healthy or not is ridiculously primitive, simplistic, and inaccurate. To think that I might not have access to the same healthcare as someone thinner than me after working so incredibly hard to get to this healthy and happy point in my life both physically and mentally makes me feel sick.

We all have individual natural and healthy weight ranges that our bodies choose and we maintain when we have a healthy lifestyle. We don’t get to choose that weight. No one else gets to choose that weight. Our bodies determine it. And those people who don’t fit into the “socially ideal” weight category (that literally wasn’t EVER intended as a way to measure health) get punished for it (whilst those who push the “obesity epidemic” and reinforce the stigma and myths around “obesity” profit from it). There is so much overwhelming evidence that it is possible to be healthy at most weights, shapes, or sizes (depending on yourself as an individual and what your own personal healthy weight is), and it is nauseating to think that people will be forced to make a choice that could cause them both physical and mental distress.

Even regardless of health, “singling out patients in this way goes against the principles of the NHS,” says Mr Ian Eardley, senior vice-president at the Royal College of Surgeons in The Independent.

The article also reports on more details:

Patients with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 40 will not be referred for routine surgery unless they are able to reduce it to under that number over a nine-month period.

Alternatively they will be required to shed 15 per cent of their weight, according NHS Herts Valley Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and NHS East and North Hertfordshire CCG.

Whichever achieves the greater weight loss will then allow them to be considered for surgery.

Patients with a BMI over 30 but under 40 will also be required to reduce that figure to under 30 or lose 10 per cent of their weight before they are considered for surgery.

This decision is yet another discriminatory act against people in larger bodies in the UK, and I’m so tired of it. I’m tired of being told everywhere I look that my body is “wrong”. I’m tired of watching my category of bodies represented by images of men and women with protruding stomachs and their heads cut out of the shots as if they are nothing but their size (for example right now I typed in “obese patients will not get non-urgent surgery until they lose weight” into Google and the majority of the images are fat people with their heads chopped off – seriously, I’m so done). I’m tired of things like having a “World Obesity day” following the National Mental Health day – which if it wasn’t so revoltingly ironic, would be laughable, without even addressing the fact that there is literally a day to tell us all how bad and unhealthy our bodies are if we are over a BMI of 30.

Artwork by Frances Cannon

Despite that, I’m someone who exists in a body that is fairly “average”. Even as an “obese” person, I have an amount of thin privilege. I can fit into clothing at regular stores. My friends laugh as if it is absurd when I say that my body fits into the “obese” category. My booty is the UK’s “average” size (although this booty is anything but average, just saying), and my top half is below the UK’s “average” size (and just so you know the average clothing size for women in the UK is a size 16, which is a US size 12, and in the U.S. the average size is between a 12-14, which is a UK size 16-18). I have only had one health professional (physiotherapist) mention my weight in a negative way (AFTER I had told him all about my previous experience with an eating disorder and described to him my active lifestyle and balanced diet. And boy, did he receive an educational six-page feedback letter on eating disorders and health at every size? Yes he most certainly did). The discrimination that I face is significantly less than those who live in bigger bodies than I do, and it can have devastating effects on mental health.

I don’t want to be fighting to be seen as equal to other people because of my BMI. I don’t want to fight for those bigger and smaller than me to be treated the same. I don’t want to fight to get rid of negative associations with certain body sizes. I just want it to BE like that. Right now. I will, of course, keep fighting this fight, but man, am I exhausted of having to argue with at least one person every time I say that to be obese is okay and that someone who is obese can be just as healthy as someone who is not. And now we have our healthcare to fight for, too.

Hopefully, one day, we will all be at peace with our own bodies, and each other’s, and regardless of our weight, shape, or size, we will be treated equally and our health considered individually. Until then, let’s keep being angry, let’s keep speaking up, let’s keep pointing out the evidence, and let’s never give up.

Artwork by Francis Cannon

Are You Listening? How We Hear the Things that People Say About Our Bodies When We Have An Eating Disorder

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My partner and I are lying in bed. He’s got his arms around me and we are a tangle of limbs beneath the sheets. Then he speaks.
“You’re so soft,” he says.
He says this a lot. He also says things like “you’re so huggable” and “you’re so squeezable”.

I wonder what your reaction was reading those words. Imagine hearing them said to you. How would you feel? What would you hear? I know what my reaction would have been a few years ago. I know that I would have heard “you’re fat”.

The thing is, we listen to what people are saying and then we apply our own filters to the words; filters which have been created from a whole myriad of experiences. That is what our minds do, and when it is someone with an eating disorder, that filter is especially pervasive, vehement, and antagonistic in the most negative of ways when it comes to comments about our bodies. People’s words go through this filter and it gets translated, so that what we hear is not necessarily what was said.

In this instance, I did a little laugh as I realised that his words went through my “ED translator”, and then carried on through my “recovered translator”, meaning that it went through two stages: “you’re so soft” turned into “you’re fat” and then into “he means your skin is soft or maybe he does mean your body is soft and so what Sarah, a lot of it is, and that’s nice, and it is nice to hug soft things that’s fine stop acting like he told you that you look like a naked mole rat that went through a blender.”

Sometimes my partner even puts his hand on my stomach and gently squeezes the squishy bit. Yeah, you can see my face now:

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If it was me three years ago I would have had a meltdown and engaged in some drastic and incredibly harmful behaviours, and it would be something I would probably remember forever as a trigger point for self-loathing. However, I am not that person anymore and I am – thankfully – now not in that torturous place. Instead I asked (slightly incredulously):
“Are you squeezing my fat?!” to which he replied: “Yeah, sorry.” Again, three years ago I would have heard that answer as “yes you remind me of a beached whale and I am poking fun at your fatness and reminding you that you should probably do something about it because it is gross.” But instead the translation that finally came out of my little two-staged system was “You have fat on your body and he squished it because he had his hand there and it is a part of you and it it something that squishes and that’s okay; he still finds you attractive and wants you to be naked 100% of the time.” Because I suffered from an eating disorder for ten years, and because I live in a society that highly values diet culture and thinness, my brain will always automatically put the words through a negative filter. But because I was able to fight tooth and nail for my life and succeed in claiming it back from my powerful and evil mental illness, and because I then went on to reject diet culture and embrace body positivity, I have a wonderful second filter in place that allows me to pause, rationalise, and try to really hear what people are saying when it comes to my body (and everything else).

The important thing in these situations is that the outcome is totally different depending on where your head is at and on your ability to hear what is really being said rather than putting it through your own personal filter. You want to be able to really hear what the speaker of the words means rather than ending up reflecting back your own insecurities as a response. If we hear things through a negative filter of our own, it can then lead to negative situations with that person or people, because we think that they are insulting or hurting us. It also leads to a spiral of negative thoughts and possibly subsequent harmful behaviours. It is important not to hear the words that people say as confirmation of our own insecurities. Your eating disorder is always looking out for ways in which to validate itself. Don’t let it cause distance and destruction towards others or yourself.

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If you are struggling with something someone is repeatedly saying, or even a one-off comment that affected you, then talk about it. Be calm; be open; be honest; and try not to use accusatory language. Instead use “I feel” or “my eating disorder hears it like x” as opposed to “you are doing x/you are making me feel x”. People’s defensive barriers go up when they feel that they are being attacked. Often what is being said is actually okay to say and is not intended harmfully, but it is the eating disorder that translates it into something else and then causes harm. Because of this it is more productive to talk about how the eating disorder is at fault rather than them, or you. Of course I am perfectly well aware that there are those who are disrespectful, insensitive, and malicious and do intend to cause damage or do not care enough not to, but I am for now talking about those who we assume are not saying the wrong thing per se, but are saying things that are triggers for the eating disorder, which then rears it’s ugly head and translates for us.

It is not an easy thing to change the patterns within our brains, but it is possible. It takes time, and patience, and perseverance. It takes determination. It takes persistence. It means having to challenge negative thoughts every damn minute of every damn day. It means working towards liking and respecting yourself as a person. It means taking steps towards accepting your body as it is at its individual natural and healthy weight. It means screaming “NO” to the eating disorder and fighting for your health and happiness. It means recognising that the people who love you are not out to hurt you. It means remembering that you might at this point in your life feel hatred towards your body and self-loathing towards who you are, but that that is not how other people feel about you. It means recovery, and it means going on a journey to the place you want to be; to the life you want to live; to being the person that has been suppressed by the eating disorder. It means taking the path that leads to being free.

It’s Summer Soon and Surprisingly, Fat People Get Hot Too

An Open Letter to the Girl I Saw at the Pool

Health At Every Size and Big Is Beautiful/Fat Acceptance: What These Movements Stand For and Why They Are Important

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Health at Every Size and the Fat Acceptance Movement started as small, barely recognised movements. Due to the hard work of those involved and the (very) gradual shift in views around weight, shape, and size, these movements are now beginning to get the acknowledgement and publicity that they deserve. The more exposure these movements get, the more people will start to be enlightened to the real facts, figures, and evidence around size, health, and weight set point theory. Hopefully with time weight-based myths, discrimination, and stigma will be something that we as a society look back on and cringe with shock and humiliation that we got something so wrong and treated millions of people so badly. However, we still have a really long way to go until then.

You might be new to these movements, or you might not be, but either way, you may be unsure about what they stand for and why these things are so important. So let’s have a look at each movement and discuss a little bit about them. haes-4

Health At Every Size (or HAES) was first developed by American psychotherapist and nutritionist Linda Bacon, who wrote the book Health at Every Size (first published in 2008), and the sequel, Body Respect. Health At Every Size is a movement that is promoted by those who believe that health and fitness can be achieved regardless of weight, shape, and size, and that weight-loss is not a requirement for those deemed “overweight” or “obese” by BMI in order to live a healthy and happy life. HAES encourages people to accept their weight as it is, and promotes mental and physical well-being without weight loss as a goal. HAES cites studies that have shown that weight loss often leads to worse health regardless of the starting weight, and presents evidence that suggests that obesity is not the cause of health issues or premature mortality. It provides strong arguments for the idea that correlation does not equal causation, and picks apart flaws in studies that apparently connect obesity to poor health. HAES supports self love, self care, and body positivity, as well as healthy physical lifestyle choices such as being active and eating a balanced diet. HAES promotes this in a way that is conductive to mental health: it urges people to engage in activity that is enjoyable first and foremost, and not gruelling and repetitive work-out routines, and it supports the idea that food is not just for survival but also for pleasure. It maintains that weight loss should never be a goal, and that weight loss is frequently damaging, and encourages people to follow intuitive and instinctive eating and activity. It also supports weight set point theory.

The Health At Every Size® Principles are:

Weight Inclusivity: Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.

Health Enhancement: Support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional, and other needs.

Respectful Care: Acknowledge our biases, and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma, and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.

Eating for Well-being: Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control.

Life-Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose.

Health At Every Size is a movement that I strongly agree with. Its main principles on exercise, food, weight, and body positivity are ones that I advocate with every fibre of my being. It’s incredibly important because we live in a culture obsessed with dieting and weight loss; a culture preoccupied with attaining the “perfect body – a body that is not achievable for the majority of people without sacrificing their mental and/or physical health. Even if you are someone who naturally has society’s idea of the “perfect” body, the dieting and weight loss industry will find ways to make you feel inadequate and flaw-ridden in a bid for you to buy their products to “fix” yourself with. The diet and weight loss industry controls much of our research into food and weight, and sweeps any evidence that contradicts their interests under the rug and publicises in a selective and biased way research that has questionable study methods or sample sizes, contentious results, and tenuous correlations. So do I have any criticism of the HAES movement?

Firstly, I think that although HAES is absolutely correct in that we should intuitively eat and listen to hunger and fullness cues, it underestimates how difficult that can be to relearn, especially if you are someone who has suffered with an eating disorder or severe dieting. In our society, feelings of guilt, self-loathing, shame, anxiety, and, on the other hand, superiority and control, have become inextricably linked with food and weight, and so it can be incredibly difficult (and perhaps even impossible) to entirely disentangle our emotions from our biological signals. That’s not to say that it cannot be done, but we need to address the context in which we live in our bodies before we can start to challenge and relearn the way that we feed and view our bodies. Being presented with the principles of the Health At Every Size movement can feel like ordering flat-pack furniture and taking it home, only to open it up, lay out the pieces of the floor, and realise that the instructions aren’t there. You’re left with all the parts, but with no idea how to assemble it. And in reality that’s not exactly a flaw of the HAES movement itself, as HAES aims to educate and promote a mentally and physically healthy and positive way of living, but it is an area it sometimes fails to recognise and address.

Secondly, I’m not really a fan of the name. Heath At Every Size is misleading. Although I absolutely 110% agree that the what we view as “healthy” should be a much much much broader range of weights, it is undeniable that there are certain weights at which you just cannot be healthy at. You cannot be a healthy adult at 50lbs, just like you cannot be a healthy adult at 500lbs, and so the name of the movement leaves it open to criticism from the onset. Prader-Willi syndrome, hypothyroidism, cancer, depression, anxiety, or eating disorders are a few examples which can cause a person’s weight to plummet or skyrocket, and there are weights that are too low or too high for anyone to be healthy at. So for me, I believe in Health At (Pretty Much) Every Size, and whilst Health At Every Size is much more catchy, it’s technically incorrect, allowing those against the movement an easy starting point on which to discredit it.

Last but not least, HAES aims to provide people with the information to start working towards accepting their bodies whatever their weight, shape, and size in order to improve both physical and mental health. However, it also has to be addressed that we live in a society where fat people are constantly subjected to prejudice, body-shaming, weight stigma, and discrimination. Fat people who agree with HAES may still struggle to accept their body size in a culture so cruel to them, and their inability to find peace with their bodies may well become yet another source of shame. Again, this isn’t a flaw in the principles of HAES, but a topic that may need more recognition.

So what is the difference between Health At Every Size and the Fat Acceptance Movement? Let’s take a look at the latter:
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The Fat Acceptance movement (also known as the size acceptance, fat liberation, fat activism, fativism, or fat power movement) is a social movement seeking to change anti-fat bias in social attitudes. Those involved seek to change attitudes towards fat people in areas of life including the aesthetic, legal, and medical approaches to people whose bodies are fatter than the social norm. The Fat Acceptance movement focuses more on the way fat people are perceived and judged due to their weight, shape, or size, and although it does address physical health and the research to back up the same principles as the Health At Every Size movement, it is more focused around changing the way fat people are treated and discriminated against. Fat people are often dehumanised and shown far less respect than those that are at a socially “acceptable” weight. One of the main examples is medical care. Fat people’s medical issues are often inaccurately dismissed as being caused by their weight, are shown less respect, and are often shamed for their body size.

The Big Is Beautiful movement is a smaller movement that comes under the Fat Acceptance movement, and focuses more on aesthetics. Its message is that people whose bodies are bigger than what is considered socially “acceptable” are beautiful too, and that you don’t have to be a certain weight, shape, or size to be attractive. Its aim is to help people find beauty in their bodies regardless of any contributing factors that make them look a certain way: health is besides the point.

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Both movements are focused around respect, and also talk about health as irrelevant. The ideas is that even if you believe that someone IS unhealthy due to their weight, its not your business what lifestyle choices they make, and they should be treated with respect regardless of those choices. For example, we all know people who smoke or binge drink, but we do not treat them as less human on an everyday basis because those choices lead to poor health. We do not assume their personality, or directly link their personal lifestyle choices with their moral character. This is why these movements are so important: they address the way society perceives and treats people who are fat.

My only criticism of these two movements (Fat Acceptance and Big Is Beautiful) is that there are some people involved in this movement who look down on those who diet as betrayers of the movement, when they should be seen as victims of a diet and weight loss obsessed society. As I stated above with HAES, it can be forgotten how powerful and pervasive “thin ideals” are, and all of us are affected by it in some way, even if we do constantly work to disentangle ourselves from it and rise above it. We should all be working together to support one another and help to lift each other up not put anyone down. We should aim to educate, not shun; support, not vilify.

Health At Every Size, the Fat Acceptance movement, and Big Is Beautiful, are all extremely important in terms of physical health, mental health, feminism, and education around food, weight, and health, amongst other things. They are powerful and uplifting; inspiring and motivational; enlightening and passionate. They can give us the information and confidence to live in a better way; a way that makes the aspirations of health and happiness more achievable.

To find out more about weight set point theory, and to read discussions around and evidence to support Health At Every Size, you can visit the resources section on this website. There is a drop-down menu that displays many sub-sections, including one for each of these topics.

And as a last little titbit of information, check the photo out below:

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Hugs for Your Jugs – Guest Post

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guest-post-2 Your boobs aren’t wrong. Your boobs are normal and wonderful. If you’re unhappy with how bras fit you, it’s because there is so much misinformation about how bras are supposed to fit out there.

So many people experience discomfort, pain, and a lack of security because of some fabric that sometimes has metal in it. And they can really contribute to insecurities. But, should you choose to wear bras, it doesn’t have to be this way!

Bras have a reputation of being annoying at best, downright torture devices at worst. And many professional bra fitters perpetuate this myth. Why? Because a lot of them don’t really know what they’re doing. Many of them are given little training and are instructed to use outdated fitting methods so they just don’t know any better.

But I’m going to tell you now that the #1 aspect of bra fitting is comfort and how you feel in a bra. They shouldn’t make you feel bad and if they are, consider trying a different size and/or shape because poorly fitting bras can really get you down in the dumps about your body.

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When I was 14, I didn’t feel great about my boobs. I was a busty teenager and I hated how they hurt when I ran and bounced about while I was walking. To me, bras were just a piece of clothing I put on that provided some amount of strapping down, as if my boobs were just a part of my body that caused minor annoyance. I know now that my experience is actually slightly uncommon and that more women experience constant discomfort and pain from wearing bras (as opposed to my neutral position on them), but they still keep wearing them because that is what is deemed socially acceptable.

I was browsing the internet and came across a link on Reddit (ABraThatFits). ABraThatFits wants to help people find bras that fit them properly. We’ve all heard those statistics – x% of women are wearing the wrong size – but I just thought to myself: “that’s not me. I’m pretty sure I’m wearing the right size“. I measured myself anyway, just out of curiosity and the result was astounding. I’m talking 3 band sizes down and 3 cup volumes up (I use cup volumes because cup letters aren’t static – cup letters have different volumes depending on the band size. If you size down in the band, you have to size up in the cup to maintain the same volume).

I didn’t really believe it but I asked my mum to take me to a nearby shop and try on one of those sizes – just on the slim chance that it would work. The difference in feeling was so immediate and so drastic that I struggled to wear my old bras out of the shop, they felt that unsupportive.

At that point in time, along with happiness at finding bras that fit properly, I also felt disillusioned. Why did society lead me to believe that this was the right size for me? I spent years of my life buying and wearing support garments that didn’t support me!

Along with the disillusionment I also felt enlightened. The sensation of a bra that fit was so amazing that I thought to myself “EVERYONE MUST FEEL THIS FEELING!”. And that’s what truly started my involvement on the subreddit A Bra That Fits.

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What I learned there over the next few years not only has enabled me to personally (attempt to) help hundreds of people, both online and my friends and family, but also made me a better, more empathetic person. People of all body shapes and sizes and from all walks of life were united by a common cause: finding bras that fit them despite how difficult it can be with almost every shop and most online guides doing a bad job.

The more I read and the more I participated the more I began to appreciate the diversity of people’s bodies.The human body is beautiful and boobs can be an infinite combination of shapes and sizes and they are all honestly gorgeous to me. One of the things I love about the ABraThatFits community is how they emphasise that all shapes and sizes are valid, and that if something is wrong it’s the bra’s problem, not yours.

Along the way, I appreciated the rest of my body too. Bras were not a thing that I just wore “because” any more but something I invested time in. I started caring about how my boobs felt in a particular bra and overall began paying lots more positive attention to them. And that (with the help of reading body positive blogs that I found via the lingerie community) made me appreciate my body more. Around that time I developed an illness which left me in chronic pain for a few years, but I still managed to appreciate the quirks and unique parts of (the exterior of) my body. Your body might be going through a lot of changes right now, and buying clothes that fit (including bras) can help you accept that change instead of fighting against it.

ABraThatFit’s tagline is also important to me: because anyone who wants one, deserves a bra that fits. No matter how badly you feel about your body or how low your self worth is, you deserve bras that fit – provided you wish to wear them. You deserve as much help as you need. And maybe bras that fit well will help you feel at least a tiny bit better.

Many thanks to my wonderful sister who drew those beautiful illustrations, and many thanks to Sarah Frances Young for allowing me to write this guest post.

Fat Girls Can Wear Crop Tops Too

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Yep, you heard me. Fat girls can wear crop tops too. Let me say it again for the people in the back:

Fat

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girls

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can

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wear

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crop tops

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too.

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But this article isn’t just about crop tops.

I understand that we live in a society that has brainwashed many of us into believing that fat bodies are worth less than thin bodies; that fat is synonymous with ugly; that there is nothing worse than being fat; that we cannot be fat AND happy (these are all lies by the way) but I still do not understand why anyone would feel that it is acceptable to attempt to police the clothing choices of any other human being, regardless of their weight, shape, or size.

Fat girls are told implicitly and explicitly that they should not wear leggings, or crop tops, or bikinis (or even go on the beach at all), or bear their legs in dresses, or wear mini shorts, or…the list goes on. There is even a hierarchy of privilege amongst fat bodies, depending on how fat you are or where your fat is stored or whether you have big enough boobs to even out your thick thighs and hips. And frankly, I find it all disgusting.

We are all people. We all lead different lives and have different values and passions and hobbies. And we all have different bodies. And the weight, shape, or size of our bodies does not alter our self worth or how beautiful we are. It also does not give anyone the right to dictate what we wear. Fat, slim, curvy, thin, chubby, muscular, pear-shaped, apple-shaped…you can be star-shaped for all I care and wear the same clothes as anyone else. Certain clothes are not reserved for certain body sizes or shapes, and whether you are a size 6 or a size 26, you are the only one who gets to choose what you wear. Don’t let ignorance get in the way of your clothing preference. If you want to rock a crop top, a mini skirt, and nine-inch heels, you do that. If you want to wear a cute summery dress to the beach and then whip it off to reveal an itsy, bitsy bikini, you do that. If you want to wear leggings and a bralet, you do that. And if you feel more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt, you do that too. Because you should be able to wear whatever it is that you feel the most confident in. And if our fatphobic, asshole of a society has made you feel too uncomfortable to wear a crop-top even if you really like them, it doesn’t make you any less badass if you save the crop tops for another time, or even never.

You do not have to wear whatever society thinks is most “flattering”. I only recently took a real long hard look at this word, and saw it from a totally different angle to what I previously saw. People use it as a compliment towards each other all of the time, and it seems like a genuinely nice thing to say someone until you examine what it wearing something “flattering” really means. The word “flattering” in itself is oppressive: it implies that we should be aiming to look a certain way – and that certain way is “as thin as possible”. No one should feel that they have to disguise their hip fat or accentuate their waist or push up their breasts or flatten down their bellies. You do not have to hide any part of your body as if it is shameful. Not one part of your body is shameful, and you have the right to wear whatever you want, at all times. Everyone deserves to embrace the body that they have and everyone deserves to love it for what it does for them and for what it looks like.

It is summer time, and it is hot outside, and fat girls are entitled to dress in the clothes that make them feel coolest – both in temperature and in style. Don’t ever shame anyone for wearing what they want to wear. It is their right to do so and to feel confident in doing so. Respect everyone’s clothing choice. Respect everyone’s bodies. Respect everyone.

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(Here’s me and my crop top)