A Flight of Ideas

There are a few of us on the fat-o-sphere feed who are in recovery for eating disorders right along side of being fat. I am one of those people. I’ve written a few blogs on this matter, but I’ll save you all from having to go through the library of posts on this site to figure out my issues. I was put on a diet by the parents at about ages 6 or 7, I then developed binge eating disorder, which permeated all aspects of my life through 17 years old, when I got too fat for my folks to handle, somewhere around 280 pounds I think. I then got put on another significant diet, whereby I was taken to a diet center, and subsequently developed bulimia, lost about 90 pounds, and then struggled with bulimia for a number of years afterwards, doing irreparable damage to my digestive system and potentially my heart, as I abused ephedrine in the thin-seeking quest.

I was never thin during my eating disorders. At my thinnest, I was still fat, weighing in at 171 pounds, after smoking during a bout of the flu. I wore a Size 12 at the Gap. It was a brief moment of joy in my life. Mostly, I was always well above 200 pounds, and fighting it all the way.

Eating disorders are not pretty, folks. I stole food. I hoarded food. I hid food in my pillowcase so that I could eat it later at night when everyone was asleep. I enlisted my sister to ask my parents for food on my behalf. I stole food as an adult, as well, not believing I had the right to buy groceries for myself, and also fearing that if I did, I would eat them all at once. Often, if I did go grocery shopping, I would end up  binging and eat most everything in the house methodically, just so I could be rid of the fear that there was food in the house. I never felt full, despite how much I ate. Later I would learn that there was an emptiness within me that food could probably never fill.

When I got diagnosed with bulimia, I told my folks, and they laughed at me.

I have done a lot of work around my eating disorders. I have a better sense of being full, because I am on a medication now that helps regulate satiety. I learned what my trigger foods were, and decided to keep those out of the house, making it safer for me to go grocery shopping. I decided to never diet again. I decided to ban any foods with the words “lite” or “fat free” on them, determined that I had lived a half-the-calorie life for so long, and it had left me wanting so badly, that I would eat everything in its full form and enjoy it. I decided to eat mayonnaise again. And bacon. Those had been deemed “bad” foods. I decided that I would bring lunches to work, so that instead of popping ephedrine and smoking through my lunch break, I would eat, and damn the consequences of potential weight gain.

I decided to work on the emptiness. That’s harder. It’s a battle I will have for the rest of my life. I have replaced some of the battles that I have had with food with other things, like smoking, or shopping.

I cannot go to the gym. It is too triggering. I cannot follow meal plans, also too triggering. I have to be careful, now, in another sense, not to engage in old patterns lest I wind up sliding down a very slippery slope. The eating disorder is always there, lurking beneath the surface. It’s a part of me, has been, since I was a kid. I have to fight against it all the time.

There’s a concept floating out there, or at least I’ve read it in a couple of blogs, that there are good fat people, and bad fat people, based on how fat people are taking care of their health. Based on if fat people are following HAES and exercising regularly. Based on if, essentially, fat people are following the “rules” of thin culture: which is that we are good if we are trying to appear thin by following the eating and exercise paradigms of the thin.

I want to say a couple of things on this. First, from the perspective of someone who is in constant recovery for an ED, I am uninterested in playing by the rules of any sort of eating/exercising culture again. It is far too triggering and damaging to me. I realize that how I live now may be unhealthy. But for me, it is an immense improvement over how I was living before, where I was drinking a case of soda a day, smoking a pack a day, taking up to 6 pills of ephedrine a day, binging on cookies, and eating cheese and crackers for dinner, and hitting the gym to burn off at least 600 calories in an hour and lift weights.

Secondly, from the perspective of someone who, in the middle of her eating disordered days, recognized she would always be fat, continued to engage in the disordered eating and exercise to show people she was at least “trying” to adhere to thin culture standards, I am uninterested in engaging in any sort of fitness and eating “program.” It would also be far too triggering to me. I do not feel the need to prove to anyone that I am a “good” fat person because I am eating healthy and exercising. To me, a “good” fat person in this sense means a person who is attempting to be accepted by thin culture. I am never going to be accepted by thin culture, because I am not thin, I never, ever have been EVER, and I don’t actually WANT to be. This is it, folks. This is me. Fat. Take it or leave it.

I am at a point in my own recovery, and in my own life, where fat is fat. How it got there, how I became fat, is unimportant. I am uninterested in proving to thin culture anymore that there a million reasons for fatness. They can suck it, as far as I am concerned. They don’t have to justify to me their thinness. Why? Because it is assumed that their thinness is inherently better. Just like white people don’t have to justify their whiteness to anyone else. Or straight people don’t have to justify their straightness to anyone else. These dominant cultures are allowed to trample all over the rights of anyone else because they are, well, dominant.

And quite frankly, people of color, queers, fatties: each of them have also been oppressed by medicine and science, stating that their inherent qualities are aberrations, when in truth, nature accounts for a variation within all populations. Fucking duh. Biology 101, people. But we don’t like people who look different than us, now do we?

So here’s where I am at with the good fat people — the fat people who exercise and eat well and follow the health standards of thin culture, vs. the bad fat people who do whatever they want. We are all fat. The End. To me, we all deserve the same rights, despite what we are eating, despite when and if we are exercising. If I eat 12 girl scout cookies, I still deserve to go to the doctor and be treated as though I am a Legitimate Patient with Legitimate Concerns, just as fat person who eats carrot sticks and celery every day for lunch. The doctor is still going to see the fat and think: Oinky, oinky, go on a diet. The visual presentation, despite the adherence to, or lack thereof, to thin culture standards, outweighs (pun intended) anything we are doing.

Fat is not a purposeful choice. I have not met a fat person yet who said: When I was a little girl, I said: I want to be a fat woman when I grow up!! Just like I have not met a queer person who has said: I chose to be gay. People do not choose to be members of oppressed populations. Every fat person I have met has been on a diet, some since literally early childhood. They have wrestled their weight. They have been on medically supervised eating plans. They have exercised. They have rejected their bodies in horrible ways. They know more about health and nutrition than Meme Roth. They have introjected thin culture standards and hated themselves for it for far too long. And yet, we are all still fat. It is time to realize there is no good or bad fat. There is simply fat. And all fat people deserve the same rights as every other person on this planet.