So. There's more than one good idea here, but I think they're tangled up and I thought I would try to pick them apart a little:
Newsflash: if you are restricting your caloric intake and or limiting your food choices solely for aesthetics you are on a diet. I don’t care if you call it a “lifestyle change”, “wellness program”, “change of habits” etc.
Diet culture runs deep. We’ve all been duped into believing that “health” is attainable through starvation (dieting for weight loss) and that it’s a moral obligation.
Dis-ease & Disability are part of the human experience and could happen to any of us at any period in time no matter what we do.
We just do a shitty job at making the world accessible for all types of bodies with all types of conditions. Then we get blamed for not maintaining our “health” never mind all the environmental and sociopolitical factors that affect it.
Health is sold to us because our bodies are only good for productivity in a capitalist society.
We chase the dream of being the picture of “Wellness” which is a cleverly disguised code word for HEALTH.
Set your self free. Realize that your body will attempt to return to its natural state, but dieting (starvation) will permanently alter it.
I don't think anybody doesn't know how fucked up and folded over the subject of weight loss is—well I take that back, one of the shocking things that I stumble upon now and again is that person who... doesn't seem to know, and accepts it as it is? Eeesh. But say, I supposedly know; and, I'm still fucked up by it. "Diet culture runs deep," now that is a true statement.
Not to make things more confusing, but I really wish I could take back the word diet to just mean the sum of food one eats in a day. Eh, I suppose that ship has sailed. For my current intents and purposes, I will be saying diet like it's a four letter word. Not that some of my best friends aren't four letter words.
So everybody also sees this, right: weight loss is sort of like racism nowadays? People still want to lose weight, they just know they're not supposed to say that out loud. I guess this is where the shockers fit in, they're like your loud uncle at Thanksgiving. Or the President of the United States. I'm not going to say that I don't want the president or your loud uncle to STFU, but a) I don't have an uncle which means b) I'm more worried about what's passing as polite conversation. Ahhh therapeutically I'm probably supposed to take people at their word: it's not that they care that they're fat, they want to be strong, they want to be comfortable in their own skin. Those are great goals and we can work toward them! But if you're secretly harboring a hatred of being fat, I can't work with that.
The fuckedupness of this whole topic is nipping at my heels, so let me try to get ahead of it by rattling off some true statements, some statements that I think are true:
How much you weigh is not super connected to how fat you are.
This is really basic, right? I know people are still confused by this, but is anybody still confused by this?
[ETA: Oh looky here, Nerd Fitness per usual has done the work spelling it out. I actually needed to read this today, diet culture has been finding me in my bunker. I'm on board with this article all the way up to "Look at your body composition rather than your weight." That way lies madness, and also to my next true statement...]
How fat you are is not super connected to how healthy you are.
I don't super care about studies, but there are studies! There was this great article I read about this that I should have pinned because I can't find it now. But it was all about how the findings that keep showing little to no correlation between obesity and morbidity and/or mortality get steamrolled or squished to fit the dominant trope that obesity kills. I really must find this article.
How healthy you are should not be connected to how worthy you are.
This is what I think that big blockquote is or should be scratching at, but then I'm not sure if it's still talking about dieting and weight loss. Which I'm so. bored. with! While still being fucked. up. by! But this is why I really wish we would get past talking about weight loss, so we can get on to talking about the way more life and deathiness of how a society defines the worthiness of its people.
How worthy you are should not be connected to how productive you are in a capitalist society.
Here be the dragons.
