Or what to say to people who tell you to just eat less and exercise more especially after menopause
People just assume that if you’re fat, it’s because you don’t exercise enough and eat a ton of food. You’re a fat pig with no self-control!
I used to be one of those thin people who could live on pizza and ice cream, with a little kale thrown in once in a while and never gain weight. I was very active as a dancer and fitness instructor, and I was young. I thought fat people just needed to exercise more and eat less.
Then I gained 60 pounds overnight during menopause. At the beginning of my 49th year, I was lean and cute and made a side income modeling for bikini/lingerie photo shoots. It was a fun way to make an extra $100 an hour on the weekends.
I had always looked young for my age and had been naturally buff and thin all my life.
I was a role model for my students as a Pilates instructor and Salsa dance teacher. I was really enjoying being a Sexy Young Salsa Dancing Girl. I thought I would always be thin and healthy.
But when I turned 50, I was suddenly 60 pounds heavier and looked ten years older than my actual age. It was like I’d been hit by a truck and peeled myself up off the asphalt to find myself suddenly transformed into a fat middle-aged invisible ghost.
I reluctantly started to give away my string bikinis, slinky lingerie, and sexy salsa dresses. Nothing fit my double sized waist and hips any longer. Good by black shiny thigh high platform boots I could no longer zip around my plump thighs! Good by little red studded string bikini!
I really wanted to get back to being “normal-sized” and get back in my cute outfits, so I joined an online anonymous group for weight loss. At the beginning of each meeting where I lurked and didn’t speak, they recited this manifesto/prayer about how evil they were and how they were to turn to a higher power to resist their own evil loathsome character defects.
It was expected that you would attend meetings daily and think of nothing else but how loathsome and bad your true inner nature was and how you could never trust yourself to know what to eat all by yourself without being watched.
I was determined to do this if it would help me lose weight and get back to being the sexy salsa mama I had been just a few months back!
I looked through the roster of available sponsors and picked one who was in my time zone. I was to call her every morning and report what I was committed to eating that day.
She asked a few questions about my life and what I did. She seemed a bit bitchy and combative and at first, I didn’t understand why. Then I got it.
I told her I had graduated from art school and was a freelance illustrator and taught Pilates.
“Oh!” She said in surprise “So it seems like you have been able to do something useful with your life and be of service to other people!” She sounded incredulous.
Aha! It dawned on me what her bitchy attitude implied. She was being tough on a fellow sinner because that was the only way to help a horrible-fat-person. She thought being fat was a character flaw and that anyone that was the least bit plump was a lazy, good-for-nothing-creep.
It made no sense! I was eating the same diet I had been eating for the past 48 years. Some of it was healthy and some of it was junk food. I had stayed, slim and muscular and been considered beautiful and young.
Why was my normal American eating habit now a sign of depravity when the same behavior had brought me praise and admiration in the past?
I was still the same person I had been when I was thin and cute. I was actually eating less food and healthier foods than I had when I was thin in the hopes of losing weight. I was doing the same daily exercise regime as I had been doing before menopause had caused my metabolism to change.
Suddenly, I was viewed as this out-of-control, loathsome, lazy, fat person? I felt like that bug in the Kafka book. Or like Fiona when she turned from a beautiful princess into a plump green Ogeress in the movie Shrek.
I was suddenly a fat middle-aged woman, invisible, shunned. No one would want to be me or fuck me ever again!
I tried calling this bitchy woman for a couple of mornings reporting my eating plan. I was supposed to eat tiny portions of only prescribed foods and never snack and always be on the watch for the lazy slothful sinner within.
I decided I didn’t want to interact with someone who judged people by how they looked. It seemed like a really twisted approach to getting healthier.
What I (and countless humans) have found is that dieting or prolonged water fasting always lead to binging sooner or later, unless you can succeed at anorexia, (and I wouldn’t want to).
Normal people binge after eating tiny portions for a period of weeks or months. The body just wants nutrients and eventually you cannot resist making up for lost time. And then you gain back more fat than you lost on the diet! Not fair!
Right before I got fat I had been on an extreme raw foods diet and had lost a lot of weight. The worst timing ever to do menopause!
Now I’m on the never diet, diet!
They key for me is to never diet but to substitute what I used to eat for a higher fiber whole-food diet that is delicious and high in volume but low in calorie density, so that I always leave the table feeling full and satisfied.
I can still have delicious filling, satisfying meals, but I have to include a lot more veggies, fruit, whole grains, beans, and a few nuts and seeds. Not nearly as fun as my old pizza and Ice cream diet.
I can still have treats now and then if I want them and I don’t have to think of it as evil or that I’m “binging” or “sinning” every time I have a bowl of ice cream or a slice of sourdough bread.
I’m on the fortification diet!
I’m on the no shame diet!
The diet industry and beauty culture make us judge fat as a sinful trait and that makes us hate ourselves.
Judging ourselves by how we look is the problem not the fat itself.
When you’re trying to lose weight the worst thing to do is feel ashamed of being fat. It just doesn’t help at all. Bodies react differently to foods. When I was younger, I ate more junk food than I do now. But no one judged me as lazy or sinful. My metabolism didn’t allow me to become fat until I hit menopause.
Our culture is just so twisted up and warped on the subject of how people look and what they eat that it is time to stop worrying about what people think.
Resources for overcoming toxic fat shaming and dieting:
- Dietland by Sarai Walker
- The Volumetric Eating Plan by Babara J. Rolls
- The Starch Solution by Dr McDougall
- Blueprint Supplements for longevity, they just make you feel better no matter what you weigh! And I no longer need reading glasses! I read the fine print like a teenager again. But I’m still fat, sigh.
- Bioma probiotics stopped my junk food cravings after 2 days! Don’t buy on Amazon because they sit on the shelf too long.
- The Eat More Weigh Less Free PDF and Email Course