Stop Losing Weight

Actually, this picture is boggling my mind right now. Either that is ONE ENORMOUS CHARD or I am one tiny lady!

I’m not losing weight anymore.  Diet industry, die in a fire, and I don’t say that lightly.

Of course, I don’t have any weight TO lose anymore.  I used to be obese.  Now I’m at the actuarially endorsed “healthy weight for my height.”  My BMI is 21 and I’m at 22% body fat.  I wear a size zero.  I’m 40, but men turn their heads when I walk by in a bikini.  I ran a marathon.  I could probably run 5 miles barefoot right now if I wanted.  I’m stronger and more physically fit than I was at 15 or 25.  That’s important to me, because I spent so many years battling one chronic illness or another.  In my life, excess body fat and physical pain go together, like a right hand and a left hand.

I did not go on a brand-name diet.  I did not try meal substitution shakes, bars, powders, pills, teas, juices, smoothies, coffee with butter, Paleo, gluten-free, cleanses, or whatever else the $20 billion diet industry is constantly trying to sell us.  (Compare to $30 billion for the self-storage industry; this is why I talk about clutter more than I do about health and fitness).  I did not eat extra protein or fewer carbohydrates or even track my macros.  What I did do was to use a scale, a measuring tape, and the MyFitnessPal app.  I followed the app’s recommended calorie intake and logged everything I ate for three months.  Then I kept going, not because I needed to lose more weight, but because I wanted to track my micronutrient consumption.  My food log could one day be a valuable source of information if I need medical attention for some complicated health problem.  (Like my cancer scare or the time I got a bald patch).  I learned how much, and what, I could eat to maintain my new physique.

I did not lose the weight at the gym.  I didn’t even GO to a gym, and I haven’t stepped foot in one in years.  Over the past two decades, I have had several gym memberships, been an avid bicycle commuter, taken dance, yoga, self-defense, water aerobics, and other exercise classes several days a week, and trained for a marathon.  (In between years-long periods of illness when I did nothing at all).  Working out is great fun and it feels good, once you get through the first three awful weeks of pain and Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.  Working out has about zero to do with weight loss.  I gained 8 lbs while I trained for my marathon because I kept cramming my little chipmunk cheeks with cookies, trail mix, and stacks of waffles.  Diet for short-term weight loss, work out for long-term maintenance and pleasure.

I love my body, but I have a lot of anger about weight loss.  It goes in two opposite directions.  On the one hand, there’s the stupid diet industry that tricks people out of their money and makes them feel defeated, hopeless, and like they lack “willpower” or “motivation.”  On the other hand, there are all the defensive fat people who can’t pass up an opportunity to naysay every person who tries to lose weight, fit-shame anyone who’s Not Fat Enough (an actual acronym some acquaintances use), and spend their time trying to debunk or discredit peer-reviewed clinical studies.  From time to time, I am fit-shamed by someone who didn’t know me when I was fat.  I explain that I used to be obese, that I had thyroid disease and a cancer scare and fibromyalgia and migraines and a parasomnia disorder (and I can keep going if you’re interested).  “Oh,” they say.  Nobody has ever apologized for the fit-shaming, for calling me a bitch or telling me to F off.  I suppose it’s assumed that I understand, because “real” thin women deserve such treatment, and I was simply collateral damage.

I’m also mad because the process is completely different for men than it is for women.  My husband used to weigh 305 pounds, and he was still over 270 when we met.  He taught me everything I know about weight loss.  He taught me to track metrics, and he’s even helped me set up mathematical models to figure out patterns.  We’ve lost 100 pounds between us, and most of it, we lost as colleagues, partners, and gym buddies.  BUT.  Every step of the way has been different.  People constantly told me to “be careful.”  Nobody said it to him.  A shop clerk pantomimed vomiting, suggesting I must be bulimic to wear the size I do.  “Um, I’m a marathoner,” I replied, horrified to my core.  I tried to make myself vomit once, when I was 12 and accidentally ate a bug, but I couldn’t do it even then.  I don’t hate my body.  I’m also sane.  Does anyone understand how rude it is to joke around or hint that someone is mentally ill?  Men who decide to lose weight don’t get lectured by their friends about body image and anorexia and fashion and celebrity obsession.  My man is “big.”  He’s been a football player, a lumberjack, and a hockey player.  He doesn’t get told to “be careful” – even when he’s sharpening a chainsaw or lighting stuff on fire.  He’s strong enough to lose weight if he wants, to “train” – but women aren’t strong enough to be strong.  I’m supposed to be passive, curvy, and feminine, not active, muscular, and sweaty.

I’ve had a foot in both worlds.  Incontrovertibly, being fit is better than being unfit.  It’s useful and convenient and it’s far more physically comfortable.  The comparison is precisely the same as having money vs. being poor and in debt.  Why would anyone ever go back?  At 22% body fat, why would I want to be 35% body fat again?  It’s not something I would set about to do on purpose, in the same way that I would not set about accruing $20,000 of debt.  Weight gain is basically something that “just happens,” and we accept it, in the same way that debt tends to “just happen.”  The same way that health problems tend to “just happen.”  The same way that clutter “just happens.”  Fitness levels like mine don’t happen by accident.  It’s intentional, the way I do most things in my life intentionally.

We don’t know what we don’t know.  I never knew I could be as strong as I am now.  When I asked doctors what I could do differently, they replied, “I don’t know what to tell you.”  There weren’t any athletes in my family.  I didn’t really know any fit people.  I assumed that the thin people I saw just came that way, in the same way that jays are blue and sparrows are brown.  I shut down a few conversations over the years, suggesting that I try losing weight or going to the gym, because what I had been told about thyroid disease and fibromyalgia said that I couldn’t do either.  I’ve heard other people say that it is “physically impossible” for them to lose weight, and in my mind, it wasn’t even a question.  I just was the way I was.  Past Self never would have believed a word I have to say about health, fitness, or weight loss.  “Past Self, being fit feels like being a millionaire.”  “F Off, Future Self.”
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This is what I think.  I think it’s a thousand times easier to change your body than to change your body image.  I think the sense of disappointment and dissatisfaction we often feel toward our bodies comes from a feeling of being physically off in some way. Maybe it’s being constantly sleep-deprived or dehydrated, having imbalanced gut flora, a micronutrient deficiency, overloading our organs with too much sugar, too many calories, too many food additives, straining joints from excess body weight, relying on pharmaceuticals to deal with the side effects of our biologically inappropriate diets.  If a single one of those factors applies, why blame that off feeling on magazine photos?  There is no way to objectively quantify how someone will feel when beholding a fashion model of any size or appearance.  We can objectively quantify what we eat and analyze a wide range of health metrics with laboratory tests.  Given our society’s mortality statistics and reliance on prescription drugs, anyone under 35 should take this under consideration.  Anyone over 35 already knows that the older we get, the more we start to suffer the side effects of our lifestyle preferences.

I stopped losing weight.  I made a decision.  “I tried being fat but I had to quit.”  Nothing about being “curvy” worked for me.  I chose a path, an uphill and muddy path.  I shook off everything holding me back, from ignorant doctors to inherited family beliefs to expectations of appropriate female behavior to food preferences.  I quit drinking soda and eating breakfast cereal.  I paid attention to my habits and became more aware of my body.  I quit planning my vacations around what restaurants to try.  I quit insisting on ordering two appetizers and a dessert.  Very little remains the same in what I eat, where I eat, how often I eat, or how much I eat.  I divorced Past Self and Past Self’s destructive, short-sighted habits.  I made a radical change.  I decided that I wouldn’t be fat anymore, that I would be at least a little stronger every year.  Two years in, I’ve maintained that.  I only wish I’d known to try it sooner.

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