Thoughts on Body Size
Before I get into the meaty part of this, I just want to say that two nights and two days in the hospital had a disproportionate effect on my brain -- when I wake up in the night, before I open my eyes, I always think I am in the hospital and Jon is next to the bed on his hard little bench cot. I think that this might be that I have never been in my own bed in a post-surgical state so that my sleepy brain associates those feelings with the hospital bed. I have been home for seven nights by now so pretty soon I should start to get re-oriented.
I have not taken any Tramadol since Tuesday night and I seem to be fine so we can check that one off too. I wasn't sure how that was supposed to work, easing off the most powerful drug, but it did work. I am still taking a steady dose of alternating Tylenol and ibuprofen and we are decreasing those doses too. Not sure when I am supposed to ease off the gabapentin because my instructions are conflicting with themselves, but I will ask. This pain management plan worked for me.
So, today's topic is not new to anyone who is a person with fat. I have been thinking about this for a while, and talked about it recently with Alissa before the surgery and just this morning ran my thoughts past Benjamin.
A little while ago I realized that the language around obesity is quite biased. Someone who has cancer is not cancerous. But a person with obesity is obese. I am a fat person. Okay, I am a fat person but more precisely, I am a person with fat. I am a lot of other things in addition. And it is no good that a person with fat is automatically judged by many to be less worthy. I am fortunate that my sense of self-worth is much more powerful that someone else's sense of my worth, but that is not true for so many others.
Last night, just by coincidence, part of Samantha Bee's rerun show was a segment on exactly this topic. She had two fat people write the piece so it was automatically more attuned to the experiences of fat folks. They documented that doctors often have a bias against people with obesity, knowing nothing more than their BMI (a pretty dodgy number, if you ask me). On a first meeting, these people are already found to be morally deficient, like smokers. Lani had this experience years ago when she felt totally pigeon-holed by a doctor, and she was so mad about it that she didn't go back to the doctor for years. I have to say that my current team of doctors has never once made me feel that I am less worthy of good attention, and I have noticed that something has changed in the last five or ten years -- my chart always mentions OBESITY but the doctors talk more about lifestyle issues.
As a sensitive medical student with a mother with obesity, Alissa has thought a bunch about this topic. She will be alert to the possibility of automatic bias. As she says, we just don't know people when we first look at them. We have to know them better. She grew up in a house with an overweight and active and very empowered mother. And as a mother, I was conscious that I didn't want my daughters to grow up with any food issues or body issues. I wanted them to be healthy and whatever size they were. At the moment they are still young and beautiful (I was once much more beautiful than I thought at the time, but isn't that true of all of us) and their bodies are just perfect, but it could easily happen that over time they will get to be more like me. If they are as safe in their sense of self-worth as I am, then they should be fine. And so should their children. Of course Benjamin is like Jon -- they have a whole different body type to enjoy.
All of this is NOT to say that I don't wish I were less fat. I do. About twenty years ago I went through Weight Watchers, lost forty pounds with a good attitude, felt happy but a little chilly, and then over the next five years or so I gained it all back, and more. Just like most people. What I learned from that was the maintenance part of the routine made me unhappy about my life. I hated keeping track and thinking about food all the time. I eat a healthy diet but I undoubtedly eat more than my body can burn. But I found that I was unwilling to swap my mental happiness in order to fight that hard to stay that thin. Some people can do it, and that is awesome. I decided instead to eat the best food I could and to try really hard not to keep gaining weight. That is what works for me. And then can we please stop thinking about it.
I have a whole new set of readers with this blog and many of you might not know that I can rant about lots of things. I hope you are happy in your bodies and you eat the healthiest diet you can possibly manage and that you are physically active. Almost all the young people I know are gorgeous and fit and excellent eaters, so I am super optimistic about those people. But I know I live in a total bubble of white privilege and there are thousands of people with obesity who are judged daily and it hurts them in so many ways.
All you people who are not fat, be aware of your biases. Those of us with obesity have enough challenges without having to deal with your judgments about us. I am sure that people with fat have the same biases because we all are in the same culture, so you people with fat are not exempt from this diatribe.
I have not taken any Tramadol since Tuesday night and I seem to be fine so we can check that one off too. I wasn't sure how that was supposed to work, easing off the most powerful drug, but it did work. I am still taking a steady dose of alternating Tylenol and ibuprofen and we are decreasing those doses too. Not sure when I am supposed to ease off the gabapentin because my instructions are conflicting with themselves, but I will ask. This pain management plan worked for me.
So, today's topic is not new to anyone who is a person with fat. I have been thinking about this for a while, and talked about it recently with Alissa before the surgery and just this morning ran my thoughts past Benjamin.
A little while ago I realized that the language around obesity is quite biased. Someone who has cancer is not cancerous. But a person with obesity is obese. I am a fat person. Okay, I am a fat person but more precisely, I am a person with fat. I am a lot of other things in addition. And it is no good that a person with fat is automatically judged by many to be less worthy. I am fortunate that my sense of self-worth is much more powerful that someone else's sense of my worth, but that is not true for so many others.
Last night, just by coincidence, part of Samantha Bee's rerun show was a segment on exactly this topic. She had two fat people write the piece so it was automatically more attuned to the experiences of fat folks. They documented that doctors often have a bias against people with obesity, knowing nothing more than their BMI (a pretty dodgy number, if you ask me). On a first meeting, these people are already found to be morally deficient, like smokers. Lani had this experience years ago when she felt totally pigeon-holed by a doctor, and she was so mad about it that she didn't go back to the doctor for years. I have to say that my current team of doctors has never once made me feel that I am less worthy of good attention, and I have noticed that something has changed in the last five or ten years -- my chart always mentions OBESITY but the doctors talk more about lifestyle issues.
As a sensitive medical student with a mother with obesity, Alissa has thought a bunch about this topic. She will be alert to the possibility of automatic bias. As she says, we just don't know people when we first look at them. We have to know them better. She grew up in a house with an overweight and active and very empowered mother. And as a mother, I was conscious that I didn't want my daughters to grow up with any food issues or body issues. I wanted them to be healthy and whatever size they were. At the moment they are still young and beautiful (I was once much more beautiful than I thought at the time, but isn't that true of all of us) and their bodies are just perfect, but it could easily happen that over time they will get to be more like me. If they are as safe in their sense of self-worth as I am, then they should be fine. And so should their children. Of course Benjamin is like Jon -- they have a whole different body type to enjoy.
All of this is NOT to say that I don't wish I were less fat. I do. About twenty years ago I went through Weight Watchers, lost forty pounds with a good attitude, felt happy but a little chilly, and then over the next five years or so I gained it all back, and more. Just like most people. What I learned from that was the maintenance part of the routine made me unhappy about my life. I hated keeping track and thinking about food all the time. I eat a healthy diet but I undoubtedly eat more than my body can burn. But I found that I was unwilling to swap my mental happiness in order to fight that hard to stay that thin. Some people can do it, and that is awesome. I decided instead to eat the best food I could and to try really hard not to keep gaining weight. That is what works for me. And then can we please stop thinking about it.
I have a whole new set of readers with this blog and many of you might not know that I can rant about lots of things. I hope you are happy in your bodies and you eat the healthiest diet you can possibly manage and that you are physically active. Almost all the young people I know are gorgeous and fit and excellent eaters, so I am super optimistic about those people. But I know I live in a total bubble of white privilege and there are thousands of people with obesity who are judged daily and it hurts them in so many ways.
All you people who are not fat, be aware of your biases. Those of us with obesity have enough challenges without having to deal with your judgments about us. I am sure that people with fat have the same biases because we all are in the same culture, so you people with fat are not exempt from this diatribe.
This is a good topic to share amongst your thoughtful peeps. There has been a movement of fat acceptance for a while now, where it is not only okay, but even celebrated. I'm sure you can google it. I also listened once to an interview on Fresh Air I think from someone who has struggled with weight forever and she made it so crystal clear exactly what you say at the end of your essay: Those of us with obesity have enough challenges without having to deal with your judgments about us.
ReplyDeletegood thoughts hana, thanks ellen
I agree this is a great topic! Hana, I can appreciate your struggle with fat all these years. As a health care provider it is hard to strike the right balance between encouraging people with fat to get to a healthy weight one way or another, and appreciating them the way they are and not being preachy about stuff they have doubtless heard more times than they can count. I feel an obligation to at least try to do some education. There are still some people who are drinking juice and soda and those are nobody's friends. I've had patients with gestational diabetes who have been forced by being motivated to have a healthy baby to change their diets--and some who stayed with the diet at least somewhat after they delivered because they felt better and had finally learned what a healthy diet looked like. I have loads of patients with fat and I love them and I hope they don't feel judged. They keep coming back, at least!
ReplyDeleteAmen!!!!!!
ReplyDelete