It matters that you eat enough

It matters that you eat things you love

It matters that you care more about nourishing and energy than your jean size

It matters that you want to listen to your body

It matters that you want to nourish your body with lots of different foods

It matters that you understand that there is no perfect eating

It matters that you know that your body wants to be healthy

It matters that you know that your body can handle a lot (and always has)

It matters that you know that you don’t have to so precious about eating the perfect amount

It matters that you stop striving for food perfection because it doesn’t exist

It matters that you start feeding your soul and your other hungers

It matters that you continually feed your physical hunger

It matters that you feed yourself, well, often, lovingly, every damn day, many times a day

It matters that chicken, spinach, and brownies all be seen as equal

It matters that you get out of your own way so your body can start telling you what it wants

It matter what you put in your mouth

You’re more than a robot who lives on lean cuisine pellets

It matters that you feed yourself and that you feed yourself well, and you let go of the dogma and obsession surrounding what you put in your mouth.

It’s time.

PS. My Life Recovery Program is finally open again! Join us now at the early bird price.

And if you haven’t seen my second webinar, the replay is here.

Fuck it.

What we think we know about weight is so so wrong.

Did you know that putting on weight easily is actually the sign of an efficient metabolism? And someone who burns weight quickly has an inefficient metabolism? Yea, because in famines? Caput! Goodbye skinny people with your inefficient metabolisms! (Including myself!)

Did you know that people who are “overweight” actually live longer than their smaller bodied friends? Life spans have lengthened alongside our rising weight over the last few decades. (I mean really, I think this is the biggest piece of info! Let this sink in!)

Did you know social factors and stressors have more to do with your health than health habits? Meaning that feelings of powerlessness, shame, or experiencing prejudice, and the stress that comes with sub par living conditions or unjust social conditions are worse for you than poor health habits?*

Feeling powerless is worse for you than poor health habits!*

Feeling powerless is worse for you than poor health habits!*

Ok. Just making sure you got that.

Did you know that beauty is subjective and learned? And what we think of as beauty changes in fads every few years. As long as we let big businesses decide for us what is beautiful and “worthy”, there will always be groups who don’t know they are allowed to feel beautiful.

This is actress and singer, Lillian Russell, was one of the biggest beauty icons in the late 19th century.

Did you know that the BMI chart was created/funded by the weight loss industry?*

Did you know that joyful exercise is good for you even if you don’t lose weight?*

Why do we never hear about this? Cultural weight bias. We’re scared. We think that what we think we know is right.

It’s like when Galileo said the world was actually round and people were like HELL NO THIS EARTH IS FLAT YOU HERETIC. And they killed him.

And he was totally right.

People are so, so scared of things that are outside their current beliefs.

We believe that weight is unhealthy and it has seeped into every crack of our consciousness.

We believe that what is considered beautiful today is what beauty actually is.

We also have all these association with gaining weight. “It’s uncomfortable. It’s ugly. It’s lack of control. It’s unhealthy.” These are things we believe so strongly that they become true. We really do have that power, especially in our perception of what is happening.

Personally? I believed that once I lost weight, my hormonal problems would go away. And they didn’t. Losing weight arguably made things worse. And the pursuit of weight loss absolutely made things worse. Poorer sleep. Worse sugar metabolism. More stress.

I am not saying…

I am not saying that every person in this world is healthy or living their best life. I am not saying every fat person** is healthy. But to assume that weight is the cause and cure of all health problems is misguided and almost certainly missing the point.

What I am saying is that our weight fear-mongering is off base. And that every person, healthy or not, deserves respect.

Also to assume that we have the right to be so emotionally invested in other people’s “health” is absurd. We absolutely do not get as emotionally invested in the “health” of smokers and heavy alcohol drinkers, we have to get honest about what we are really focusing on and really afraid of. (Do you know how many smokers smoke so they can try to stay thin? They are not doing it for their health. I used to think “hmmmm if I wasn’t a singer I would totally smoke”… so I could be thin. Yea.)

 

*Lots of this information is from the book Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor.

** Fat is not a bad word

 

After I became weight stable I ate and ate and ate and didn’t gain a pound. I was amazed at the weight regulatory mechanism once I actually healed my metabolism from the diet/binge cycle.

Recently, I gained some weight.

I can still wear my clothes, but some are snug. And it’s enough that people have stopped saying, “Woa you look soooo tiny! What are you doing these days and how can I do it!!?” To which my awkward response was, “Uh, actually I … am an anti-diet writer and I believe in letting your body eat whatever it wants and that will heal your”- at which point they stopped listening or believing me.

It was a weird place to be in, thinner than I almost ever was, but being a body positive, anti-diet, Health at Every Size and fat activist. I felt uncomfortable with it. Half loving that my strange genetic metabolic composition allowed me to be a sneaky voice for the cause, and also half insecure that my fatter followers (fat is not a bad word!) would stop listening because some probably felt I couldn’t possibly understand the prejudice they faced on a daily basis.

So you know why I gained weight?

I think it was a combination of two things: giving up caffeine and getting over a heartbreak.

Giving up caffeine.

Actually, I had a cup of half-caff coffee this morning because I went to an awards show last night and had more alcohol and less sleep than anyone should ever have. But now even just a bit of caffeine makes me feel a little crazy. And most days I drink a decaf.

BIG CHANGE.

After 6 years of true caffeine devotion, mornings that went by in a buzzy haze, and having “coffee” consistently on my little gratitude lists of “my favorite things in life”, I decided Okayyyyyy, Fine. I will do what I never thought I would do …I am ready to give up the mania. (Plus my acupuncturist told me my energy felt nuts almost every time I went in, and I intuitively knew what that meant for me: caffeine. Blah!)

The process of giving it up actually really sucked. So I am not saying “You must give up caffeine”! I only did it because it felt right —even though it also felt horrible. I had tried giving it up a few years back when I went on the Fuck It Diet originally, but ultimately decided I was dealing with too much change and misery already, so I decided to add it back in.

But this time I actually did it (except for today of course but that is because rules are made to be broken!!!). I decided, Hey, I’m just ready to feel calmer. I’m gonna commit to being lethargic and slow and boring if need be. And so I was tired and unmotivated and not quite right for a few months.

And, I gained weight.

I gained weight because I essentially gave up a drug. I gained weight by doing something that made me a bit calmer and healthier.

Heartbreak.

Last year around this time my heart BaROKE. Like, never have I ever experienced the emotional, spiritual, physical ramifications of true inexplicable, soul heartbreak. And when it happened I lost some weight. And I didn’t really put it together until now, but that was the catalyst for my tinier year. That was when I got really small no matter what I ate and people started commenting.

And it took a really long time. And slowly but surely the heartbreak healed. And it took almost year. And right around that time that I quit caffeine, I started feeling healed and back to normal.

And voila, my weight is probably back to where it was before the heartbreak.

You see what this means, right?

Skinny isn’t necessarily healthy or happy. And for me, it was actually two unhealthy, taxing states that my body was experiencing that correlated with the lower weight. The world assumed I was at my healthiest in a time of true internal imbalance.

Low weight is actually often a sign of sickness, misery, and feebleness. Not always, of course, but our societal glorification of it is really skewed.

Healing my emotional self and supporting my physical self are the things that added back on weight, which means that for me (and you) weight is a sign of health, happiness, and healing.

But I know for a fact that if I had not committed to this journey a few years back, this weight gain would have been met with fear, insecurity, worry, dieting, fixation, mumus, and running that I didn’t want to do. It would have just continued that pointless gain/repent cycle.

Instead, I have the chance to gain weight and practice what I preach. To embrace it. To trust that nothing is wrong. To listen even closer to what my body and intuition are saying. And to continue to use my body as a way to enjoy this life, and use it as an instrument to get messages like this one out.

Be a Body Rebel. Take Up Space. Fuck It.