Well, it happened. I gave up on my healthy eating/fitness plan that I wrote about a few weeks ago. I knew this was likely to happen, because I knew people would say things to me about it and I would fall for those things. There are a lot of folks out there that think a person should never actively try to lose weight – that it means you’re “falling for the diet industry’s claims” and that you should instead “learn to love yourself just the way you are.” The way that I lose weight when I’m actively doing it is pretty much unrelated to the diet industry. I use a free workout plan (downloadable online) which has intentionally been made for people to do at home without a gym membership or spending any money. It’s emphasis is on eating well to fuel your body. For me, that means buying a lot of apples, carrots, lettuce, nuts, and eggs, and eating every 2-3 hours to maintain constant blood sugar levels. It’s made for people who want to join the military, be firefighters, and police officers. Not anorexic people who lie around and can’t move due to lack of nutrients.
Also, “who I am” is not “fat.” You know? It’s not an intrinsic part of who I am. That’s like saying, “don’t learn how to read and write and do math. That’s a bad idea. You need to learn to love yourself just the way you are – as a person who doesn’t know things.”
It’s stupid, but I fell for this garbage anyways. Because the idea is that I’m only working out if I hate myself (which is, of course, “bad” and I don’t want anyone to think that I hate myself). But here’s the thing. I DO kind of hate myself. Even though I’m not supposed to. I gained this weight in the first place because I hate myself. When I’m not actively forcing myself on a healthy, structured eating plan, I’m eating food from a drive-thru. And I don’t mean once in a while. I mean every single day. As someone who actually likes to cook, I don’t even like most of the food I buy from Taco Bell or McDonald’s, but I do it anyways. I love making myself ache for the real food people are eating – people who have partners and families and children, who are eating real food from their kitchens – while I need to eat garbage, alone, to punish myself for being a failure in life.
This may sound excessive or extreme, but it isn’t. Eating and depression have a long history. My own grandmother was severely overweight before she passed away – to the extent that she could only walk a few steps before needing to sit down – and that was because of the link for her between depression and food. As a very devout religious woman, drinking and doing drugs were not options as coping mechanisms. But eating was. And, I think, as long as the opportunity to harm ourselves with food has been available, someone has been doing it.
This is not to say that every overweight person is overweight due to not liking themselves. Or that they’re unhealthy. Or that they’re unattractive. Or anything else. Because I’m not really talking about anyone else – I’m talking about myself. I am not attractive at this weight — and that’s because this weight is built out of self hatred. And staring at my fat rolls in the mirror while saying, “I love you, you are a part of me,” (yes, some of my feminist friends recommend that) – that’s just not a love affair I’m interested in having.
People tell me that my idea that I’m more “dateable” when I’ve lost weight is a “toxic idea” and that I need to let go of it immediately. That I shouldn’t want to waste my time with anyone who would judge me on my size. First off, I date men, particularly men who date men. And I’m sorry, there’s a lot of judging going on, even if no gay guys want to openly admit it. Just scan your local Craigslist postings for Men For Men: You’ll see how “You be HWP” (height/weight proportionate) is attached to almost every posting. Is that bad? Yes, probably. But can I, transgender queer man who has so far slept with exactly two men in his entire life, march around and turn this tide by myself to force people to be attracted to me and others at whatever weight we weigh? No. This is an entire culture that has been going on for decades. And it is unrealistic for anyone to put that burden on me, as if it is easier for me to change a culture and the aesthetic opinions of hundreds of men, rather than lose twenty or thirty pounds.
Secondly, I do think people are more “dateable” when they are more confident in their bodies (even if that’s the wrong thing to think). In my case, that means being physically fit enough to not have to ask a partner for breaks during sex because I don’t have the ability to do any physical activity for more than a few minutes at a time. It means being able to have clothes fit me right. It means not having to run to the bathroom on a date because my digestive system is doing wacky stuff because of all the junk food I eat. And it means not having to ask to turn off the lights when I take my clothes off with someone.
I don’t understand why people have such negative reactions to this. I don’t understand why I get such vehement pushback. Why people who call themselves my friends would want me to have my circulation cut off by my socks because my ankles are so swollen, why they think the best thing is for me to be proud of my own lack of self-care. Most of all, I don’t understand why I listen.
These last few months have not been easy for me. Well, okay, the last year – or more – has not been easy for me, but the last few months have been especially rough. And while my doctor has been prodding me to exercise because of my rapid weight gain and my increased cholesterol, the reality is that those things were getting worse because I was eating a lot of junk food, and I was doing that because I was depressed and anxious, and because I was depressed and anxious, I wasn’t about to go work out. Indeed, I’ve been spending most of my evenings these last months sitting in my apartment with the lights off, mulling, analyzing, and thinking myself in and out of circles.
Amorphous Amphibian 