fat shame?

Now Playing: Yellow by Coldplay (you know for you I'd bleed myself dry)

This year I've lost about 9kg, or 20lbs.

I feel goooood.

I feel good because I like the aesthetics of things better - how this curves in, how that curves out, how everything is soft and curvy and pretty. I feel good because I fit into my clothes again and getting dressed isn't a constant battle of shirts that cling funnily or pants that don't button up (although my pants keep falling down, which is slightly annoying). I feel good because I'm not using food as stress relief or as anti-depressants or as a cure for a broken heart.

It doesn't really work, anyway.

Before I lost weight I was under two conflicting pressures - pressure from my family to lose weight, and pressure from other people to somehow accept that the heaviness and the bulkiness and the fatigue and the muffin tops were somehow 'healthy'. Together it was a total mind fuck.

In the end I realized that losing weight was the way to go, and I began blogging about it - because, ya know, that's just what I do.

I got a lot of crap for losing weight. People were accusing me of submitting to pressure, to trying to make myself 'skinny' in a vain attempt to be 'sexy' or 'beautiful', or for being a hypocritical feminist.

I lost weight because I was on the borderline for 'overweight'. I lost weight because for my frame and height I was getting a bit dumpier than I ought to. I lost weight because I have a heart condition and I really should watch my health. I lost weight to look good and feel good, yes, but there's nothing 'unfeminist' about being the best that you can be.

I am not skinny. 9kgs down, I am in no way shape or form 'small' or 'skinny' or 'dangerously thin'. My tummy's still soft and I've still got hips and boobs and ass - like, ya know, normal human beings. Curves are sexy! I have never in my life said: look how pretty those jutting out ribs look on that girl...

Another thing people don't realize is that I LOVE food - I still love food, only now I love it and don't...abuse it. People sometimes accuse me of not eating, but I don't eat for the hell of it, or for fuel - I eat because I love eating. I don't eat (much) at school because I'm not always hungry during school hours, and there's not a lot of healthy and appealing things to eat at school. The moment I get home it's Operation Food...I eat more than most guys do...

A disturbing thing I've noticed recently is that some people have started accepting 'fat' as 'normal', and losing weight as giving in to social pressure rather than giving in to your doctors' pleads for you to not die of a heart attack. If you look at the red carpet now there are still wafer thin peroxide blondes, but there are also an ever increasing number of women who are so obviously dangerously obese, but are 'fat proud'. And nobody can say anything about the danger of promoting obesity as 'healthy', or as a good way to rebel against the thin-love of Hollywood. There are sitcoms now promoting lifestyles that lead to unhealthy weight gain and it's just all bleurgh. Being anorexic is definitely not a good thing, but that doesn't mean that obesity has suddenly become okay.