By Amanda Martinez Beck
This is a good book. It is an important book for people like myself who have struggled with weight gain and loss and maintenance throughout life. My BMI right now is 10 pounds “overweight”. And yet I’ve been as much as 57 pounds “overweight”. I have also had a healthy BMI, on occasion, for a few years here or there. So, there is a lot I agree with in Amanda’s book.
All bodies are “good” bodies. Yes, I agree. Our bodies protect us and do their best to heal from various sicknesses, diseases, broken bones, aches, pains and other ailments. Regardless of whether your body or my body, fit the stereotypes we consider “gorgeous,” “healthy,” “handsome,” “beautiful,” “sexy,” and “acceptable,” our bodies are none-the-less “good.”
Every body has the right to take up space—and as much space as their body needs. Yes, I think this is true. I am not only large in my weight, but also very tall. When Amanda mentioned plane seats not being big enough, I agreed particularly because of my height. I do wish airlines would be more accommodating and put in larger seats, meaning that they would have to sell fewer tickets per flight.
I especially related to what Amanda had to say about larger people seeing doctors. When doctors don’t take illnesses seriously and blame everything on being “overweight,” this hardly treats the whole person or helps them with the situation they are in right now in which there body is on the larger side of life and has issues that can and should be investigated and treated. “Fat” people need adequate, holistic medical treatment as much as anyone.
I found it uncomfortable that Amanda likes the word “fat,” and wants to transform its use from insult to descriptive fact. But I certainly appreciate when Amanda advocates for “fat” people not being equated to “unhealthy” people. Health is not relative to body size. Weight might play a factor in health, but it is only one factor.
I even appreciated Amanda’s re-interpretation of the word “gluttony.” I definitely felt guilty of “gluttony” and “laziness” as an “overweight” child. It is difficult to establish whether a person is eating too much, or exercising too little if they cannot exercise at all (due to illness or injury etc), and if they are, in fact, hungry and craving certain types of foods. When she talked about cutting out certain types of food and how this only led to binge eating those foods after the abstinence period, I could see very well how this is more problematic for a person’s health because yo-yo dieting (abstaining from certain foods for a period of time) doesn’t work. Lifestyle change is the only thing I have found to work, and quite frankly, lifestyle change is rarely permanent. Our eating “lifestyle” adapts to our communities and environments all the time.
I think where I struggled most with this book was that it felt like it might be leaning in the opposite extreme, away from being holistically healthy, to saying it actually doesn’t matter what you eat and whether or not you exercise at all. I found this leaning unconvincing. I don’t want to go to the extreme of saying “it is okay to be fat” (as chapter four is titled), in other words, it is okay for everyone to always be fat. I’m not convinced. While I agree that some “fat” and “overweight” people are arguably and even measurably more healthy than some of the people who “look” healthy or who we have been taught to see as healthy—body builders are often far heavier and can even look “fat” but may be “healthier” than people who don’t exercise with weights. That does not mean that everything we eat or every aspect of our lifestyle is healthy. Amanda argues that health is not the goal. We all suffer from lack of health in various areas, probably all the time. I can agree with that. And our bodies are good because they are our homes, from which we develop relationships with other people. Relationship is the point, or is more important than health, according to Amanda.
I don’t disagree that relationships are a higher goal and desire and need, than the aim to be “healthy.” But I think it is beneficial to focus on physical health some of the time. Just as we are encouraged to seek medical advice when our bodies feel sick, shouldn’t we also have some motivation toward eating healthier foods, listening to hunger cues and also fullness cues, listening to our bodies about the nutrients they actually crave. For instance, if you crave a piece of cake, perhaps you could eat a piece of fruit first (knowing that you are probably craving sugar and/or carbohydrates) and then still eat your piece of cake, but likely not return for a second piece because the combination of fruit and cake hopefully made you full enough not to want a second piece? There are so many tricks we can learn that can lend to a healthier over-all diet, without following a super strict yo-yo diet that is likely to fail.
I have never dieted! And yet at one period in my life I lost 66 pounds over the course of about 18 months. I have never gained the same amount of weight back. At most I came close to my “fattest” weight while pregnant with my second child, and it took a long time for me to decrease that weight. My weight is still fluctuating and is higher than I want it, and my BMI is considered “overweight.” I don’t think BMI is an accurate or realistic measurement. I agree that there are many more contributing factors when looking at a person’s overall health. But I don’t think desiring and aiming to be more healthy is wrong. And I don’t think that having a piece of cake or an ice cream or some other “unhealthy” food is the worst possible thing, either. I want to believe in moderation. I don’t want to go to either extreme of a restrictive diet or simply saying “I am fat and I will always be fat and it doesn’t matter to me.”
I don’t think people in society should be so harsh about judging other people’s bodies and their weight. I agree with Amanda on this, and I liked how she talked about fat discrimination in movies and how she processed various movie scenes (like on Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) with her kids. There should definitely be a wide variety of bodies on television just as there are in reality, and no one should be discriminated against for their size, skin-color, accent, ethnicity, gender, sexuality etc. Diversity is a beautiful thing. Acceptance is beautiful, and I would also have to argue that it is a lot easier to become healthier when we are more accepting of ourselves the way we are!!!
It is, in my experience, easier to lose weight from a place of embracing my body with its limitations, age, height and other factors, than from a place of dislike and punishment. I agree with the sentiment that we should not be punishing our bodies or viewing our bodies as a form of punishment because of the way they look or how we might feel “trapped” in our bodies. We have to embrace our skin-color, eye-color, hair texture, birthmarks and freckles and moles, our biological sex and the fact that we menstruate, or have erections, or both, or neither, or whatever. We need body acceptance, YES! And yet our bodies change every day. They “age” every day. They digest food, they expel waste, they fight disease, they are good bodies like Amanda says! And because they are changing all the time, we can embrace our reality today, and also aim toward health in the now and in the future. We can make healthy adaptations ourselves—realistic ones. And we can work on our health, just as our body is working on digesting and pooping. Bodies are not static. They are in process. They are growing, adapting and changing. Body acceptance is a good thing. And acceptance of change is also a good thing. Learning about healthy change, well, I don’t see anything wrong with that personally.
I hope this review is helpful. I appreciate Amanda’s book. I love “fat” people. I am “fat.” I have “fat” friends and family. And I also think it is okay and good to aim toward health. Not all bodies are the same, and some people have more health struggles than others, it seems. I get it. Improving health, including overall quality of life, including mental health and body acceptance seems to me to be to our overall benefit as individuals and societies.
Thank you, Amanda, for your wonderful contribution to such a complex topic.