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11:54am May 23, 2012

Reason #53767 that fat hatred is not about our health.

I eat pretty healthy food for the most part, other than at the end of the month when I can’t afford it. (Subs are always surprised when they see all the veggies I eat.) But there’s one junk food I eat a little too much of at times, that I’m interested in cutting down on because of a family history of high cholesterol (including on one side of the family, so high that it can’t possibly be from diet or exercise habits) and heart disease, stroke, etc. My dad just had to have surgery on a neck artery, and he’s one of a small number of male relatives to live past the 45-65 age range. Cutting it down wouldn’t result in much if any weight loss but it would make me healthier.

Problem? My relationship to food has been so fucked up by fat hatred that I can’t just approach this in the straightforward manner it deserves. It’s complicated by a history of orthorexia, an eating disorder that basically amounts to following an overly restrictive diet in an obsessive way that fucks up your health and often results in some level of malnutrition. But even without that it’s complicated.

And I can’t ask for help. Anywhere. Because I’m not interested in losing weight for its own sake and practically everyone around me is. Even thin people I know are obsessed with staying that way. And some of them are even worse – obsessed with making everyone else thin. I once sat through a horribly classist discussion where people with a good deal of influence, tried to think up ways to design uncomfortable chairs for call center workers so they would be forced to get up and move around. It became very obvious that none of them had been a call center worker or known any very well, because the ways this won’t work (but will fuck up people’s lives) are legion. But my input into that conversation was unwanted and therefore ignored.

And spending just one week around some weight-obsessed thin people I know made me glad to come home, food and weight and “health” came up in every conversation. And they weren’t worried about Prednisone’s effect on my mood or immune system but they sure wanted me off it for my appetite. Which isn’t very big when off Prednisone. Often I force myself to eat. People don’t believe me. This morning I couldn’t even finish half a bowl of oatmeal, and I keep stalling about lunch.

So anyway. I can’t ask anyone for help because they’d shift their attention to my weight and do more of the same damage that makes it hard to cut back on this food already. And that’s pissing me off.