When I first went to my doctor, he told me I “ought to” lose weight. I told him (gently but firmly) that I had no interest in doing so, and he accepted that at face value.

Flash forward six months and I’m dealing with some bizarre digestive problem that’s making me lose weight. My doctor is a good guy and is helping me pursue the problem, but was still shocked – shocked! – that I don’t at least feel more energetic and healthy now. (Actually I feel a bit less so – one of the reasons I fought for the weight in the first place was because my energy level is so much better at that size. I don’t want to be like my skinny friend who – bless his heart! – is exhausted by kayaking across a tiny lake with me.)

He asked me, “Don’t you feel like breaking into a run sometimes when you’re walking now?” and I said, “Yes – but less than I did at 240 pounds.” I could literally see him wrestling with the concept (I think he qualifies as “overweight” as well).

My mother is dieting, and she swears it makes her feel better, that her knees hurt less, etc. If it works for her, great, but I suspect it’s treating her body better and finding forms of exercise that don’t stress her joints that’s doing most of the good. That or the placebo effect – they should do a study on whether the placebo effect is intensified when the patient has to do more work…

I’m also trying to get my husband to listen to me and ask his doctor to, I don’t know, RUN SOME TESTS to see what’s going on with him instead of just repeating like a fucking robot “lose weight, lose weight, lose weight” every check up for YEARS now. Because he’s fat so obviously nothing can possibly be wrong with him that losing weight won’t cure (never mind that he’s lost and regained 100 lbs twice and smaller amounts countless times over the past 20 years – he’s obviously not one of the 5%).

Wait, I went on a tangent there. Doctors. That’s a rant for another day.

Plus, mental health sometimes has direct consequences for physical health…

That said, I completely agree with Rachel – although it sometimes can be very, very hard to find a doctor that is truly willing to look beyond body size (at least that is my experience).

All of this makes the remarks of doctors particularly infuriating when they tell me I need to lose weight *despite* my explanation that “normal” BMI is underweight for me.

There are doctors out there who are more understanding of weight concerns and who can see past fatness. If your doctors are this demoralizing, I would suggest seeking out a new doctor who doesn’t encourage disordered behaviors. One of the reasons I rarely went to the doctor in my early twenties is because he always lectured me on my weight. After learning about my past experiences with eating disorders, my current doctor, who is very tiny and petite, never once addresses my weight.

I know many doctors have bought into the while fat is unhealthy rhetoric, but what they can’t see is that mental health is sometimes much more important than one’s physical health. And harping on one’s weight is usually conducive neither to good physical or mental health.

I hate that I am still so easily influenced by lopsided societal norms. The instant I stop thinking, I instinctively revert to the hungry = pure baseline for personal judgment. I want to fulfill the expectations of culture. I had to seek out and receive a kick in the ass from Hanne Blank before I could give myself *permission* to want to be with my short fat husband, who is perfect for me, just because I’m not *supposed* to be attracted to fat. (See every billboard? See every TV show? Such an unnatural fetish!) Being told I’ve lost weight still makes me glow when I ought to be annoyed. My favorite photographs are the ones where all bulges are smoothed. So much of my head space is still defined by an unhealthy inherited culture. Reason keeps the worst of it at bay, but still… still. I don’t know how to actually be free.

Not spamming at all, Aebhel!

And Fillyjonk is the genius behind this post, but thanks for the kind words about the blog.

I’m one of those people who has a metabolism like a furnace – I’ve been skinny my whole life, to the point that, when I ran track in high school, I would actually gain weight from getting in shape. I’ve always been baffled by the assumptions some people make about the state of my health or how well I take care of myself simply because I’m thin, and especially baffled by the moral ‘arguments’ along those lines. There’s nothing ‘moral’ about my protruding hipbones; I have them because my mother had them, and my father had them, and their mothers and fathers before them…it’s not an achievement and even if it were I can’t see how it could be considered a particularly admirable one.

I’m sorry if I’m spamming, you’re just articulating a lot of things that I’ve felt for a long time. Thank you.