When do I just accept that I am fat and just stop trying to lose weight?

At what point do I give up the ghost of the thin person I hope to be?

As a friend said to me while playing devil's advocate, "If you've been fighting (your weight) this long, you're probably not going to win."

If I truly can't win, then what?

This is a question overweight people do not ask themselves.

Because we are never supposed to think it. Our every moment must be spent in constant pursuit of weight loss. When we aren't dieting, we are always thinking about dieting. We are Captain Ahab seeking the Thin White Whale.

We are told — through medical decrees, commercials, movies and books — that it is our duty to lose weight. Other people are encouraged, with Bible verses and happy posters, to accept themselves just as they are — but when we try to join that parade we are met with a halting hand and a voice that says, "Whoa. That doesn't include you folks."

All of us — you and me included — are members of the jury that judges obese people. The law of our land is simple: To be fat is unacceptable.

You may balk at that inference. You may say, "Not me. I accept everyone, no matter how fat or thin they are."

But think of how you react when someone you know loses weight. You congratulate them. You may even say they are an inspiration and "look great."

So? What's the problem with that? I'll explain it by sharing this story from a blog by J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books and one of the richest women in the world: "I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? 'You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!'

" 'Well,' I said, slightly nonplussed, 'the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby.'

"What I felt like saying was, 'I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?' But no — my waist looked smaller. Forget the kid and the book. Finally, something to celebrate!"

If a woman like Rowling, who earns an estimated $7 every second, has to contend with society's judgment of success based on her body size, there seems to be little hope of any of us escaping a similar fate.

That leaves fat people with two choices in response: change our size or simply stop giving a damn. I've been trying to change my size for 27 years. That hasn't gone so well.

I guess that means I need to stop giving a damn.

There are a few brave people out there who have done just that.

Chief among them are some bloggers who write for sites like Rotund, Fat Fu, Big Fat Deal or the F-Word. They write about fat issues of all sizes. They regularly challenge the notion that fat people can't truly be happy and that there is an obesity epidemic. They are part of the Fat Acceptance Movement — a grassroots campaign that advocates against the discrimination of fat people. They also believe that punishing our bodies to fit the "perfect" ideal makes us more unhealthy overall.

One study may prove them somewhat correct.

Researchers from Ohio State University found that women who accept their bodies — no matter what their size — choose healthier food because they eat only when hungry.

"The message that women often hear is that some degree of body dissatisfaction is healthy because it could help them strive to take care of their bodies," said Tracy Tylka, co-author of the study, during an interview in Research News. "But it may be just the opposite: an appreciation of your body is needed to really adopt better eating habits."

I guess it's clear: If I truly want to be healthy, both physically and emotionally, I need to give up on trying to lose weight and learn to love all 267 pounds of myself.

Great. And that should still leave me time, later in the day, to part the Red Sea and heal a few lepers.


How hard is it to accept your body as it is when you are more than 100 pounds overweight? Christine will give it a try for
24 hours and let you know. To read about it, go to her blog at etastesantafe.com.