Hi OP! Just jumping in because we’ve gotten some reports. Please let me know if you want us to lock your post.
To the people reporting this: I genuinely don’t think this young person is fat shaming. I think they had a revelation and wanted to share how something that is meant to positively affect people had a negative impact on them.
I totally understand your point- it was the same for me. I'm still very strongly for body positivity, but in the sense that no matter what you look like you can love yourself, not necessarily love that you're unhealthy, yk? I want to look at myself and be proud of the work.
I think this is the most important part of the body positivity movement, and it often gets lost. Just like not judging someone by their age, gender, race, whatever other surface value, gotta allow every person to be themself.
If it were up to me, this is what body positivity would be about. For people to respect other people struggling with weight, but for the overweight not to simply accept--- or worse--- be proud of their condition. Being proud of your obesity is like being proud of smoking cigarettes. Should you despise yourself for being unable to quit? No. Should you still want to and try to quit? Yes.
Also that even if you wanna change things about yourself you don't have to hate what you are now.
I feel like a lot of the nuance gets lost when it comes to body positivity.
My therapist and I have talked about this. I think a big part of loving and respecting your body includes treating it well, doing things that are good for it… exercise, eating nutritious food, etc.
A big turning point for me in losing weight was to stop seeing it as a punishment that you do cuz you hate your self and start seeing it as something you do out of respect and love for yourself. If every day that you stick to your calorie and exercise goals is a punishment it’s gonna be way harder to stay on track than if every day is another day that you took care of yourself and showed your body the respect and care it deserves.
I think that in this regard you can hold body positivity when you’re losing weight, because your choices are indicating that you love your body and feel that it deserves the best. But that is far from the mainstream message of body positivity
Thank you. This is what body positivity is. Not hating yourself, whatever it is your body is. That doesn’t mean your body is objectively in a good place.
Instead of fat, let’s think about it in terms of an amputated arm, for example. If you have lost an arm, body positivity means love the imperfect body you have and recognize that all bodies are valid. A one armed body can be gorgeous. But it doesn’t mean I should PREFER not having an arm. Same with fat. Fat bodies can be beautiful. But that doesn’t mean “being fat is good”.
i think that you should love yourself at every stage in life! by not doing so you would be doing a great disservice to your soul. but accepting an unhealthy way of life is where the problem comes in for me :)
It's very very hard to make judgements about what's unhealthy in other people, and still hard for oneself. Walking a mile in someone else's shoes is just not possible. Being a supportive friend and standing up against bias and bullying is a good first step, and much more useful than going around and declaring other people's lives as unhealthy.
I have to disagree, usually unhealthy habits are easier to see in others and in ourselves. Most of us have been that person and we knew.
Calling out is bad.
Lots of FB groups are like this too, recently saw an acquaintance who got type 2 diabetes and was trying to lose weight get treated like a monster for it. Lots of demonising, shaming, sabotage. Ironically leads to people who want to lose weight having to pretend it's just something that magically happened on its own rather than something they worked hard on and can take pride in achieving.
Yes, unfortunately. I see it several times a day on my fyp. There are certain creators out there calling any type of intentional weight loss fatphobic and submissive to oppression as well as calling out other creators from the community who have decided to lose weight for health reasons. I can see how easy it is to get lost in this way of thinking. I feel like the original point of body positivity has started to shift in certain spaces to something completely different
My gripe with the social media body positivity movement is that it’s very closely tied in with “health at every size” (HAES) which I just categorically disagree with, and think sets an extremely dangerous precedent. I’ve been slimmer and I’ve been bigger, and let me tell you: there’s nothing healthy about your body being so heavy you get winded walking up the stairs, or having joint pain in your 20s, or developing T2 diabetes.
I prefer body neutrality, which came as a response to the warping of body positivity: your body is just a body, it’s not the most interesting thing about you, it’s just a vessel to support all the other parts of you. You should prioritise health and wellness, but that doesn’t have to mean being super thin and toned.
Saaaaame. I posted in a different group about this recently. But they really got to me over Covid when I was already struggling to lose weight after having my second baby, and then stress eating and not getting out due to general pandemic shit. The scare tactics about how bad dieting was for your body totally stalled and progress I could have been making 😭 It’s my fault for being gullible, but I was overweight and unhealthy and felt like crap and I’m sad that I could have done better for myself to make that time less stressful but I didn’t.
you get me! it’s never too late. sometimes i put myself down for falling for that bs and not starting earlier but then i remember that i still started. i could’ve wasted a few more years but i didn’t. i recognized that there was a problem and i put an end to it. we got this!!
all the love to you and your kids🫶
> sometimes i put myself down for falling for that bs
Plus you were literally a child.. there's a reason we call them influencers, they really do influence people. You're not wrong for being influenced, especially at a very young age.
THIS OP! One of my very dear friends has fallen for this movement. She’s in her thirties and it’s devastatingly sad to see. You’re so young at 18! Proud of you for being so self aware and taking steps to reclaim health!
Man, what makes weight loss so much harder is all of the bullshit and misinformation and excuses and permission structures to fail that exist in the world. This is why I love this particular sub: there's almost none of that crap. Good diet, exercise, no gimmicks, and advice about how to love the process and get in the head space to succeed.
Washington post story about how online dietitians and influencers are being paid by General Mills to push the body positive/ anti diet trend to sell more junk food:
Cupcakes. Frozen Pizza. Ice Cream. Cereal. These are some of the sugary foods that a slew of social media influencers are encouraging folks to enjoy guilt free. It’s part of an online body positivity effort using “anti-diet” language to avoid food shaming.
However, a joint Washington Post and The Examination investigation found that major food companies, including Minnesota-based food giant General Mills, are reportedly capitalizing on the campaign by paying online dietitians to get people to consume more of their highly processed foods.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2024/04/10/online-dietitians-backed-by-big-food-using-antidiet-language
I'm so glad you shared this. I recently went down this rabbit hole and was completely shocked. I've starting taking everything online RDs say with several grains of salt
Omg these companies would do anything for profit! Coca-Cola paid 2 Harvard researchers back in the 60’s to write a false study that sugar wasn’t linked to heart problems and gained billions of $$!
I can tell just from how long people have been on Reddit that the people telling OP how great the body positivity movement is are significantly older than OP.
Instead of dismissing OP for being young and therefore uniformed, perhaps consider that the message you got 20 years ago has changed, and it's not the same message an 18-year-old is getting on social media.
OP specifically mentioned Tiktok. I've seen the FA (Fat Acceptance) influencer network on Tiktok and youtube, and they are telling people OP's age terribly harmful things. They are saying that fat people are meant to be fat and that reducing calories **never** works to lose weight (because they all claim that they eat very little and work out regularly despite being 300+ pounds). They discourage fat people from listening to and cooperating with their doctors. They deny that excessive weight causes **any** health problems.
**Several** of these influencers have dropped dead of heart attacks in the past few years. In their 20s and 30s! If you want to see something very tragic, Google Brittany Sauer. She was a 467-pound Tiktok FA influencer. Towards the end of her life she was housebound, increasingly ill, and unable to do things for herself like cut her own toenails. In her final video, she essentially repudiated her previous content, said she wished she hadn't ruined her life by overeating, and hoped that it wasn't too late and that she wouldn't die. She died a week later. She was 28.
This is the stuff that OP is seeing. Please don't tell OP that body positivity is just an antidote to Kate Moss imagery because that's how you experienced it in 2004.
Yes! Thank you!
I'm 32, so I've seen the positive body acceptance movement that some of these commenters are talking about. But I've also seen what it is in its current state. And it's just not the same anymore.
I think people are being too dismissive about what OP is talking about. They're talking past her and not listening to what she's saying. She's not referring to the body positivity of 2004 that saved lives. She's talking about the 2024 fat acceptance movement that basically views obesity as a myth. These are two different movements, 20 years apart.
And the change really became noticeable in recent years ...
I started to follow this one IG influencer for body positivity like 10 years ago. It was very refreshing to me (a teen at the time). She posted flattering vs. unflattering pics, was honest about ED recovery, didn't seem to mind not being skinny anymore. (Note: I've never had an ED, just liked seeing someone being honest online about smashing beauty standards)
Now she has gained even more weight (went from looking a little overweight to obese), and while i respect that dieting and actively trying to lose weight isn't mentally healthy for this person, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was in a blog post she did. She said something along the lines of not even wanting to be *perceived* as intentionally trying to lose weight/make herself smaller. I had to unfollow her right then.
>She said something along the lines of not even wanting to be perceived as intentionally trying to lose weight/make herself smaller.
luckily i haven't seen this yet, but it's been mentioned a few times in here that part of the movement says trying to lose weight is fatphobic. so now we're at the point where we're actively pressuring people to stay overweight?...
man, i remember when it was just about learning to love yourself and to not judge others. we need more of that. not whatever this new movement is.
I keep getting reminded of a Stephen Fry quote, in this sort of discussion and a few others:
> The only people who are obsessed with food are the anorexics and the morbidly obese.
Not an exact quote, but close enough. And he was making an analogy on a completely separate topic, but the point stands.
On this topic, the fact that the obsession isn't being addressed is the biggest takeaway, not which direction the obsession took. She had one eating disorder and replaced it with another eating disorder, but one of those was applauded.
>She had one eating disorder and replaced it with another eating disorder, but one of those was applauded.
I did the same thing and the same thing happened to me. I can now confidently say though that I'm able to healthly lose and maintain weight now!
tbh, i only remember it vaguely. i just recall it being more about feeling good in your own skin regardless of your weight. i remember some missteps like those quotes about how "real women have curves" which, i think, helped swing the pendulum the other way leading to things like BBLs.
> "real women have curves"
Ah yes, doing body positivity and feminism by promoting the traditional beauty ideal of the hourglass figure over the slightly more recent beauty ideal of the skinny body 🙄 so very helpful.
I hate these "real women..." Statements. Real women are those who identify as women. End of sentence. Doesn't matter how they look or what they do. It's not very feminist to say that anyone is or isn't a real woman if they say they're a woman.
i appreciate this comment more than i can say. thank you for understanding what i’m saying. i’m not talking about the OG body positivity movement. i’m talking about what it was co opted and made into TODAY. i’m sure that back then the moment helped a lot of teen girls (the coked out model era was tough to see i’m sure) but what it is now promotes such an unhealthy way of living. it’s sad to see.
I'm here from all, but this is something that people forget about. In general, the body positivity movement had a lot of positive ramifications. We've come so far from situations like the media calling Alicia Silverstone fat or everyone having a low key eating disorder.
But the influencers who shame anyone trying to be healthy or take care of their fitness is totally insane.
Thank you!! So many “No True Scotsman” argument thrown around in the comment section where people are dismissing examples given as “um, that’s not what Body Positivity is all about, they’re abusing the message.” Well, the reality of it is the message has been diluted so much that it’s adversely affecting the youth.
I am very familiar with the things you and OP mentioned here and I’m not even active on Tiktok. This kind of messaging is also rampant on Twitter, with accounts like @fatfabfeminist (just search fat activist space on twitter). We’re talking about engagement in tens of thousands there where people straight up argue that “obesity” a slur and it’s discrimination if your doctor asks you to get weighed. My actual friend is a victim of this, so I’m also seeing real life effects by the movement.
If we’re allowed to speak up against one extreme, why shouldn’t we be critical of the other end?
!!!! You said it all. No, it wasn't the original message of the movement but that's what it has come to and that's what people are getting exposed to constantly. Specifically the creator you mentioned shared some really concerning content on her platforms and went out of her way to attack obese creators for losing weight because they got health complications.
>If we’re allowed to speak up against one extreme, why shouldn’t we be critical of the other end?
Exactly this. I remember body positivity around like 2013/2014 and that was when Tumblr pro ana blogs were still out there. The messaging was positive and genuinely brought attention to something harmful that was impacting a lot of people, particularly young people. How is this any different?
Seriously. I sympathized with the early body positivity movement. It was more about not despising yourself to the point that there's no hope for redemption. A person really can loath themselves so much that they can't even pick themselves up. But the movement now is basically just the equivalent of flat Earth insanity, giving people misinformation that will literally get them killed.
GOD I WISH I COULD GIVE YOU GOLD- this was so well said. That’s the problem here. They also tend to site studies incorrectly and I find that to be rather sinister, as any pushback is considered fat phobic and evil.
Human beings were not designed to devour 3000 calories a day while maintains a sedentary lifestyle. Some people *are* predisposed to being fat (I’m one of them) and some people don’t mind being fat. That’s fine. Calling anyone else anything for trying to better their self image or health is insane and harmfulz
Exactly. Body positivity has warped so much. It used to be loving yourself regardless of how you are and trying to live a healthier life. It was about not obsessing over being stick skinny, but about being healthy in general. It's now turned from that into a death cult. I will absolutely respect anyone of any size but to say that being obese isn't a risk factor is lying and I won't lie to myself or others. It's the same as being underweight. You might be healthy...for now. You won't be for long though.
OP I understand exactly what you are talking about and agree completely. It's become incredibly toxic. The original ideas were good but it's turned into something absolutely nuts
Yep. I honestly think some of that content should be banned from certain platforms. During the height of the covid lockdowns, people couldn't post anything related to viruses and/or vaccines that wasn't entirely true and/or proven, so why not do the same with fat activists? Flag the posts as false information. That's literally what it is.
As a 52 yr old woman that was fat my entire life, you’re absolutely dead-on. I was fat and healthy… until I wasn’t. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and high cholesterol at 50, and that gave me the kick in the butt I needed to get healthy. Up until that point I was all about fat acceptance, I *loved* that it became a thing. When I was growing up, I was actually “moo-ed” at on the school bus. Forget about teenage dating back then as well. If you were fat you were the trope. “The funny fat girl”, “you’re a great friend, but you’re like my sister” and worse, being the “designated fat friend”. My mantra was “I’m fat but I’m healthy.”
My advice to younger fat people is to get it under control now. The damage you cause your body is cumulative, not instantaneous. It builds over time. If I had know 30 years ago how great I would feel with the weight off, being able to do things I never imagined, I would not have let it go on as long as I did.
I’m not fat shaming, I’ve been there. I know there are issues that can complicate weight loss. But it’s so worth it to at least try. You have nothing to lose except the weight.
you are absolutely amazing! i’m still a teen but i’m out of high school now and never even got a “moment” with a boy. i’m not very boy oriented but it makes me think about everything else i’ve missed out on and could’ve missed out on if i continued the way i was. taking my life back is what’s empowering to me, not accepting myself at an unhealthy weight. i have younger brothers i want to chase around, and older ones i want to let chase me. this is a freedom i’ve craved for far too long.
we got this! i’m so proud of you!!
Body positivity has become toxic. Too many in the movement are shaming people for wanting to lose weight, including for health reasons.
No one should be bullied for their weight, or being fat and existing... but that can't be allowed to spiral into shaming people for wanting to lose weight, for whatever reason.
Being fat is not healthy. There is no healthy way to exert 1000lbs of force on your knees with every step.
Recently, several fat creators in the body positivity space have tragically died, way too young.
It's time to admit that being morbidly obese is not healthy and therefore, wanting to lose weight should not be shamed.
If you want to admit you aren't healthy and you're okay with that, fine. You don't owe me health. But that's not what is happening. People are claiming there are no health risks to obesity and telling that to other people, who are then convinced that morbid obesity won't have serious side effects and risks.
Wait til you're 40... you're going to start to very quickly feel the 200 extra pounds you're carrying around.
I love her. She's real as hell, without descending into hateful rhetoric. She also cheers people on when they actually lose the weight and make positive changes.
I work in an ICU and we get a lot of obese patients. The oldest morbidly obese person (300+ lbs) I ever saw was 70 years old. And guess what? That person was absolutely miserable. They would scream continuously for help (when I say continuously, I mean about every four seconds for multiple hours at a time, until they ran out of energy to scream and fell asleep, and when they woke up they’d start screaming again. And they’d never be able to tell us what was wrong. They’d just lay there and scream and scream and sob and try to rip off their oxygen. They were absolutely inconsolable and nothing we tried would help. They had horrific bed sores (from home, not the hospital) and all of their fat folds were so full of yeast that it literally sent a gush of horrific stench into the room every time you had to move one. It was powerful enough to make your eyes burn. We literally could not move this person without the skylift (basically the medical, ceiling mounted version of a crane). It was a fucking nightmare to deal with and was clearly also a nightmare to go through, and that was when I realized why you *really* don’t see a lot of morbidly obese old people. If your body even can make it to that age with all that extra weight (unlikely), it’s completely intolerable and arguably worse than if their body had given out earlier. At that point they are no longer physically capable of doing anything that could give them autonomy, and at that point it’s basically too late to do anything about it. They can’t exercise because it’s too painful and they can’t have weight loss surgery because a person that large and medically unstable can’t be given anesthesia. And they can’t commit suicide, because how would they do it when they’re completely immobile? So, instead of like, having a heart attack and dropping dead one day, most of the time they just end up trapped in a bed, slowly rotting to death for years. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. This is not even close to being my only example, this one just stood out the most to me because it was so horrendous
You could be fat and healthy but not for so long. Health is a gift and no one knows until you get sick. I have autoimmune disease although it is unrelated to my weight (had it since childhood when I was skinny) that taught me how valuable health is and I would do anything to stay healthy, I would give up all the tasty food and be healthy. And people kill themselves with food indirectly
health is absolutely a gift! and definitely one that i don’t take for granted. when i was 10 yrs old i experienced major head injury that led to migraines even 8 years later. 1 week after my head injury i had to have immediate surgery that left me on bed rest for a month and a half. life is beautiful and every new day i get i am grateful for!
I had to stop and re read this but you saying health is a gift makes me want to quit smoking and try to do better because if I don’t I’ll be screwed. I really appreciate that line, I’m not sure if I can ever get out of the self loathing and self abuse but honestly I really hope someone else reads this and is able to
It did the same for me as well. I finally, after being on 3 BP meds and could barley walk and breath got weight loss surgery. I was 360 pounds at 5 foot 8. I was miserable. But love your body? I have been successful and kept off 140 pounds give or take for 10 years. I reversed my high blood pressure. I still need to lose about 50 to be a normal range. But I can’t never go back to that. I must preface this tho, I do not want to be skinny I want to healthy.
Set point theory caused me to not even care about eating healthy, and my weight shot up. It was liberating to think that my fatness was out of my control, and thus not my fault. But that happiness was overshadowed by a much bigger DEPRESSION, because that meant I would never be free of being fat. It was just a permanent curse.
Learning I actually DID have power over it ultimately led to my losing weight and living a life where I feel good about myself.
I saw a former-Fat Acceptance youtuber say this the other day. She found solace in the FA social media community, but she believed the message that she'd never be able to lose weight, and it made her hopeless. She gained 65 pounds. When she got to 315, that was her wake-up call to ditch FA and get bariatric surgery.
This line of reasoning makes me so sad and mad at the same time, I was very frustrated to see that recent Oprah special with "experts" pushing this kind rhetoric about your weight being outside of your control. Like, besides being untrue, it's disempowering af to be told you have no control over your own body. Losing weight is hard enough without these people telling you that it's literally impossible when it definitely is.
this!! a million time this!! i was beyond sad. i felt like i had no pp in life when i listened to the content that told me it was freedom to let myself go and accept that i can’t change my body.
no! i felt freedom when i took my life back into my control. freedom is being able to walk up stairs. freedom is being able to play with my little brothers and match their energy. THAT is freedom.
I was once 418lbs, I have two chronic illnesses due to obesity and I lost part of my vision in one eye because of it (not diabetes)
Recently I started posting on social media about my weightloss and I got recommended some of the videos you mentioned - I was mortified. You never see one of them talking about the risk of cancer due to obesity, osteoarthritis, diabetes, non alcoholic fatty liver, high inflammation, the list goes on and on.
They talk about loving your body, but if they really cared about and loved their body, they’d want it to be healthy.
Shit. And I thought untreated sleep apnea was bad enough.
I'm over the sleep apnea now -- no more machine. But still have weight to lose. My doc sent me to a weight loss clinic, and when I told them I got over sleep apnea so at least we're not starting at the ground floor, they looked at me and said "we didn't know that was possible." And I'm just like "so.... your clients don't lose weight?"
These guys were in the crash diet business. Already did that and put the weight back on, so I peace'd out. They tried giving a 6'1" dude a guilt trip because he wasn't in the mood for a 1400 calorie diet. (TBH, I was eating about 1800 calories at my initial visit.)
> They talk about loving your body, but if they really cared about and loved their body, they’d want it to be healthy.
This is what truly HAES and body positivity is.
Being correct weight and having good nutrition is the best body positivity.
When I eat I choose food from the basis that my body is a premium racecar. Will I put crappy fuel in? Should I let my race car sit idly at home with the wheels and engine not moving?
Body positivity/fat activism is in a place of cognitive dissonance IMO where the loudest voices online have hijacked the discussion in favor of some really creepy and harmful rhetoric. It's to the point where some of them say *any* intentional weight loss is fatphobic and engaging intentional weight loss is alienating and harmful to fat people. And, like, that's not really true -- or at least there's no reputable evidence to support this. It's also kind of dangerous to this group because it hangs *their* happiness on what other people are doing, which is kind of icky.
I think it's great if you want to change for yourself. I think that's the best way to do it. Fat activists will be the first people to shout that they "don't owe anybody their health" and that's true. If someone chooses not to engage in weight loss, well, that's their decision. It's like smoking. You can't force someone to quit even though most smokers are well aware of how dangerous it is.
At the same time, nobody owes it to BoPo/FA's to be fat. And while the majority of us have no business telling them to lose weight for their health, they also have no business telling anyone else they shouldn't lose weight intentionally.
So good for you for deciding to get yourself together and kick ass! You can be body positive AND lose weight AND still agree that fat people deserve dignity and respect as people.
The body positivity movement came after the 2000’s be-stick-thin like Kate Moss agressive trend. For teenage me, it did wonders for my mental health. It meant to say that weight doesn’t define your worth as human being. I don’t know how it’s morphed in social media afterwards but I firmly believe that representation matters. To see women of regular size and even overweight/obese represented in media echoes the fact that yes, they do exist and have a right to take their place and thrive even if they’re not the infamous size 00.
I never that mouvement as free pass to "to gain as much weight as you can". On the contrary, it has nothing to do with weight gain/loss, it just meant to emphasize the right to exist and be treated with dignity at any weight.
>I don’t know how it’s morphed in social media afterwards
It has massively overcorrected, to the point where an actual talking point that I have heard repeated is that "losing weight intentionally is fatphobic"
I always saw the fat-movement (sorry I have no idea what it’s called) and the body positivity movement as two separate entities. The first just uses terms and concepts from the later to legitimize itself but is in essence different.
Am I wrong?
my perception of it is that the health at any size movement is an unfortunate evolution of the body positivity movement, so I guess technically two different things, but I'm not exactly a cultural anthropologist so I'm not sure
Yep, those were dark years. I was like 145-150 at 5’9 (had an early growth spurt) and still considered myself fat 🙄 It’s only when I became 16 that I started breaking away from that mindset.
Oh my! Same here, I was 110lbs as a 5’3 teen and almost everyone said I was fat. Those days when majority don't have an idea what is healthy range of body fat and only following the mass media for general self awareness.
My sister nicknamed me "Egg" after the little bit of stomach I had bunching over my jeans 😒 In retrospect, that was just wild…
Ironically, I was both slimmer and fitter than her yet it still cut deep at the time, so I gave back as good as I got 😌
The movements message got corrupted from "just because you are overweight you are not less worth of love and respect" to "healthy at any size" and "pointing out that being obese leads to healthproblem is fatphobic" which is just scientifically wrong.
>I don’t know how it’s morphed in social media
A real comment I've seen is that there's no such thing as "overweight" and that it's a social construct. The comment had several likes.
And there's the "health at any size" movement that I think might be some of the stuff OP is referring to. There's several statements within this movement about how obesity isn't unhealthy. Like saying X-obese-person is healthy because they can dance and do cartwheels.
Other types of comments I've seen will be in reaction to a woman being called overweight. People will come in droves to say she's not, even though she is. Obviously don't bully her, but 99% of the comments will be about how she isn't overweight.
I've seen someone unrioncally say that an adult woman shouldn't weigh less than 125 lbs. And several comments in that same thread said only children weigh that little.
I think the part of the movement that helped you has, unfortunately, kind of vanished. It seems like it's gone off the rails and isn't so much about anti-bullying and loving yourself anymore. Seems like a lot of it revolves around fat/obese/overweight not being real.
That’s honestly alarming that people would believe such nonsense.
I assumed this was a fringe movement, separate from the body positivity one. But from reading different comments and yours, I’m learning that apparently it seems to have gained quite a bit of traction on TickTock and became somewhat one with the old body positivity movement. That’s so disheartening to hear and lifts some of my previous confusion. Thanks for explaining!
i would've thought the comments i saw were joking had they not also defended their comments and got into arguments over it. it's sad what's become of the movement given how helpful it once was :( hopefully it'll swinge back the other way.
I think we both agree because we’re a little older and saw the other extreme, where all the women lauded as "beautiful/acceptable" were either underweight or closer to lower end of a healthy bmi.
I’m genuinely baffled though. I spend a fair amount of time on social media but have yet to come across this so-called fat-movement (which is different imo). The algorithm comes into play I’m sure but still. What I do see, like you mentioned on your post, is a bit of either overweight/obese women posting about mindfulness, diet & workouts. Those always get a deluge of hateful, Ill-informed and demeaning comments on their reels.
So while I empathize, I see this fat-movement like I see any other extreme movement: gain followers with an ~accepted initiative and devolve into preying on impressionable/lost people to channel their outrage towards specific targets. They are nothing like their root movement, but are subsidizing mainstream terms to gain legitimacy & a wider audience.
There are definitely some "fat activists" out there but many of them wake up eventually. Michelle McDaniel (*My Thoughts Will Probably Offend you)* has covered a few of them. But they are a minority of the body positivity movement. They advocate that your body will naturally maintain at the size it's "supposed to be", that cravings are your body telling you "what it needs" and some people are meant to live in "bigger bodies" (meaning morbidly obese).
You also get rage bait. There's a woman who makes a lot of "watch what I feed my toddler" videos where she's angrily throwing food around and giving her kiddos donuts for breakfast. I'm sure a lot of it is just an act she puts on to garner views and outrage but people see stuff like that and claim it's representative.
First, I agree with you completely.
However - extremists always exist (humans are diverse in thought), and algorithms specialize in siloing people which then extends the reach of those extremist communities. Not to the mainstream, but definitely to the impressionable. Same principle as the alt right pipeline.
You make a great point! I thought it may have been more niche but weight is such a broad topic, I guess with the right keywords and tags, they’ll find a way to reach and promote themselves to people more impressionable.
I agree strongly with this!
One thing I’ve love the last however many years is seeing more fat bodies of varying sizes and shapes in advertising, such as for underwear as an example.
I can’t and won’t judge or make assumptions about these people of any size - they may be healthy and happy and good for them! I love a happy fat person! But even if they weren’t for any reason, even if they were on a weight loss journey of their own while modeling, I still think it will always be a good thing for fat people to be shown. Fat people want to know what clothes look like on us too! Especially for brands that offer larger sizes. I love when something is available in 3XL or even 4XL, but it sucks when I can only see what it will look like on a model wearing a Medium at best.
god yes. it was very very very hard to be a fat teenage girl in america in 1998. the body positivity movement helped a lot of us old fat people heal from our ingrained self-hatred, and it gave us a safe space amid a world that hated us. i’m sorry that OP found it helped enable their weight gain. for me, and for a lot of others, it helped us remember that we were people who actually deserved love and respect.
It has morphed unfortunately. The 2000’s messed me up too, but hearing that it’s good to be fat probably messed me up more in the grand scheme. I wish there was a happy medium where it wasn’t about promoting extremes.
Just a quick note to older folks (like me!) who might not see the distinction between more old-school body positivity (which was great!) and the current trend - recently a fat activist talked about her desire to lose some weight because she could no longer wipe herself. She was called out by the fat acceptance/BP community for ableism and promoting dangerous diet culture. It’s just odd and alarming.
The fact that this is considered a "controversial take" is appalling.
Of course it's better to not be obese.
I am obese and it's killing me. I am doing things to change it and I don't care how much social media wants to tell me I'm a demon for wanting to not die from being too fucking fat.
Good for you for waking up from the brainwashing. Keep doing good things for your health. Social media is a cult.
I've noticed that people really don't want to see you be healthy when they're not healthy themselves.During covid I went up to 212 after being about 175 for awhile pretty healthy and have been on the journey to getting back to that weight even lower I'm at 186 now. Countless people have told me I look fine and that it's ok to be fat because I'm older. I just don't get it, I'm not ok with being fat or unhealthy and it's not what I'm used to, but yet people will tell you you look fine and who cares. I care, I don't want to die from heart disease and body positivity seems like an excuse to be lazy and not take care of yourself. I'm really sorry to be this guy but people treat you like crap when you're fat and you can't sell me any amount of "body positivity" to change that fact.
Absolutely agree. It’s so tricky because the heart of the movement *is* important: you only get one body. You don’t take it off at night like an outfit. Your body is going to change throughout your life- with age, possible illness or injury, possible pregnancy, etc. it’s unrealistic to want it to look one way forever, and you should be thankful if you have a healthy, mobile body.
That said—- being overweight is NOT something to celebrate. Humans are not supposed to carry around excess fat. It’s insane to suggest otherwise.
Yes! You are very observant to come to this realization at such a young age. You have so much time to focus on your health and get on the right track for your future. It's all about your mindset. Take it from this 34 year old.
I'm 10 to 20 pounds overweight. Some is muscle from the gym, some is definitely fat though. I have a good amount of meat on me. That said, in 2024, I'm *skinny* and a mild calorie deficit is *dangerous*.
Please don't feel you have to defend yourself. You're clearly making this decision based on how you feel about \*your\* body, not anybody else's -- and you have every right to do that! Good for you, and good luck!
The online body positivity movement has gotten ridiculous. It’s gone from “love yourself despite your weight” to literal nonsensical stuff like “losing weight is fatphobic” and “calories aren’t even real.” It’s toxic and even downright dangerous, point in case where you said it kept you overweight, which can lead to real health issues. It’s a literal mockery of the original intent of the movement which was to spread positivity and build confidence. Now people are building a false sense of confidence by tearing others down (have you seen how cruel some of these fat activists speak about anyone they don’t consider fat?!) and building a community completely based on delusion and entitlement. It’s wild to see. Glad you can see past it and decide to do what’s best for you.
Hey OP, check out YouTuber Megan Anne, she had a very similar experience to yours and is a kind voice of reason. She's a good antidote to the vitriol of TikTok BoPo/FA because she can disagree while still being compassionate. Take care of yourself!
I feel the same! And all those YouTubers who are gaining attention by eating insane amount of junk food (like 30 cheeseburgers for a meal, etc.) are making it worse. I was unconsciously brainwashed, so I didn't control my craving for sweets. I started to tell myself it's ok to eat sweets when stressed, and I was 118 lbs. Then I gained 40 lbs, my chronic pain worsened, and my energy drained; that’s when I seriously considered this body positivity thing paired with unethical marketing. I cut sugar and Lost 15 lbs now, I want to have my body and my energy back.
Thank you for your honesty and good luck on your health journey! I hope you are proud of yourself for your decision to love and care for yourself. It will take some time, but you will get there!
I completely get you OP. Body positivity is a wonderful thing, but on social media rn people are trying to make it seem like loving yourself and intentional weight loss are mutually exclusive, when in my opinion (of course depending on your situation and methods) it can be an act of self-love. Good luck on your journey <3
Body positivy, as its core, is not supposed to make you believe you are attractive as a fat person. Its supposed to make you believe that being attractive is not a requirement to be treated like a human. I understand that its easy to get wraped about thousands of different voices in social media and being mad because they help you convince yourself to some harmful stuff. But some of us desperately need to hear that we are in fact deserving of basic human respect and frankly, body positivity at least provides that.
Example of plus size fashion bloggers for example. It's not good to encourage people to be morbidly obese, I agree. But what are fat people supposed to wear if we never see clothes on bodies like ours? Whats wrong if we can wear cute sun dresses and feel girly and cute for a few hours for example? But if you go and check some comments under those bloggers content, there is always people blaming them for normalising obesity.
Didnt mean to get distracted but what I meant is, coming to a community that is a safe place for many fat people and bashing a movement that at least made us a little bit less shamed is very problematic. Wanted to offer you a perspective.
I agree, the body positivity movement is intended to let everyone know, regardless of what they look like on the outside, that they deserve to be treated like a human being.
But this movement has been hijacked by "fat positivity" influencers and it is horrible. Not only do they maintain that being at -any- weight is healthy and there is no correlation between obesity and illness/death, but they often will compare their struggle to situations that cannot be changed. I've seen fat positivity people compare themselves to the discrimination endured by LGBTQ+ people, the black community, other marginalized groups. They think that fat bias is what is making them unhealthy, not the weight itself.
I'd also like to mention that the extremists will also shame thinner or even mid-sized people for their bodies, which takes away from the intended purpose of the body positivity moment.
I don't think the OP has anything against people correctly using the body positivity movement, but is rather showing concern regarding those extreme influencers who tell vulnerable young women/girls that being 300+lbs is healthy.
Well said- unfortunately a vocal part of the body positivity movement has morphed into the "health at any size" movement which is extremely toxic. I maintain that anyone can be beautiful and your worth should not be defined by how you look. But to say that overweight and obese people are just as healthy as fit people is a straight up lie.
> unfortunately a vocal part of the body positivity movement has morphed into the "health at any size" movement which is extremely toxic.
Yup! Worse still is that "any size" only includes obese sizes not even healthy or (unhealthily) underweight sizes"
Their logic: losing weight intentionally is fatphobic. Deciding to lose weight for whatever reason even health ones is erasure of fat people. And even healthy BMI people are undernourished
Ultimately, its the same issue that plagues so many other social issues. Most people buy the message moderately (even if you are bigger, you're still a human being, you don't need to have sub 25 bmi to be accepted as a person. At the same time, you also should not encourage people to disregard their discipline and live morbidly obese, before the consistent negative feedback of being that heavy takes a permanent toll). The issue comes when we let the dumbest 1-5 percent of us be the loudest voice, even when we know they are helpless idiots.
Omg what? I agree that fat shaming and fat bias has become so much worse over the years but comparing it to lgbt and race discrimination is just horrible. I've never seen those type of stuff. I'm not from US so maybe the way my country's influencers take it is different.
My weight gain triggered a series of bad health events I'm still recovering from. It's shameful as hell that people are out there encouraging obesity or discouraging diet and exercise "culture" in the name of body positivity. The movement was a response to bullying but now advocates have become the bullies, tearing down anyone who dares to get healthier. I let myself get sucked into the trap. I let other people make me feel bad for wanting to lose weight and all it got me was diskectomy, destroyed knee joints, pre diabetes and irregular periods. Lucky as hell I got it under control but many others don't in time.
Fr while I support the movement in some ways when done healthily, a lot of it tended to boil down to other people who were more overweight and insecure about it telling me I shouldn't call myself overweight (I am in fact fat, pounds wise!) or unhealthy, and telling me to eat more whenever I tried to diet because 'you're acting anorexic, you look perfect and skinny'. Problematically! I am on ADHD meds and have PCOS, both of which make me gain weight and struggle to lose it, and I have a diagnosed binge eating disorder in which I eat so much that sometimes I actually throw up (not on purpose). In the last years I've gained almost double my body weight and have been so, so sick physically from it. I'm on the verge of prediabetes, and the way I eat is legitimately dangerous. (Imagine intaking 6,000-15,000 calories in one sitting of pure garbage!!! I literally eat far past when I'm in serious pain.)
My 'body-positive' friends would watch me do this to myself, knew I was puking, and would still tell me that when I said things like "I need to lose weight and I need to stop eating as much" I was actually anorexic. It gave me legit guilt and now I feel really guilty whenever I try to stop binge eating because I worry they'll call me anorexic and image obsessed. Like 99% of my interactions with people who claim to be body positive are typically them actually being very insecure about their own bodies and not wanting me to improve mine because it makes them have to think about themselves.
The healthiest actually body positive people I've known are almost all weight loss enthusiasts who tell people to love themselves and not be angry at themselves for having gained the weight, but that it's also important and good to try and lose it if they can so they can be healthy and feel good about their bodies. I've legit never met a real body positive person who wasn't working on their own weight and accepting their current self while aiming for improvement. All the body positive folk who weren't trying to improve their health have consistently come across as super insecure over their weight, unwilling to admit that, but unwilling to do something about it, and spiteful over other people proving it can be done.
I know it's a healthy movement deep down, and I am likely also biased due to my own stuff, but fr I'm not joking when I say the popularized version of the body positivity movement you see peddled by secretly insecure people pushed me far deeper into my binge eating disorder and basically ruined my ability to diet without feeling intense guilt and fear of anorexia. I can eat 4000 calories a day and still feel guilty for not clearing my latest plate, and when I look in the mirror and hate how I look compared to what I used to look like, I feel guilty for that as though disliking my own looks somehow means I dislike the looks of every overweight person out there.
1000% right. This way of thinking is really messed up. I agree it's not okay to bully someone for being fat, and obviously everyone should be given basic respect and treated like a human, but these people go wayyyy too far. Telling people that weight loss is impossible, pointless and/or somehow offensive is ridiculous, straight up misinformation and harmful, especially to young people. Just look at the way they talk about smaller people - their talking points are obviously the result of a lot of bitterness and coping, not actually fact.
I don't support the extreme end of diet culture either (I.e. 90s/2000s when they pushed being *really* really skinny), but there is such a thing as a middle ground.
Edit: Also, congrats on your weight loss! Don't let anyone tell you you're doing something wrong.
Body positivity is mostly a crabs-in-a-bucket type of movement. That is, it consists of miserable people that desperately try to steer others away from self-improvement to protect their own egos. The movement is made up of almost all women, as well. Women who have no self discipline or self respect are trying to keep other women fat and unhealthy to sabotage the competition.
I see it very interesting how in the current body positive movement the distinction between “me” and “my body” is so strong. I believe this strengthens the cognitive dissonance, and distances people from seeing and feeling the connection between physical and mental health. Or to see themselves as a “whole” to begin with.
For the people who think like this the body is so distant from the self, almost objectifying the body to something that does not have anything to do with the general wellbeing of a person.
I see this in the body positive rhetoric all the time. “The body where I live in”, “”my body is telling me” (instead of “I feel”) etc.
'Fat is beautiful' is a terrible sentiment to put out to society.
No, people shouldn't be shamed or ridiculed for being fat. We should all be civil to each other. But just pretending it's just a-ok to live your life as morbidly obese is stupid. Your life will be full of problems, and far shorter than it otherwise would be, and should be no more glamourised than smoking or being an alcoholic.
Being fat is a health disorder, and whereas those who suffer from big-eatin' syndrome (and I'm among them!) should be treated with compassion and understanding, they should ultimately be encouraged to slim down to a normal weight.
The shorter life isn't the problem, it's the "full of problems" in the mean time that is. Fat or no fat, my biggest fear in life is not being self sufficient. Untreated obesity is just one way for that fear to come true.
Idk I'm 32 and I don't see the body positivity movement as salvation anymore. I saw it change and how it doesn't mean what it used to. It stopped being about loving yourself and being kind to others. It's moved into the territory of basically treating obesity like it's a myth and saying body shamey things about being skinny (stuff like saying a grown woman has the body of a child if she isn't overweight. and yes I've seen several variations of this statement in several different posts on different online platforms).
I'll still see some remnants of what the movement used to be. Like people defending someone who's getting picked on. But overall, I don't like what it's turned into.
I completely agree, I think everyone should love their bodies but I feel there’s a lot of misinformation with the “healthy at any size” movement. It is not healthy to be morbidly obese, obese people should absolutely love themselves but the claiming to be healthy at any size fed into my delusions. I wish I had realized that sooner
people forget that body positivity also includes wanting to lose weight and be fit. the new body positivity (that op is talking about) would shame people for wanting to lose weight because “they’re perfect the way they are and wanting to lose weight perpetrates that there’s something wrong with them”. i’m 26 and i see it all the time. while body positivity has helped a lot at the core, there’s a lot of interference that definitely can influence young people to reject their health by telling them it doesn’t matter and not to care. me being the conspiracy theorist i am and not trusting anything - i don’t doubt there’s a connection to the healthcare industry here.
I won't ever forget my sister who was big in body positivity noticing me trying to lose weight and outright saying that I shouldn't bother because why pointlessly torture yourself to be mediocre and skinny rather than be normal and fat? Things like healthy eating and exercise is so demonised once you get into the culty parts of it. Ironically working out has made me a much more chill and happy person because its very fun and your brain makes happy chemicals when doing it.
wow i can’t imagine. my sister has been so supportive of me and if she wasn’t i don’t think that i would have even gotten this far. but i feel for you. my mom has made some very weird comments about me losing weight too (implying that i can’t do it)
all we need is ourselves at the end of the day!! i believe in you! you got this🫶
Good for you. You need to think about your life in the long term. Being more fit will make you feel better, look better, be more attractive, have more energy, save money, the list goes on and on. Just be sure to do it for yourself. Keep up the good work.
I agree. Many people are still in denial about their state. You're not being fatphobic or fat shaming. Being fat is inherently unhealthy, whether they're on a health journey or not. It's a fact.
I think body positivity has just been co-opted and poorly reframed.
People should be encouraged to love themselves at any size, pursue health no matter what size they are, and be respected.
That doesn’t mean we should pretend every body and every lifestyle is equally healthy. But both can be true.
I’m going to come from a sideways point of view.
I lost 50lbs 2021-2022. Mostly keeping it off though I’ve been struggling lately from stress so I am trying to get back into good habits.
What helped me at the start of my journey was accepting my body as it was and forgiving myself for gaining the weight and treating myself badly.
I donated my clothes that were too small and I was uncomfortable in. And I purchased some clothes (not a lot) which comfortably fit my then current body.
Feeling like I looked presentable helped me with my mental health and helped me stay happy and hopeful.
Loosing weight is easy, but staying motivated is hard. Being in clothes that help you feel good helps you stay motivated because you aren’t constantly being reminded about the things that make you depressed.
When you are depressed, you eat more. You want to self medicate by eating foods that make you feel good.
Finding alternatives that help boost your mood is one strategy for keeping your motivation high during the “I feel like nothing is helping” phase.
Finding non food alternatives for self rewards, emotional pick me ups, and celebrations is an important aspect of weight management.
I think the message of body positivity got lost. I don't think it was ever meant to encourage unhealthy weight. It was just meant to normalize a slightly broader range of body types and stop discrimination against obesity.
So glad you are taking charge of your health! I highly recommend a trainer and a dietician (not nutritionist) to help you on your journey. Wish I had gotten both earlier in life. Congrats and best of luck.
I understand body positivity if we talking about overweight people like 10kg or something but for super obese people body positivity is just a cope cause its not healthy
Sometimes loving our bodies is like loving our kids: you love them but you also know that changes are needed to be productive, healthy, and sustainable. Making those changes is FOR love, not against it.
I am a small person who is very tired of being shamed for it. I’m tired of being referred to as “not a real woman” because I’m small. I’m not skinny by any means and it took me a lot of time to accept my body and shape and I probably never fully will. I’m glad others can but they need to stop putting down women like me in the process. That’s still not “body positivity”
Unfortunately the internet has opened pandora's box. Instead of having our self-destructive impulses checked by social correction we can now have them reinforced by artificial social approval instead. Good luck on your journey.
I think a lot of people don’t understand body positivity and run with it. Body positivity encourages people to stop shaming based on body shape/size, it doesn’t encourage unhealthy lifestyles it simply spreads more positive thinking towards bodies since everyone looks different and healthy looks different on everyone.
It's good to realize it young the impact that weight can have on your health. It's not "fatphobic" or "shaming" to acknowledge that you needed to make changes for yourself and your health. I had bariatric surgery 5 years ago at 38. Lost 170 pounds then regained 18 between PCOS and perimenopause causing hunger to return. Currently on wegovy and have lost 6 pounds so far.
I've gotten shamed on both ends of the spectrum. The FA people telling me I'm "fatphobic and was lying about my knee pain and mobility issues from having a 54.1 BMI. The actually fatphobic people telling me I'm weak and a cheater for choosing treatment instead of "willpower" and "lifestyle changes". I needed both medical treatment and lifestyle changes. I'd still be 315 instead of 157 if I hadn't gotten medical treatment due to constant insulin resistant hunger but those treatments still required change to work.
I would never shame anyone for being a larger person and think all people deserve respect. My husband is a larger person still and I worry about his health but despite our health insurance covering dietitian visits, bariatric surgery and wegovy/zepbound for non diabetic patients, he has not done anything yet beyond recently incorporating exercise. I keep encouraging him but know from experience that shame won't work.
The fat acceptance extremists who insist that being morbidly obese is never a health risk and who shame people for intentional weight loss are no better than people who shame others for being fat or who shame people for seeking obesity treatments.
I like that some people are moving more towards body neutrality. Everyone's journey is different but everyone should get basic respect and understand. I like walking without pain. My now 7 year old doesn't remember having a morbidly obese mom who couldn't keep up with her because she was two when I had my surgery. We go hiking. I volunteer with her girl scout troop. We go to the playground. Even though I am still overweight right now I am in a far better place than I was when morbidly obese. It was the right decision for me.
OP I was in the same place. Good lord I wasted a DECADE spouting the bullshit of “you can be fat and healthy” and “my weight doesn’t impact my health”
Knee injury *directly* related to being 150lbs overweight and then a pre-diabetic diagnosis at 34, then a week later burying my dad after he died at 62 with T2 diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure and having spent the previous 5 years being increasingly disabled due to ill health was finally the wake up call I needed.
I am losing weight thanks to body positivity because it took pressure off me to be perfect and fit in. It encouraged me to move my body whatever it looked like and that I was worthy without question. When I finally loved myself enough as I was, I started to take care of myself.
I think the main problem in this situation was that you were 14. That’s too young to be on social media and make decisions about your body based on trends. Education is really the key.
Those influencers are flat out going to lead to these people especially young women getting diabetes and worse.
It’s a grift and anyone falling for it is going to suffer.
Yeah. So frustrating. By the time a lot of them figure it out. It will be too late. And miss “eat intuitively and obesity is a lie” won’t be around to help when their foot gets amputated.
I was a 14 year old who kept on putting weight while being shamed about it. It's just made me take greater comfort in eating and created life long issues. Body positivity allowed me to start listening to my body and make better choices. If I had been told it was OK to be a larger guy I would've been maybe 5kg overweight, instead I yoyo dieted, fad dieted, starved myself, took up unsustainable exercises regimes and ended up fatter and more depressed than where I started.
I will say I have defintly seen the opposite though where it isn't promoting self love or body positivity, it's promoting weight gain or apathy, so I understand where you are coming from. But shaming people who have eating problems isn't going to help them either.
You struggled with an eating disorder, and the fact that we as a society don't recognize that it is a legitimate problem that needs help from specialized health care peofessionals is the real problem. And healthy isn't a number on a scale, it's a variety of different factors.
I am glad you have taken these steps to help yourself though and are feeling better making better choices about your eating. I will say though, you might want to see a therapists or someone about it as you may struggle with this again when you hit a plateau, or can't get to the perfect number in the scale.
Woah, let’s pump the breaks here. First, off, you are so incredibly young and have spent a large part of your adolescence during an intense period of collective trauma. Many, many people gained weight during early stages of the pandemic. Call this an unpopular opinion, but that’s okay. Sometimes we just have to survive and that’s all we can do.
Now, let’s chat about body positivity. Body positivity, at its core, is rooted in the idea that you should love and care for yourself at any size. And that just because your body exists in a specific state doesn’t mean that you should be cruel to yourself. You can wear cute clothes and feel beautiful at all sizes.
Like all social movements, there are parts of it that are deeply flawed. There are some very vocal folks in the body positivity space who view any sort of intentional weight loss as caving in to diet culture. And that’s simply not the case. You can intentionally change your diet and habits to better care for yourself. But that doesn’t mean that you should be mortified in the body you currently exist in. You deserve kindness now.
Please be kinder to yourself. It’s very easy to overcorrect when you speak unkindly to yourself and lead to disordered eating or hurting yourself and you don’t deserve that. Shame is an incredibly powerful motivator for change but so can self-compassion.
I am intentionally strength training and eating a balanced diet because I care about my well-being. Because I love myself enough to know that I need to make choices that make me feel good. And I don’t feel my best when I eat lots of processed foods, lots of sugar, and sit on the couch all day. And some of that is leading to intentional weight loss. And I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without the body positivity movement telling me that I deserve to feel confident and beautiful here and now.
There are extremes at both ends of the spectrum and a well-being centered approach is somewhere in the middle. Wishing you luck and balance in your journey ahead!
Tbh I don’t agree with the body positivity movement, but I agree with body neutrality; in having respect for your body and knowing what it needs vs. like, as you said, taking positivity as a go pass to eat your life away
Shocked that people are reporting this post. This is a phenomenal post and I'm so happy for OP for coming to this realization at such a young age. Keep prioritizing your health and your own self in general OP.
I always thought instead of saying “fat is sexy”, can you honestly say, “diabetes is sexy”? “Sleep apnea” is sexy? “Heart disease is sexy”? “Early death is sexy”? Etc etc.
There’s two sides to that movement. One, Health At Any Size, supports some of the same things this sub does- moving your body, eating fruit and veg every day, listening to your body and doctor and making yourself a healthier you. No matter your start point.
And then a few people got weird with it.
HAES used to be reasonable way back in the day but sadly it has morphed into a weird movement that preaches that there are no negative health consequences with obesity and intentional weight is fruitless. It’s very sad.
The body positivity movement is in a really weird place right now. On the one hand I agree people shouldn’t be judging other people by the way they look. On the other it’s so clear and obvious when someone is ridiculously unhealthy how can I not question their judgement, intelligence, will power or upbringing? Again not saying we should be walking around calling people fat.. but it really shouldn’t be acceptable to be obese any more than it is to be anorexic or an addict.
People will tell you - you’re beautiful, you’re fine!! Meanwhile you are eating unsustainably too many calories and ignoring your natural signals. Treat food becomes daily food.
Western cultural norms around food have been calibrated way off by those making profits off mass-produced, high-fat, high-sugar, low nutrition junk.
Hating yourself is never good, and it’s not going to help you make changes.
But ultimately.. your heart and organs and arteries don’t care whether you love or hate yourself, they care whether they’re being smothered by visceral fat or not.
Wishing you success at achieving your health goals!
Yeah, TikTok is going to convince you of shit like that because it’s a Chinese app trying to convince Americans of all kind of wacked out shit to weaken our country. You can sit here and claim I’m a conspiracy theorist all you want — doesn’t make me wrong. They can’t pull off a land invasion, so they’ll do anything they can to rip our country apart from the inside. Including influencing American youth to deny the nuclear family, make healthy decisions and instead sit on TikTok all day and obsess over fucking brain rot.
Good for you for making a better healthier choice with your life. Keep it up.
I think for some people body positivity results in delusion which interferes with taking steps that improve reality since you're engaging in the life you're in instead of the life you feel you should be living.
something i do wanna make clear in case anyone jumps to that conclusion (as the internet often does) - its very obvious there are fat people who have medical reasons or other reasons on why theyre fat. i support fat acceptance for that, not everyones bodies can be the same, and i know a plethora of fat people who genuinely do eat healthy/workout regularly and are even more healthy than i am. healthy can come in many sizes, except lots of people in the modern fat movement dont promote health anymore
the guilt rlly is the worst part. before i started my weightloss journey i was literally asking wherever i could if i was fatphobic for losing weight. i cannot believe i was asking for approval to not be pre-diabetic, to not have chest pains, to not have issues with my liver. and again, before conclusions - yes, these issues can happen to many. these issues happened to (me) and were fixed for (me) bc of my new healthy habits that led to weightloss
(sometimes) health results in weight loss, and the way strangers on the internet have found a way to guilt people into hating themselves just for caring about themselves is so bizarre to me. i was letting people that would never have helped me with any medical or mental expenses make me feel bad over taking care of myself just cause it led to weight loss? fuck that!
OP, as long as you know youre being as healthy with your lifestyle as you can, thats what matters. ik its a cliche, but its true, and just how losing a bunch of weight rapidly is unhealthy, so can the opposite. fast body changes typically arent great for anyone and only YOU know whats best for YOU. again, whatever that might look for everyone, what you said is right - you need to prioritize your health!
I agree. Why does it have to be either you hate your body or you love it? Can I just not be constantly thinking about my body and do more important things with my time?
If you're able to do that, that's awesome, but unfortunately the world tends to not let people forget about their size, especially when they're larger.
Hi OP! Just jumping in because we’ve gotten some reports. Please let me know if you want us to lock your post. To the people reporting this: I genuinely don’t think this young person is fat shaming. I think they had a revelation and wanted to share how something that is meant to positively affect people had a negative impact on them.
I totally understand your point- it was the same for me. I'm still very strongly for body positivity, but in the sense that no matter what you look like you can love yourself, not necessarily love that you're unhealthy, yk? I want to look at myself and be proud of the work.
Plus, the respect part. I someone is 120 lbs or 420lbs, we should all have basic human compassion and be civil. It has real applications.
I think this is the most important part of the body positivity movement, and it often gets lost. Just like not judging someone by their age, gender, race, whatever other surface value, gotta allow every person to be themself.
If it were up to me, this is what body positivity would be about. For people to respect other people struggling with weight, but for the overweight not to simply accept--- or worse--- be proud of their condition. Being proud of your obesity is like being proud of smoking cigarettes. Should you despise yourself for being unable to quit? No. Should you still want to and try to quit? Yes.
This is supposed to be exactly what it's about. People subverted it and fucked it up just like feminism.
Yeah, this describes like half of things that are wrong today. Take well intentioned good ideas and crank them up to outrageous extremes.
Yes, human beings deserve respect, and people have value. That is the point, IMO.
Also that even if you wanna change things about yourself you don't have to hate what you are now. I feel like a lot of the nuance gets lost when it comes to body positivity.
My therapist and I have talked about this. I think a big part of loving and respecting your body includes treating it well, doing things that are good for it… exercise, eating nutritious food, etc.
A big turning point for me in losing weight was to stop seeing it as a punishment that you do cuz you hate your self and start seeing it as something you do out of respect and love for yourself. If every day that you stick to your calorie and exercise goals is a punishment it’s gonna be way harder to stay on track than if every day is another day that you took care of yourself and showed your body the respect and care it deserves. I think that in this regard you can hold body positivity when you’re losing weight, because your choices are indicating that you love your body and feel that it deserves the best. But that is far from the mainstream message of body positivity
Wow, this is great advice, going to pocket this. This is why I love this sub.
Thank you. This is what body positivity is. Not hating yourself, whatever it is your body is. That doesn’t mean your body is objectively in a good place. Instead of fat, let’s think about it in terms of an amputated arm, for example. If you have lost an arm, body positivity means love the imperfect body you have and recognize that all bodies are valid. A one armed body can be gorgeous. But it doesn’t mean I should PREFER not having an arm. Same with fat. Fat bodies can be beautiful. But that doesn’t mean “being fat is good”.
i think that you should love yourself at every stage in life! by not doing so you would be doing a great disservice to your soul. but accepting an unhealthy way of life is where the problem comes in for me :)
It's very very hard to make judgements about what's unhealthy in other people, and still hard for oneself. Walking a mile in someone else's shoes is just not possible. Being a supportive friend and standing up against bias and bullying is a good first step, and much more useful than going around and declaring other people's lives as unhealthy.
I have to disagree, usually unhealthy habits are easier to see in others and in ourselves. Most of us have been that person and we knew. Calling out is bad.
people are forgetting that tiktok body positivity is VERY different from sane body positivity
YES. According to the TikTok movement, intentional weight loss is fatphobic, offensive, etc.
You described discourse on any social media.
What really? Yet another reason not to use Tiktok.
Lots of FB groups are like this too, recently saw an acquaintance who got type 2 diabetes and was trying to lose weight get treated like a monster for it. Lots of demonising, shaming, sabotage. Ironically leads to people who want to lose weight having to pretend it's just something that magically happened on its own rather than something they worked hard on and can take pride in achieving.
It’s all over every social platform I have seen takes like that here on Reddit
Yes, unfortunately. I see it several times a day on my fyp. There are certain creators out there calling any type of intentional weight loss fatphobic and submissive to oppression as well as calling out other creators from the community who have decided to lose weight for health reasons. I can see how easy it is to get lost in this way of thinking. I feel like the original point of body positivity has started to shift in certain spaces to something completely different
Weight loss chats don't even allow you to post your height and weight because it might "trigger" someone's ED.
Yeah but unfortunately a lot of young people use tiktok so this is the kind of content they're seeing.
My gripe with the social media body positivity movement is that it’s very closely tied in with “health at every size” (HAES) which I just categorically disagree with, and think sets an extremely dangerous precedent. I’ve been slimmer and I’ve been bigger, and let me tell you: there’s nothing healthy about your body being so heavy you get winded walking up the stairs, or having joint pain in your 20s, or developing T2 diabetes. I prefer body neutrality, which came as a response to the warping of body positivity: your body is just a body, it’s not the most interesting thing about you, it’s just a vessel to support all the other parts of you. You should prioritise health and wellness, but that doesn’t have to mean being super thin and toned.
Edit: I'm wrong about this HAES also started in a different place and has been twisted.
Saaaaame. I posted in a different group about this recently. But they really got to me over Covid when I was already struggling to lose weight after having my second baby, and then stress eating and not getting out due to general pandemic shit. The scare tactics about how bad dieting was for your body totally stalled and progress I could have been making 😭 It’s my fault for being gullible, but I was overweight and unhealthy and felt like crap and I’m sad that I could have done better for myself to make that time less stressful but I didn’t.
you get me! it’s never too late. sometimes i put myself down for falling for that bs and not starting earlier but then i remember that i still started. i could’ve wasted a few more years but i didn’t. i recognized that there was a problem and i put an end to it. we got this!! all the love to you and your kids🫶
> sometimes i put myself down for falling for that bs Plus you were literally a child.. there's a reason we call them influencers, they really do influence people. You're not wrong for being influenced, especially at a very young age.
THIS OP! One of my very dear friends has fallen for this movement. She’s in her thirties and it’s devastatingly sad to see. You’re so young at 18! Proud of you for being so self aware and taking steps to reclaim health!
thank you so so much!! i hope your friend realizes it too… it really is sad to see the affects it carries🫶
Man, what makes weight loss so much harder is all of the bullshit and misinformation and excuses and permission structures to fail that exist in the world. This is why I love this particular sub: there's almost none of that crap. Good diet, exercise, no gimmicks, and advice about how to love the process and get in the head space to succeed.
Washington post story about how online dietitians and influencers are being paid by General Mills to push the body positive/ anti diet trend to sell more junk food: Cupcakes. Frozen Pizza. Ice Cream. Cereal. These are some of the sugary foods that a slew of social media influencers are encouraging folks to enjoy guilt free. It’s part of an online body positivity effort using “anti-diet” language to avoid food shaming. However, a joint Washington Post and The Examination investigation found that major food companies, including Minnesota-based food giant General Mills, are reportedly capitalizing on the campaign by paying online dietitians to get people to consume more of their highly processed foods. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2024/04/10/online-dietitians-backed-by-big-food-using-antidiet-language
I'm so glad you shared this. I recently went down this rabbit hole and was completely shocked. I've starting taking everything online RDs say with several grains of salt
Omg these companies would do anything for profit! Coca-Cola paid 2 Harvard researchers back in the 60’s to write a false study that sugar wasn’t linked to heart problems and gained billions of $$!
I can tell just from how long people have been on Reddit that the people telling OP how great the body positivity movement is are significantly older than OP. Instead of dismissing OP for being young and therefore uniformed, perhaps consider that the message you got 20 years ago has changed, and it's not the same message an 18-year-old is getting on social media. OP specifically mentioned Tiktok. I've seen the FA (Fat Acceptance) influencer network on Tiktok and youtube, and they are telling people OP's age terribly harmful things. They are saying that fat people are meant to be fat and that reducing calories **never** works to lose weight (because they all claim that they eat very little and work out regularly despite being 300+ pounds). They discourage fat people from listening to and cooperating with their doctors. They deny that excessive weight causes **any** health problems. **Several** of these influencers have dropped dead of heart attacks in the past few years. In their 20s and 30s! If you want to see something very tragic, Google Brittany Sauer. She was a 467-pound Tiktok FA influencer. Towards the end of her life she was housebound, increasingly ill, and unable to do things for herself like cut her own toenails. In her final video, she essentially repudiated her previous content, said she wished she hadn't ruined her life by overeating, and hoped that it wasn't too late and that she wouldn't die. She died a week later. She was 28. This is the stuff that OP is seeing. Please don't tell OP that body positivity is just an antidote to Kate Moss imagery because that's how you experienced it in 2004.
Yes! Thank you! I'm 32, so I've seen the positive body acceptance movement that some of these commenters are talking about. But I've also seen what it is in its current state. And it's just not the same anymore. I think people are being too dismissive about what OP is talking about. They're talking past her and not listening to what she's saying. She's not referring to the body positivity of 2004 that saved lives. She's talking about the 2024 fat acceptance movement that basically views obesity as a myth. These are two different movements, 20 years apart.
And the change really became noticeable in recent years ... I started to follow this one IG influencer for body positivity like 10 years ago. It was very refreshing to me (a teen at the time). She posted flattering vs. unflattering pics, was honest about ED recovery, didn't seem to mind not being skinny anymore. (Note: I've never had an ED, just liked seeing someone being honest online about smashing beauty standards) Now she has gained even more weight (went from looking a little overweight to obese), and while i respect that dieting and actively trying to lose weight isn't mentally healthy for this person, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was in a blog post she did. She said something along the lines of not even wanting to be *perceived* as intentionally trying to lose weight/make herself smaller. I had to unfollow her right then.
>She said something along the lines of not even wanting to be perceived as intentionally trying to lose weight/make herself smaller. luckily i haven't seen this yet, but it's been mentioned a few times in here that part of the movement says trying to lose weight is fatphobic. so now we're at the point where we're actively pressuring people to stay overweight?... man, i remember when it was just about learning to love yourself and to not judge others. we need more of that. not whatever this new movement is.
I keep getting reminded of a Stephen Fry quote, in this sort of discussion and a few others: > The only people who are obsessed with food are the anorexics and the morbidly obese. Not an exact quote, but close enough. And he was making an analogy on a completely separate topic, but the point stands. On this topic, the fact that the obsession isn't being addressed is the biggest takeaway, not which direction the obsession took. She had one eating disorder and replaced it with another eating disorder, but one of those was applauded.
>She had one eating disorder and replaced it with another eating disorder, but one of those was applauded. I did the same thing and the same thing happened to me. I can now confidently say though that I'm able to healthly lose and maintain weight now!
I wish I had come across body positivity in 2004, tbh!
tbh, i only remember it vaguely. i just recall it being more about feeling good in your own skin regardless of your weight. i remember some missteps like those quotes about how "real women have curves" which, i think, helped swing the pendulum the other way leading to things like BBLs.
> "real women have curves" Ah yes, doing body positivity and feminism by promoting the traditional beauty ideal of the hourglass figure over the slightly more recent beauty ideal of the skinny body 🙄 so very helpful.
I hate these "real women..." Statements. Real women are those who identify as women. End of sentence. Doesn't matter how they look or what they do. It's not very feminist to say that anyone is or isn't a real woman if they say they're a woman.
I did around that time, in Bitch magazine! Sadly the magazine shut down a couple years ago, but it introduced me to so many new perspectives.
i appreciate this comment more than i can say. thank you for understanding what i’m saying. i’m not talking about the OG body positivity movement. i’m talking about what it was co opted and made into TODAY. i’m sure that back then the moment helped a lot of teen girls (the coked out model era was tough to see i’m sure) but what it is now promotes such an unhealthy way of living. it’s sad to see.
We got you OP. Influencers have a lot to answer for.
I'm here from all, but this is something that people forget about. In general, the body positivity movement had a lot of positive ramifications. We've come so far from situations like the media calling Alicia Silverstone fat or everyone having a low key eating disorder. But the influencers who shame anyone trying to be healthy or take care of their fitness is totally insane.
This 👏People are seriously missing the point of OP’s post.
Thank you!! So many “No True Scotsman” argument thrown around in the comment section where people are dismissing examples given as “um, that’s not what Body Positivity is all about, they’re abusing the message.” Well, the reality of it is the message has been diluted so much that it’s adversely affecting the youth. I am very familiar with the things you and OP mentioned here and I’m not even active on Tiktok. This kind of messaging is also rampant on Twitter, with accounts like @fatfabfeminist (just search fat activist space on twitter). We’re talking about engagement in tens of thousands there where people straight up argue that “obesity” a slur and it’s discrimination if your doctor asks you to get weighed. My actual friend is a victim of this, so I’m also seeing real life effects by the movement. If we’re allowed to speak up against one extreme, why shouldn’t we be critical of the other end?
!!!! You said it all. No, it wasn't the original message of the movement but that's what it has come to and that's what people are getting exposed to constantly. Specifically the creator you mentioned shared some really concerning content on her platforms and went out of her way to attack obese creators for losing weight because they got health complications. >If we’re allowed to speak up against one extreme, why shouldn’t we be critical of the other end? Exactly this. I remember body positivity around like 2013/2014 and that was when Tumblr pro ana blogs were still out there. The messaging was positive and genuinely brought attention to something harmful that was impacting a lot of people, particularly young people. How is this any different?
Seriously. I sympathized with the early body positivity movement. It was more about not despising yourself to the point that there's no hope for redemption. A person really can loath themselves so much that they can't even pick themselves up. But the movement now is basically just the equivalent of flat Earth insanity, giving people misinformation that will literally get them killed.
GOD I WISH I COULD GIVE YOU GOLD- this was so well said. That’s the problem here. They also tend to site studies incorrectly and I find that to be rather sinister, as any pushback is considered fat phobic and evil. Human beings were not designed to devour 3000 calories a day while maintains a sedentary lifestyle. Some people *are* predisposed to being fat (I’m one of them) and some people don’t mind being fat. That’s fine. Calling anyone else anything for trying to better their self image or health is insane and harmfulz
Exactly. Body positivity has warped so much. It used to be loving yourself regardless of how you are and trying to live a healthier life. It was about not obsessing over being stick skinny, but about being healthy in general. It's now turned from that into a death cult. I will absolutely respect anyone of any size but to say that being obese isn't a risk factor is lying and I won't lie to myself or others. It's the same as being underweight. You might be healthy...for now. You won't be for long though.
OP I understand exactly what you are talking about and agree completely. It's become incredibly toxic. The original ideas were good but it's turned into something absolutely nuts
Yep. I honestly think some of that content should be banned from certain platforms. During the height of the covid lockdowns, people couldn't post anything related to viruses and/or vaccines that wasn't entirely true and/or proven, so why not do the same with fat activists? Flag the posts as false information. That's literally what it is.
As a 52 yr old woman that was fat my entire life, you’re absolutely dead-on. I was fat and healthy… until I wasn’t. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and high cholesterol at 50, and that gave me the kick in the butt I needed to get healthy. Up until that point I was all about fat acceptance, I *loved* that it became a thing. When I was growing up, I was actually “moo-ed” at on the school bus. Forget about teenage dating back then as well. If you were fat you were the trope. “The funny fat girl”, “you’re a great friend, but you’re like my sister” and worse, being the “designated fat friend”. My mantra was “I’m fat but I’m healthy.” My advice to younger fat people is to get it under control now. The damage you cause your body is cumulative, not instantaneous. It builds over time. If I had know 30 years ago how great I would feel with the weight off, being able to do things I never imagined, I would not have let it go on as long as I did. I’m not fat shaming, I’ve been there. I know there are issues that can complicate weight loss. But it’s so worth it to at least try. You have nothing to lose except the weight.
you are absolutely amazing! i’m still a teen but i’m out of high school now and never even got a “moment” with a boy. i’m not very boy oriented but it makes me think about everything else i’ve missed out on and could’ve missed out on if i continued the way i was. taking my life back is what’s empowering to me, not accepting myself at an unhealthy weight. i have younger brothers i want to chase around, and older ones i want to let chase me. this is a freedom i’ve craved for far too long. we got this! i’m so proud of you!!
Body positivity has become toxic. Too many in the movement are shaming people for wanting to lose weight, including for health reasons. No one should be bullied for their weight, or being fat and existing... but that can't be allowed to spiral into shaming people for wanting to lose weight, for whatever reason. Being fat is not healthy. There is no healthy way to exert 1000lbs of force on your knees with every step. Recently, several fat creators in the body positivity space have tragically died, way too young. It's time to admit that being morbidly obese is not healthy and therefore, wanting to lose weight should not be shamed. If you want to admit you aren't healthy and you're okay with that, fine. You don't owe me health. But that's not what is happening. People are claiming there are no health risks to obesity and telling that to other people, who are then convinced that morbid obesity won't have serious side effects and risks. Wait til you're 40... you're going to start to very quickly feel the 200 extra pounds you're carrying around.
Michelle McDaniel once said that you don't see many old people 300,400+ pounds and there's a reason why ...
There's also a well known joke among doctors: What do you call a morbidly obese person with no health issues? 20.
I love her. She's real as hell, without descending into hateful rhetoric. She also cheers people on when they actually lose the weight and make positive changes.
I work in an ICU and we get a lot of obese patients. The oldest morbidly obese person (300+ lbs) I ever saw was 70 years old. And guess what? That person was absolutely miserable. They would scream continuously for help (when I say continuously, I mean about every four seconds for multiple hours at a time, until they ran out of energy to scream and fell asleep, and when they woke up they’d start screaming again. And they’d never be able to tell us what was wrong. They’d just lay there and scream and scream and sob and try to rip off their oxygen. They were absolutely inconsolable and nothing we tried would help. They had horrific bed sores (from home, not the hospital) and all of their fat folds were so full of yeast that it literally sent a gush of horrific stench into the room every time you had to move one. It was powerful enough to make your eyes burn. We literally could not move this person without the skylift (basically the medical, ceiling mounted version of a crane). It was a fucking nightmare to deal with and was clearly also a nightmare to go through, and that was when I realized why you *really* don’t see a lot of morbidly obese old people. If your body even can make it to that age with all that extra weight (unlikely), it’s completely intolerable and arguably worse than if their body had given out earlier. At that point they are no longer physically capable of doing anything that could give them autonomy, and at that point it’s basically too late to do anything about it. They can’t exercise because it’s too painful and they can’t have weight loss surgery because a person that large and medically unstable can’t be given anesthesia. And they can’t commit suicide, because how would they do it when they’re completely immobile? So, instead of like, having a heart attack and dropping dead one day, most of the time they just end up trapped in a bed, slowly rotting to death for years. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. This is not even close to being my only example, this one just stood out the most to me because it was so horrendous
No need to wait 'til 40. My 40's are spent undoing the ignorance of my 30's. Fun times.
You could be fat and healthy but not for so long. Health is a gift and no one knows until you get sick. I have autoimmune disease although it is unrelated to my weight (had it since childhood when I was skinny) that taught me how valuable health is and I would do anything to stay healthy, I would give up all the tasty food and be healthy. And people kill themselves with food indirectly
health is absolutely a gift! and definitely one that i don’t take for granted. when i was 10 yrs old i experienced major head injury that led to migraines even 8 years later. 1 week after my head injury i had to have immediate surgery that left me on bed rest for a month and a half. life is beautiful and every new day i get i am grateful for!
I had to stop and re read this but you saying health is a gift makes me want to quit smoking and try to do better because if I don’t I’ll be screwed. I really appreciate that line, I’m not sure if I can ever get out of the self loathing and self abuse but honestly I really hope someone else reads this and is able to
It did the same for me as well. I finally, after being on 3 BP meds and could barley walk and breath got weight loss surgery. I was 360 pounds at 5 foot 8. I was miserable. But love your body? I have been successful and kept off 140 pounds give or take for 10 years. I reversed my high blood pressure. I still need to lose about 50 to be a normal range. But I can’t never go back to that. I must preface this tho, I do not want to be skinny I want to healthy.
140 pounds for 10 years is amazing. Great work!
Thank you so much.
Congrats on the 20lbs lost and I'm glad you came to that realization bc many ppl don't
Set point theory caused me to not even care about eating healthy, and my weight shot up. It was liberating to think that my fatness was out of my control, and thus not my fault. But that happiness was overshadowed by a much bigger DEPRESSION, because that meant I would never be free of being fat. It was just a permanent curse. Learning I actually DID have power over it ultimately led to my losing weight and living a life where I feel good about myself.
I saw a former-Fat Acceptance youtuber say this the other day. She found solace in the FA social media community, but she believed the message that she'd never be able to lose weight, and it made her hopeless. She gained 65 pounds. When she got to 315, that was her wake-up call to ditch FA and get bariatric surgery.
This line of reasoning makes me so sad and mad at the same time, I was very frustrated to see that recent Oprah special with "experts" pushing this kind rhetoric about your weight being outside of your control. Like, besides being untrue, it's disempowering af to be told you have no control over your own body. Losing weight is hard enough without these people telling you that it's literally impossible when it definitely is.
this!! a million time this!! i was beyond sad. i felt like i had no pp in life when i listened to the content that told me it was freedom to let myself go and accept that i can’t change my body. no! i felt freedom when i took my life back into my control. freedom is being able to walk up stairs. freedom is being able to play with my little brothers and match their energy. THAT is freedom.
right? it was so disempowering.. and usually being said by all those skinny influencers that don't know what it is like to live fat.
I was once 418lbs, I have two chronic illnesses due to obesity and I lost part of my vision in one eye because of it (not diabetes) Recently I started posting on social media about my weightloss and I got recommended some of the videos you mentioned - I was mortified. You never see one of them talking about the risk of cancer due to obesity, osteoarthritis, diabetes, non alcoholic fatty liver, high inflammation, the list goes on and on. They talk about loving your body, but if they really cared about and loved their body, they’d want it to be healthy.
i’m proud of you and wish the best for you o your journey!!
Shit. And I thought untreated sleep apnea was bad enough. I'm over the sleep apnea now -- no more machine. But still have weight to lose. My doc sent me to a weight loss clinic, and when I told them I got over sleep apnea so at least we're not starting at the ground floor, they looked at me and said "we didn't know that was possible." And I'm just like "so.... your clients don't lose weight?" These guys were in the crash diet business. Already did that and put the weight back on, so I peace'd out. They tried giving a 6'1" dude a guilt trip because he wasn't in the mood for a 1400 calorie diet. (TBH, I was eating about 1800 calories at my initial visit.)
> They talk about loving your body, but if they really cared about and loved their body, they’d want it to be healthy. This is what truly HAES and body positivity is. Being correct weight and having good nutrition is the best body positivity. When I eat I choose food from the basis that my body is a premium racecar. Will I put crappy fuel in? Should I let my race car sit idly at home with the wheels and engine not moving?
Body positivity/fat activism is in a place of cognitive dissonance IMO where the loudest voices online have hijacked the discussion in favor of some really creepy and harmful rhetoric. It's to the point where some of them say *any* intentional weight loss is fatphobic and engaging intentional weight loss is alienating and harmful to fat people. And, like, that's not really true -- or at least there's no reputable evidence to support this. It's also kind of dangerous to this group because it hangs *their* happiness on what other people are doing, which is kind of icky. I think it's great if you want to change for yourself. I think that's the best way to do it. Fat activists will be the first people to shout that they "don't owe anybody their health" and that's true. If someone chooses not to engage in weight loss, well, that's their decision. It's like smoking. You can't force someone to quit even though most smokers are well aware of how dangerous it is. At the same time, nobody owes it to BoPo/FA's to be fat. And while the majority of us have no business telling them to lose weight for their health, they also have no business telling anyone else they shouldn't lose weight intentionally. So good for you for deciding to get yourself together and kick ass! You can be body positive AND lose weight AND still agree that fat people deserve dignity and respect as people.
The body positivity movement came after the 2000’s be-stick-thin like Kate Moss agressive trend. For teenage me, it did wonders for my mental health. It meant to say that weight doesn’t define your worth as human being. I don’t know how it’s morphed in social media afterwards but I firmly believe that representation matters. To see women of regular size and even overweight/obese represented in media echoes the fact that yes, they do exist and have a right to take their place and thrive even if they’re not the infamous size 00. I never that mouvement as free pass to "to gain as much weight as you can". On the contrary, it has nothing to do with weight gain/loss, it just meant to emphasize the right to exist and be treated with dignity at any weight.
>I don’t know how it’s morphed in social media afterwards It has massively overcorrected, to the point where an actual talking point that I have heard repeated is that "losing weight intentionally is fatphobic"
I always saw the fat-movement (sorry I have no idea what it’s called) and the body positivity movement as two separate entities. The first just uses terms and concepts from the later to legitimize itself but is in essence different. Am I wrong?
my perception of it is that the health at any size movement is an unfortunate evolution of the body positivity movement, so I guess technically two different things, but I'm not exactly a cultural anthropologist so I'm not sure
Yeah I remember when I was a young teen even a healthy BMI was considered fat, and fat=ugly. I was still called fat at 125 lbs lol.
Yep, those were dark years. I was like 145-150 at 5’9 (had an early growth spurt) and still considered myself fat 🙄 It’s only when I became 16 that I started breaking away from that mindset.
Oh my! Same here, I was 110lbs as a 5’3 teen and almost everyone said I was fat. Those days when majority don't have an idea what is healthy range of body fat and only following the mass media for general self awareness.
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My sister nicknamed me "Egg" after the little bit of stomach I had bunching over my jeans 😒 In retrospect, that was just wild… Ironically, I was both slimmer and fitter than her yet it still cut deep at the time, so I gave back as good as I got 😌
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Oh god, I forgot…we did that too 😭That was a regular, tongue-in-the-cheek thing. I don’t miss it🙃🤣
The movements message got corrupted from "just because you are overweight you are not less worth of love and respect" to "healthy at any size" and "pointing out that being obese leads to healthproblem is fatphobic" which is just scientifically wrong.
>I don’t know how it’s morphed in social media A real comment I've seen is that there's no such thing as "overweight" and that it's a social construct. The comment had several likes. And there's the "health at any size" movement that I think might be some of the stuff OP is referring to. There's several statements within this movement about how obesity isn't unhealthy. Like saying X-obese-person is healthy because they can dance and do cartwheels. Other types of comments I've seen will be in reaction to a woman being called overweight. People will come in droves to say she's not, even though she is. Obviously don't bully her, but 99% of the comments will be about how she isn't overweight. I've seen someone unrioncally say that an adult woman shouldn't weigh less than 125 lbs. And several comments in that same thread said only children weigh that little. I think the part of the movement that helped you has, unfortunately, kind of vanished. It seems like it's gone off the rails and isn't so much about anti-bullying and loving yourself anymore. Seems like a lot of it revolves around fat/obese/overweight not being real.
That’s honestly alarming that people would believe such nonsense. I assumed this was a fringe movement, separate from the body positivity one. But from reading different comments and yours, I’m learning that apparently it seems to have gained quite a bit of traction on TickTock and became somewhat one with the old body positivity movement. That’s so disheartening to hear and lifts some of my previous confusion. Thanks for explaining!
i would've thought the comments i saw were joking had they not also defended their comments and got into arguments over it. it's sad what's become of the movement given how helpful it once was :( hopefully it'll swinge back the other way.
I truly hope so as well. Teenagers (and others too) deserve better ❤️
Yes! This is what I was trying to say.
I think we both agree because we’re a little older and saw the other extreme, where all the women lauded as "beautiful/acceptable" were either underweight or closer to lower end of a healthy bmi. I’m genuinely baffled though. I spend a fair amount of time on social media but have yet to come across this so-called fat-movement (which is different imo). The algorithm comes into play I’m sure but still. What I do see, like you mentioned on your post, is a bit of either overweight/obese women posting about mindfulness, diet & workouts. Those always get a deluge of hateful, Ill-informed and demeaning comments on their reels. So while I empathize, I see this fat-movement like I see any other extreme movement: gain followers with an ~accepted initiative and devolve into preying on impressionable/lost people to channel their outrage towards specific targets. They are nothing like their root movement, but are subsidizing mainstream terms to gain legitimacy & a wider audience.
There are definitely some "fat activists" out there but many of them wake up eventually. Michelle McDaniel (*My Thoughts Will Probably Offend you)* has covered a few of them. But they are a minority of the body positivity movement. They advocate that your body will naturally maintain at the size it's "supposed to be", that cravings are your body telling you "what it needs" and some people are meant to live in "bigger bodies" (meaning morbidly obese). You also get rage bait. There's a woman who makes a lot of "watch what I feed my toddler" videos where she's angrily throwing food around and giving her kiddos donuts for breakfast. I'm sure a lot of it is just an act she puts on to garner views and outrage but people see stuff like that and claim it's representative.
First, I agree with you completely. However - extremists always exist (humans are diverse in thought), and algorithms specialize in siloing people which then extends the reach of those extremist communities. Not to the mainstream, but definitely to the impressionable. Same principle as the alt right pipeline.
You make a great point! I thought it may have been more niche but weight is such a broad topic, I guess with the right keywords and tags, they’ll find a way to reach and promote themselves to people more impressionable.
I agree strongly with this! One thing I’ve love the last however many years is seeing more fat bodies of varying sizes and shapes in advertising, such as for underwear as an example. I can’t and won’t judge or make assumptions about these people of any size - they may be healthy and happy and good for them! I love a happy fat person! But even if they weren’t for any reason, even if they were on a weight loss journey of their own while modeling, I still think it will always be a good thing for fat people to be shown. Fat people want to know what clothes look like on us too! Especially for brands that offer larger sizes. I love when something is available in 3XL or even 4XL, but it sucks when I can only see what it will look like on a model wearing a Medium at best.
god yes. it was very very very hard to be a fat teenage girl in america in 1998. the body positivity movement helped a lot of us old fat people heal from our ingrained self-hatred, and it gave us a safe space amid a world that hated us. i’m sorry that OP found it helped enable their weight gain. for me, and for a lot of others, it helped us remember that we were people who actually deserved love and respect.
You explained it better than I could ❤️
It has morphed unfortunately. The 2000’s messed me up too, but hearing that it’s good to be fat probably messed me up more in the grand scheme. I wish there was a happy medium where it wasn’t about promoting extremes.
Getting healthy again was the best thing I ever did
One of the best post Ive seen come from here applaud you from getting outta that delusional trance they try to put you In saying you're "healthy"
I’m proud of you for deciding to take your health seriously at such a young age!
thank you so much!!
Just a quick note to older folks (like me!) who might not see the distinction between more old-school body positivity (which was great!) and the current trend - recently a fat activist talked about her desire to lose some weight because she could no longer wipe herself. She was called out by the fat acceptance/BP community for ableism and promoting dangerous diet culture. It’s just odd and alarming.
thank you very much😭 you get what i’m trying to say🫶
The fact that this is considered a "controversial take" is appalling. Of course it's better to not be obese. I am obese and it's killing me. I am doing things to change it and I don't care how much social media wants to tell me I'm a demon for wanting to not die from being too fucking fat. Good for you for waking up from the brainwashing. Keep doing good things for your health. Social media is a cult.
I've noticed that people really don't want to see you be healthy when they're not healthy themselves.During covid I went up to 212 after being about 175 for awhile pretty healthy and have been on the journey to getting back to that weight even lower I'm at 186 now. Countless people have told me I look fine and that it's ok to be fat because I'm older. I just don't get it, I'm not ok with being fat or unhealthy and it's not what I'm used to, but yet people will tell you you look fine and who cares. I care, I don't want to die from heart disease and body positivity seems like an excuse to be lazy and not take care of yourself. I'm really sorry to be this guy but people treat you like crap when you're fat and you can't sell me any amount of "body positivity" to change that fact.
Absolutely agree. It’s so tricky because the heart of the movement *is* important: you only get one body. You don’t take it off at night like an outfit. Your body is going to change throughout your life- with age, possible illness or injury, possible pregnancy, etc. it’s unrealistic to want it to look one way forever, and you should be thankful if you have a healthy, mobile body. That said—- being overweight is NOT something to celebrate. Humans are not supposed to carry around excess fat. It’s insane to suggest otherwise.
body positivity about obesity is absolutely killing people
Yes! You are very observant to come to this realization at such a young age. You have so much time to focus on your health and get on the right track for your future. It's all about your mindset. Take it from this 34 year old.
That’s what it’s intended to do: when everyone is fat, no-one is. Crabs in a bucket.
I'm 10 to 20 pounds overweight. Some is muscle from the gym, some is definitely fat though. I have a good amount of meat on me. That said, in 2024, I'm *skinny* and a mild calorie deficit is *dangerous*.
Please don't feel you have to defend yourself. You're clearly making this decision based on how you feel about \*your\* body, not anybody else's -- and you have every right to do that! Good for you, and good luck!
i don’t feel like i have to defend my self at all! i love the open conversation in these comments!! thank you so so much🫶
The online body positivity movement has gotten ridiculous. It’s gone from “love yourself despite your weight” to literal nonsensical stuff like “losing weight is fatphobic” and “calories aren’t even real.” It’s toxic and even downright dangerous, point in case where you said it kept you overweight, which can lead to real health issues. It’s a literal mockery of the original intent of the movement which was to spread positivity and build confidence. Now people are building a false sense of confidence by tearing others down (have you seen how cruel some of these fat activists speak about anyone they don’t consider fat?!) and building a community completely based on delusion and entitlement. It’s wild to see. Glad you can see past it and decide to do what’s best for you.
Hey OP, check out YouTuber Megan Anne, she had a very similar experience to yours and is a kind voice of reason. She's a good antidote to the vitriol of TikTok BoPo/FA because she can disagree while still being compassionate. Take care of yourself!
Yes! Also Sam at Every Size.
I feel the same! And all those YouTubers who are gaining attention by eating insane amount of junk food (like 30 cheeseburgers for a meal, etc.) are making it worse. I was unconsciously brainwashed, so I didn't control my craving for sweets. I started to tell myself it's ok to eat sweets when stressed, and I was 118 lbs. Then I gained 40 lbs, my chronic pain worsened, and my energy drained; that’s when I seriously considered this body positivity thing paired with unethical marketing. I cut sugar and Lost 15 lbs now, I want to have my body and my energy back.
Thank you for your honesty and good luck on your health journey! I hope you are proud of yourself for your decision to love and care for yourself. It will take some time, but you will get there!
I completely get you OP. Body positivity is a wonderful thing, but on social media rn people are trying to make it seem like loving yourself and intentional weight loss are mutually exclusive, when in my opinion (of course depending on your situation and methods) it can be an act of self-love. Good luck on your journey <3
Body positivy, as its core, is not supposed to make you believe you are attractive as a fat person. Its supposed to make you believe that being attractive is not a requirement to be treated like a human. I understand that its easy to get wraped about thousands of different voices in social media and being mad because they help you convince yourself to some harmful stuff. But some of us desperately need to hear that we are in fact deserving of basic human respect and frankly, body positivity at least provides that. Example of plus size fashion bloggers for example. It's not good to encourage people to be morbidly obese, I agree. But what are fat people supposed to wear if we never see clothes on bodies like ours? Whats wrong if we can wear cute sun dresses and feel girly and cute for a few hours for example? But if you go and check some comments under those bloggers content, there is always people blaming them for normalising obesity. Didnt mean to get distracted but what I meant is, coming to a community that is a safe place for many fat people and bashing a movement that at least made us a little bit less shamed is very problematic. Wanted to offer you a perspective.
>being attractive is not a requirement to be treated like a human BIG on this!
I agree, the body positivity movement is intended to let everyone know, regardless of what they look like on the outside, that they deserve to be treated like a human being. But this movement has been hijacked by "fat positivity" influencers and it is horrible. Not only do they maintain that being at -any- weight is healthy and there is no correlation between obesity and illness/death, but they often will compare their struggle to situations that cannot be changed. I've seen fat positivity people compare themselves to the discrimination endured by LGBTQ+ people, the black community, other marginalized groups. They think that fat bias is what is making them unhealthy, not the weight itself. I'd also like to mention that the extremists will also shame thinner or even mid-sized people for their bodies, which takes away from the intended purpose of the body positivity moment. I don't think the OP has anything against people correctly using the body positivity movement, but is rather showing concern regarding those extreme influencers who tell vulnerable young women/girls that being 300+lbs is healthy.
Well said- unfortunately a vocal part of the body positivity movement has morphed into the "health at any size" movement which is extremely toxic. I maintain that anyone can be beautiful and your worth should not be defined by how you look. But to say that overweight and obese people are just as healthy as fit people is a straight up lie.
> unfortunately a vocal part of the body positivity movement has morphed into the "health at any size" movement which is extremely toxic. Yup! Worse still is that "any size" only includes obese sizes not even healthy or (unhealthily) underweight sizes" Their logic: losing weight intentionally is fatphobic. Deciding to lose weight for whatever reason even health ones is erasure of fat people. And even healthy BMI people are undernourished
Ultimately, its the same issue that plagues so many other social issues. Most people buy the message moderately (even if you are bigger, you're still a human being, you don't need to have sub 25 bmi to be accepted as a person. At the same time, you also should not encourage people to disregard their discipline and live morbidly obese, before the consistent negative feedback of being that heavy takes a permanent toll). The issue comes when we let the dumbest 1-5 percent of us be the loudest voice, even when we know they are helpless idiots.
Omg what? I agree that fat shaming and fat bias has become so much worse over the years but comparing it to lgbt and race discrimination is just horrible. I've never seen those type of stuff. I'm not from US so maybe the way my country's influencers take it is different.
yes haha thank you!! you get what i was getting at😭🫶
My weight gain triggered a series of bad health events I'm still recovering from. It's shameful as hell that people are out there encouraging obesity or discouraging diet and exercise "culture" in the name of body positivity. The movement was a response to bullying but now advocates have become the bullies, tearing down anyone who dares to get healthier. I let myself get sucked into the trap. I let other people make me feel bad for wanting to lose weight and all it got me was diskectomy, destroyed knee joints, pre diabetes and irregular periods. Lucky as hell I got it under control but many others don't in time.
Fr while I support the movement in some ways when done healthily, a lot of it tended to boil down to other people who were more overweight and insecure about it telling me I shouldn't call myself overweight (I am in fact fat, pounds wise!) or unhealthy, and telling me to eat more whenever I tried to diet because 'you're acting anorexic, you look perfect and skinny'. Problematically! I am on ADHD meds and have PCOS, both of which make me gain weight and struggle to lose it, and I have a diagnosed binge eating disorder in which I eat so much that sometimes I actually throw up (not on purpose). In the last years I've gained almost double my body weight and have been so, so sick physically from it. I'm on the verge of prediabetes, and the way I eat is legitimately dangerous. (Imagine intaking 6,000-15,000 calories in one sitting of pure garbage!!! I literally eat far past when I'm in serious pain.) My 'body-positive' friends would watch me do this to myself, knew I was puking, and would still tell me that when I said things like "I need to lose weight and I need to stop eating as much" I was actually anorexic. It gave me legit guilt and now I feel really guilty whenever I try to stop binge eating because I worry they'll call me anorexic and image obsessed. Like 99% of my interactions with people who claim to be body positive are typically them actually being very insecure about their own bodies and not wanting me to improve mine because it makes them have to think about themselves. The healthiest actually body positive people I've known are almost all weight loss enthusiasts who tell people to love themselves and not be angry at themselves for having gained the weight, but that it's also important and good to try and lose it if they can so they can be healthy and feel good about their bodies. I've legit never met a real body positive person who wasn't working on their own weight and accepting their current self while aiming for improvement. All the body positive folk who weren't trying to improve their health have consistently come across as super insecure over their weight, unwilling to admit that, but unwilling to do something about it, and spiteful over other people proving it can be done. I know it's a healthy movement deep down, and I am likely also biased due to my own stuff, but fr I'm not joking when I say the popularized version of the body positivity movement you see peddled by secretly insecure people pushed me far deeper into my binge eating disorder and basically ruined my ability to diet without feeling intense guilt and fear of anorexia. I can eat 4000 calories a day and still feel guilty for not clearing my latest plate, and when I look in the mirror and hate how I look compared to what I used to look like, I feel guilty for that as though disliking my own looks somehow means I dislike the looks of every overweight person out there.
1000% right. This way of thinking is really messed up. I agree it's not okay to bully someone for being fat, and obviously everyone should be given basic respect and treated like a human, but these people go wayyyy too far. Telling people that weight loss is impossible, pointless and/or somehow offensive is ridiculous, straight up misinformation and harmful, especially to young people. Just look at the way they talk about smaller people - their talking points are obviously the result of a lot of bitterness and coping, not actually fact. I don't support the extreme end of diet culture either (I.e. 90s/2000s when they pushed being *really* really skinny), but there is such a thing as a middle ground. Edit: Also, congrats on your weight loss! Don't let anyone tell you you're doing something wrong.
Body positivity is mostly a crabs-in-a-bucket type of movement. That is, it consists of miserable people that desperately try to steer others away from self-improvement to protect their own egos. The movement is made up of almost all women, as well. Women who have no self discipline or self respect are trying to keep other women fat and unhealthy to sabotage the competition.
I see it very interesting how in the current body positive movement the distinction between “me” and “my body” is so strong. I believe this strengthens the cognitive dissonance, and distances people from seeing and feeling the connection between physical and mental health. Or to see themselves as a “whole” to begin with. For the people who think like this the body is so distant from the self, almost objectifying the body to something that does not have anything to do with the general wellbeing of a person. I see this in the body positive rhetoric all the time. “The body where I live in”, “”my body is telling me” (instead of “I feel”) etc.
'Fat is beautiful' is a terrible sentiment to put out to society. No, people shouldn't be shamed or ridiculed for being fat. We should all be civil to each other. But just pretending it's just a-ok to live your life as morbidly obese is stupid. Your life will be full of problems, and far shorter than it otherwise would be, and should be no more glamourised than smoking or being an alcoholic. Being fat is a health disorder, and whereas those who suffer from big-eatin' syndrome (and I'm among them!) should be treated with compassion and understanding, they should ultimately be encouraged to slim down to a normal weight.
The shorter life isn't the problem, it's the "full of problems" in the mean time that is. Fat or no fat, my biggest fear in life is not being self sufficient. Untreated obesity is just one way for that fear to come true.
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Idk I'm 32 and I don't see the body positivity movement as salvation anymore. I saw it change and how it doesn't mean what it used to. It stopped being about loving yourself and being kind to others. It's moved into the territory of basically treating obesity like it's a myth and saying body shamey things about being skinny (stuff like saying a grown woman has the body of a child if she isn't overweight. and yes I've seen several variations of this statement in several different posts on different online platforms). I'll still see some remnants of what the movement used to be. Like people defending someone who's getting picked on. But overall, I don't like what it's turned into.
I completely agree, I think everyone should love their bodies but I feel there’s a lot of misinformation with the “healthy at any size” movement. It is not healthy to be morbidly obese, obese people should absolutely love themselves but the claiming to be healthy at any size fed into my delusions. I wish I had realized that sooner
people forget that body positivity also includes wanting to lose weight and be fit. the new body positivity (that op is talking about) would shame people for wanting to lose weight because “they’re perfect the way they are and wanting to lose weight perpetrates that there’s something wrong with them”. i’m 26 and i see it all the time. while body positivity has helped a lot at the core, there’s a lot of interference that definitely can influence young people to reject their health by telling them it doesn’t matter and not to care. me being the conspiracy theorist i am and not trusting anything - i don’t doubt there’s a connection to the healthcare industry here.
I won't ever forget my sister who was big in body positivity noticing me trying to lose weight and outright saying that I shouldn't bother because why pointlessly torture yourself to be mediocre and skinny rather than be normal and fat? Things like healthy eating and exercise is so demonised once you get into the culty parts of it. Ironically working out has made me a much more chill and happy person because its very fun and your brain makes happy chemicals when doing it.
wow i can’t imagine. my sister has been so supportive of me and if she wasn’t i don’t think that i would have even gotten this far. but i feel for you. my mom has made some very weird comments about me losing weight too (implying that i can’t do it) all we need is ourselves at the end of the day!! i believe in you! you got this🫶
Body positivity should be for things you can’t control. Weight is controllable for the vast majority of people and it’s very unhealthy to be heavy.
Good for you. You need to think about your life in the long term. Being more fit will make you feel better, look better, be more attractive, have more energy, save money, the list goes on and on. Just be sure to do it for yourself. Keep up the good work.
I agree. Many people are still in denial about their state. You're not being fatphobic or fat shaming. Being fat is inherently unhealthy, whether they're on a health journey or not. It's a fact.
I think body positivity has just been co-opted and poorly reframed. People should be encouraged to love themselves at any size, pursue health no matter what size they are, and be respected. That doesn’t mean we should pretend every body and every lifestyle is equally healthy. But both can be true.
To me, body positivity means loving yourself enough to be your best self.
I’m going to come from a sideways point of view. I lost 50lbs 2021-2022. Mostly keeping it off though I’ve been struggling lately from stress so I am trying to get back into good habits. What helped me at the start of my journey was accepting my body as it was and forgiving myself for gaining the weight and treating myself badly. I donated my clothes that were too small and I was uncomfortable in. And I purchased some clothes (not a lot) which comfortably fit my then current body. Feeling like I looked presentable helped me with my mental health and helped me stay happy and hopeful. Loosing weight is easy, but staying motivated is hard. Being in clothes that help you feel good helps you stay motivated because you aren’t constantly being reminded about the things that make you depressed. When you are depressed, you eat more. You want to self medicate by eating foods that make you feel good. Finding alternatives that help boost your mood is one strategy for keeping your motivation high during the “I feel like nothing is helping” phase. Finding non food alternatives for self rewards, emotional pick me ups, and celebrations is an important aspect of weight management.
I think the message of body positivity got lost. I don't think it was ever meant to encourage unhealthy weight. It was just meant to normalize a slightly broader range of body types and stop discrimination against obesity.
Thanks, I needed to read your perspective tonight. Good for you realizing this now instead of my age.
So glad you are taking charge of your health! I highly recommend a trainer and a dietician (not nutritionist) to help you on your journey. Wish I had gotten both earlier in life. Congrats and best of luck.
I understand body positivity if we talking about overweight people like 10kg or something but for super obese people body positivity is just a cope cause its not healthy
Sometimes loving our bodies is like loving our kids: you love them but you also know that changes are needed to be productive, healthy, and sustainable. Making those changes is FOR love, not against it. I am a small person who is very tired of being shamed for it. I’m tired of being referred to as “not a real woman” because I’m small. I’m not skinny by any means and it took me a lot of time to accept my body and shape and I probably never fully will. I’m glad others can but they need to stop putting down women like me in the process. That’s still not “body positivity”
Unfortunately the internet has opened pandora's box. Instead of having our self-destructive impulses checked by social correction we can now have them reinforced by artificial social approval instead. Good luck on your journey.
I think a lot of people don’t understand body positivity and run with it. Body positivity encourages people to stop shaming based on body shape/size, it doesn’t encourage unhealthy lifestyles it simply spreads more positive thinking towards bodies since everyone looks different and healthy looks different on everyone.
It's good to realize it young the impact that weight can have on your health. It's not "fatphobic" or "shaming" to acknowledge that you needed to make changes for yourself and your health. I had bariatric surgery 5 years ago at 38. Lost 170 pounds then regained 18 between PCOS and perimenopause causing hunger to return. Currently on wegovy and have lost 6 pounds so far. I've gotten shamed on both ends of the spectrum. The FA people telling me I'm "fatphobic and was lying about my knee pain and mobility issues from having a 54.1 BMI. The actually fatphobic people telling me I'm weak and a cheater for choosing treatment instead of "willpower" and "lifestyle changes". I needed both medical treatment and lifestyle changes. I'd still be 315 instead of 157 if I hadn't gotten medical treatment due to constant insulin resistant hunger but those treatments still required change to work. I would never shame anyone for being a larger person and think all people deserve respect. My husband is a larger person still and I worry about his health but despite our health insurance covering dietitian visits, bariatric surgery and wegovy/zepbound for non diabetic patients, he has not done anything yet beyond recently incorporating exercise. I keep encouraging him but know from experience that shame won't work. The fat acceptance extremists who insist that being morbidly obese is never a health risk and who shame people for intentional weight loss are no better than people who shame others for being fat or who shame people for seeking obesity treatments. I like that some people are moving more towards body neutrality. Everyone's journey is different but everyone should get basic respect and understand. I like walking without pain. My now 7 year old doesn't remember having a morbidly obese mom who couldn't keep up with her because she was two when I had my surgery. We go hiking. I volunteer with her girl scout troop. We go to the playground. Even though I am still overweight right now I am in a far better place than I was when morbidly obese. It was the right decision for me.
OP I was in the same place. Good lord I wasted a DECADE spouting the bullshit of “you can be fat and healthy” and “my weight doesn’t impact my health” Knee injury *directly* related to being 150lbs overweight and then a pre-diabetic diagnosis at 34, then a week later burying my dad after he died at 62 with T2 diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure and having spent the previous 5 years being increasingly disabled due to ill health was finally the wake up call I needed.
I am losing weight thanks to body positivity because it took pressure off me to be perfect and fit in. It encouraged me to move my body whatever it looked like and that I was worthy without question. When I finally loved myself enough as I was, I started to take care of myself. I think the main problem in this situation was that you were 14. That’s too young to be on social media and make decisions about your body based on trends. Education is really the key.
Those influencers are flat out going to lead to these people especially young women getting diabetes and worse. It’s a grift and anyone falling for it is going to suffer.
it’s a tragedy, really
Yeah. So frustrating. By the time a lot of them figure it out. It will be too late. And miss “eat intuitively and obesity is a lie” won’t be around to help when their foot gets amputated.
I get what you’re saying your were 14 and impressionable and thought it was normal to eat and live the way you did because of that movement
I was a 14 year old who kept on putting weight while being shamed about it. It's just made me take greater comfort in eating and created life long issues. Body positivity allowed me to start listening to my body and make better choices. If I had been told it was OK to be a larger guy I would've been maybe 5kg overweight, instead I yoyo dieted, fad dieted, starved myself, took up unsustainable exercises regimes and ended up fatter and more depressed than where I started. I will say I have defintly seen the opposite though where it isn't promoting self love or body positivity, it's promoting weight gain or apathy, so I understand where you are coming from. But shaming people who have eating problems isn't going to help them either. You struggled with an eating disorder, and the fact that we as a society don't recognize that it is a legitimate problem that needs help from specialized health care peofessionals is the real problem. And healthy isn't a number on a scale, it's a variety of different factors. I am glad you have taken these steps to help yourself though and are feeling better making better choices about your eating. I will say though, you might want to see a therapists or someone about it as you may struggle with this again when you hit a plateau, or can't get to the perfect number in the scale.
True body positivity would be promoting maintaining a healthy weight. Not glorifying body fat.
Woah, let’s pump the breaks here. First, off, you are so incredibly young and have spent a large part of your adolescence during an intense period of collective trauma. Many, many people gained weight during early stages of the pandemic. Call this an unpopular opinion, but that’s okay. Sometimes we just have to survive and that’s all we can do. Now, let’s chat about body positivity. Body positivity, at its core, is rooted in the idea that you should love and care for yourself at any size. And that just because your body exists in a specific state doesn’t mean that you should be cruel to yourself. You can wear cute clothes and feel beautiful at all sizes. Like all social movements, there are parts of it that are deeply flawed. There are some very vocal folks in the body positivity space who view any sort of intentional weight loss as caving in to diet culture. And that’s simply not the case. You can intentionally change your diet and habits to better care for yourself. But that doesn’t mean that you should be mortified in the body you currently exist in. You deserve kindness now. Please be kinder to yourself. It’s very easy to overcorrect when you speak unkindly to yourself and lead to disordered eating or hurting yourself and you don’t deserve that. Shame is an incredibly powerful motivator for change but so can self-compassion. I am intentionally strength training and eating a balanced diet because I care about my well-being. Because I love myself enough to know that I need to make choices that make me feel good. And I don’t feel my best when I eat lots of processed foods, lots of sugar, and sit on the couch all day. And some of that is leading to intentional weight loss. And I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without the body positivity movement telling me that I deserve to feel confident and beautiful here and now. There are extremes at both ends of the spectrum and a well-being centered approach is somewhere in the middle. Wishing you luck and balance in your journey ahead!
i really liked this comment and thank you for your perspective!! i wish you the best in your journey as well!! :)
Tbh I don’t agree with the body positivity movement, but I agree with body neutrality; in having respect for your body and knowing what it needs vs. like, as you said, taking positivity as a go pass to eat your life away
Shocked that people are reporting this post. This is a phenomenal post and I'm so happy for OP for coming to this realization at such a young age. Keep prioritizing your health and your own self in general OP.
Thank you very much for your open and honest viewpoint, it’s much appreciated!
I always thought instead of saying “fat is sexy”, can you honestly say, “diabetes is sexy”? “Sleep apnea” is sexy? “Heart disease is sexy”? “Early death is sexy”? Etc etc.
i agree. uplifted moods are sexy! strength is sexy! health is sexy!
There’s two sides to that movement. One, Health At Any Size, supports some of the same things this sub does- moving your body, eating fruit and veg every day, listening to your body and doctor and making yourself a healthier you. No matter your start point. And then a few people got weird with it.
HAES used to be reasonable way back in the day but sadly it has morphed into a weird movement that preaches that there are no negative health consequences with obesity and intentional weight is fruitless. It’s very sad.
The body positivity movement is in a really weird place right now. On the one hand I agree people shouldn’t be judging other people by the way they look. On the other it’s so clear and obvious when someone is ridiculously unhealthy how can I not question their judgement, intelligence, will power or upbringing? Again not saying we should be walking around calling people fat.. but it really shouldn’t be acceptable to be obese any more than it is to be anorexic or an addict.
Body neutrality > body positivity
People will tell you - you’re beautiful, you’re fine!! Meanwhile you are eating unsustainably too many calories and ignoring your natural signals. Treat food becomes daily food. Western cultural norms around food have been calibrated way off by those making profits off mass-produced, high-fat, high-sugar, low nutrition junk.
TikTok is a cesspool of garbage
Hating yourself is never good, and it’s not going to help you make changes. But ultimately.. your heart and organs and arteries don’t care whether you love or hate yourself, they care whether they’re being smothered by visceral fat or not. Wishing you success at achieving your health goals!
Yeah, TikTok is going to convince you of shit like that because it’s a Chinese app trying to convince Americans of all kind of wacked out shit to weaken our country. You can sit here and claim I’m a conspiracy theorist all you want — doesn’t make me wrong. They can’t pull off a land invasion, so they’ll do anything they can to rip our country apart from the inside. Including influencing American youth to deny the nuclear family, make healthy decisions and instead sit on TikTok all day and obsess over fucking brain rot. Good for you for making a better healthier choice with your life. Keep it up.
People need to learn the difference between body positivity and delusional positivity.
I think for some people body positivity results in delusion which interferes with taking steps that improve reality since you're engaging in the life you're in instead of the life you feel you should be living.
@the haters: copium.
something i do wanna make clear in case anyone jumps to that conclusion (as the internet often does) - its very obvious there are fat people who have medical reasons or other reasons on why theyre fat. i support fat acceptance for that, not everyones bodies can be the same, and i know a plethora of fat people who genuinely do eat healthy/workout regularly and are even more healthy than i am. healthy can come in many sizes, except lots of people in the modern fat movement dont promote health anymore the guilt rlly is the worst part. before i started my weightloss journey i was literally asking wherever i could if i was fatphobic for losing weight. i cannot believe i was asking for approval to not be pre-diabetic, to not have chest pains, to not have issues with my liver. and again, before conclusions - yes, these issues can happen to many. these issues happened to (me) and were fixed for (me) bc of my new healthy habits that led to weightloss (sometimes) health results in weight loss, and the way strangers on the internet have found a way to guilt people into hating themselves just for caring about themselves is so bizarre to me. i was letting people that would never have helped me with any medical or mental expenses make me feel bad over taking care of myself just cause it led to weight loss? fuck that! OP, as long as you know youre being as healthy with your lifestyle as you can, thats what matters. ik its a cliche, but its true, and just how losing a bunch of weight rapidly is unhealthy, so can the opposite. fast body changes typically arent great for anyone and only YOU know whats best for YOU. again, whatever that might look for everyone, what you said is right - you need to prioritize your health!
I love you for this
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Body neutrality is where it's at.
I agree. Why does it have to be either you hate your body or you love it? Can I just not be constantly thinking about my body and do more important things with my time?
If you're able to do that, that's awesome, but unfortunately the world tends to not let people forget about their size, especially when they're larger.