Self-acceptance may be one of the biggest issues women deal with, even if they are not overweight. Being overweight — even slightly — seems to amplify this. As women, we really do need to find ways to be kinder to ourselves.

Unfortunately, I think social media has made this even worse.

Just this morning, I watched a great video on a young man who decided to lose 130 pounds and surprise his parents. (You can see the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b4Gve_PaK4) The clip aired originally on NBC, and it’s a great story; see it here: http://www.today.com/health/son-surprises-parents-130-pound-weight-loss-2D11876422.

I don’t care how you go about losing 130 pounds — it’s a battle, and this young man did it through diet and exercise alone. I found the video of his parents seeing him for the first time, not knowing about his weight loss, extremely touching; I think most of us that have had weight issues would not only understand the excitement, but would want to commend him for his hard work.

Enter the trolls in the YouTube comment section, though, who made nasty remarks about his mother’s weight, and about him, as well. Sure, it’s easy enough to do on the internet; if you’re reading this blog, chances are you’ve seen innumerable instances of people being cruel, with no accountability. Simply put, the anonymity of the internet allows people to act like jerks, with few or no consequences, and often, plenty of reinforcement from other jerks. The YouTube video comments are actually quite mild, compared to other instances I’ve seen of fat shaming.

Most of us have seen some version of body shaming in person, as well. Someone is too short, too tall, too pretty, too ugly, too blond, too something. It’s as if we have to quantify other people in some hopes of finding fault — maybe to make ourselves feel better. The thing is, everyone who has been a victim of body shaming knows it’s wrong. Fat shaming often seems to carry with it judgments based solely on appearance. Because, you know, those who fat shame have the special ability to determine a person’s overall health, eating habits, choices, activity level, and family history, just by looking at someone. Let’s just fire all the doctors and hire these folks!

I’ve been a victim of fat shaming. Sometimes, it’s blatant; sometimes it’s subtle and comes from people close to me, including family members. For the most part, I ignore it; when it comes from strangers, I don’t value their opinions of me enough to care. It stings more when it comes from friends or family members, but I usually chalk it up to them not being aware that their comments hurt. Regardless, it doesn’t drag me down when someone says or does something that targets my obesity, but it took decades of desensitizing myself to it to reach that point. Sometimes, if I’m feeling fragile, it still bothers me.

I’m fat. I know I’m fat, and having someone reinforce that isn’t exactly big news. (BIG NEWS! Get it? *insert eye roll here*) Attempting to shame me to make you feel better just illustrates that you have issues that likely make you an unhappy person.

Regardless, this blog entry is more about fat shaming ourselves. When we devalue ourselves because we compare ourselves to an unattainable standard, that’s when the real damage occurs. It evolves into our self-talk. It becomes evident when someone gives us a compliment, and we’re automatically suspicious of the person’s sincerity. We make excuses for not already being the person we think people believe we should be. A friend of mine often will address this issue by saying “don’t talk about my friend this way!” She’s right; if we wouldn’t talk about someone else that way, why do we talk about ourselves that way?

We are apologetic and make fat jokes about ourselves, as if buffering ourselves against rejection before it even happens. We take ourselves out of situations that might be embarrassing, even if it’s something we truly wanted to do. We judge ourselves more harshly than anyone else. We tell ourselves on a daily basis that we’re somehow not good enough.

I do this — a lot. I recently had the opportunity to see friends that I hadn’t seen face to face in decades. These are people who I “see” on Facebook, and I often have current photos of myself posted, so why on earth did I feel the need to make apologetic comments about my own weight before seeing them? I doubt it made any difference at all to them.

It’s quite the conflict, reminding yourself to love and accept yourself as you are, today, when you’re also essentially trying to change who you are — whether it’s through weight loss, just getting healthier, or changing an old habit. Perhaps it’s because in my mind, “change” means a rejection of the state before the change. It means that something wasn’t good enough about the situation, and therefore, change was required.

I freely admit that I need a lot of work in this regard. That’s where most of my inner voice gets its critical tone: you must change because you are a failure.

I have to reject that thinking, and change it to you choose to change because you are heading toward something better. Perhaps it means the same thing at its core, but it comes from a place of choice rather than shame. Body shaming, regardless of whether it comes from ourselves or someone else, serves no purpose other than to degrade.

 

Good news: my last loss update was 31.8 pounds, and I’m pleased to say that this morning, I’ve now lost 32.2 pounds. While that’s not enough to change my public stats, believe me, I am thrilled to finally see a loss after the holidays.

This also puts me even with my previous recorded high weight. I phrase it that way, because I’d actually dieted for a couple weeks before I lost enough weight for the scales I had then to register, and that number was 338. I’m at 338.8 this morning. While it might be a dubious accomplishment to meet my previous high weight, I also see this as a nice mini milestone; I lost from 338 to 197.5, for a total of 140.5 pounds lost. It’s encouraging to me to remember that I did that, once. I’m smarter, now — and I intend to surpass that mark.

I have a couple other small milestones that happen in the next few pounds of loss, and I’m looking forward to scooting right on by them, as well. Maybe next week!