Why Are You Fat?

In order to lose weight and keep it off, you’re going to need to know why you’re fat.  Imagine you’re hooked on pain pills.  You decide you want to get off the pills.  You stop taking them, the pain starts to come back, and you sit there, gripping the edge of your chair with white knuckles, moaning because of the pain, unable to function or enjoy your life.

How long are you going to last?

Do you think this scenario might have a better outcome if you look around, realize you have been taking the pain pills because of the hammer that’s hitting you in the head every five minutes, and stop the hammer?

Special Occasions—Make it About the Friends, Not the Food

Imagine it’s your birthday, and you’re having a party.  Someone has brought a lovely cake.  One of your friends is allergic to wheat and you know she won’t be able to eat the cake.  What do you do?  Do you tell your friend to stay home because eating cake is the most important part of the day?

No.  You most certainly do not.  You tell your friend to come and eat what she can and celebrate the day with you.  The cake is there as a pleasurable indulgence for those who choose to partake of it, not as a gauntlet that must be run by every person at the party to prove their love for you.

Why Do You Hate Being Fat?

There are a lot of reasons to hate being fat, but it’s important to be crystal-clear about what yours are.  You need to make a list.  It’s your own, personal, custom-tailored inventory of misery.  If you’re obese, you have a list.  Get honest and write it down.

And no, I don’t care how “fat positive” you are.  Being obese carries with it physical, lifestyle, and social tolls that are unavoidable no matter how supportive your community is of your freedom of expression or natural body type (or whatever they want to call condoning your overeating).  Get honest, and write it down.

Here’s my list I wrote five days before I started my new eating plan:

Your Jiggly Floppy Body is Funny—Laughter Helps

So you’ve wrecked your body.  You’re never going to look like Angelina Jolie naked.  So what?

Seriously, so what?  You were never going to be as smart as Stephen Hawking, as athletic as Lance Armstrong, as famous as Neil Armstrong, or as kind as Mother Teresa, either.  You managed to let all that go somehow.

It’s time to let go of the dream of the perfect body.  Our media is very intensely bent on the idea that you should hate your imperfect body and keep spending lots of money to try to be less flawed.  Allowing our media to control your self-image is not going to serve you well, though.