On Self-Loathing

Over the last few months, I've gotten really fed up with the whole weight loss/weight maintenance tilt-a-twirl I've been on since I first did Weight Watchers in 2002. I've just gotten tired of beating myself up about every damned thing I eat, feeling guilty when I don't exercise and all the other pathological shit that goes along with trying to maintain weight loss. I have enough stress to deal with in my life, without worrying about attaining some mythical body. And I'm also tired of feeling like some moral failure if I gain a pound or two or five or however many more.

As I was really getting my outrage good and boiling about this, I stumbled onto Kate Harding's Shapely Prose blog, which promotes Health at Any Size and calls into question a lot of the assumptions our society makes about weight loss, health, thinness, beauty, etc. It's been eyeopening and I'm now addicted to reading her blog daily and the many great links (like the one above) that she and her team gather on a daily basis.

It's nice to know - or have confirmed - that I can enjoy food and be healthy without making myself crazy. Anywho, excerpt from the blog I linked to:

Self-loathing is not a fucking character-builder. It doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you better. It’s just an ever-deepening, creepy-ass trap; a trap that is a huge moneymaker for corporations that do not have and never will have good intentions. You’re not disgusting. You’re not freakish. You’re not ugly. And you’re never going to be perfect. And holy shit, that is so okay.