angryfeminist_16

I’m trying to lose weight. After being informed by several doctors that my weight was impacting my health, I made the decision to lose weight – a significant amount of weight. (I want to be clear that this is about my health; I don’t want or mean to imply that overweight people are neccesarily unhealthy or that being thinner means you are automatically healthier. I haven’t ever been a very healthy person regardless of my weight, I’m trying to change that, and I want that to be clear to everyone who reads this.)

Weight loss is a touchy subject in the feminist community; posts about weight on Feministing illustrate this regularly. Negative comments include people who are hesitant to accept those who are overweight for fear of – I’m not sure, exactly, unless it’s fear that overweight people will somehow become a menace to society, no doubt perpetuated by common myths about being overweight. While these people have good intentions, however misguided and damaging, other people display outright hatred for overweight people, calling them disgusting, a threat to society, and portraying them as people who have no self-control, who could lose weight if they really just tried harder.

In reality, weight loss is tough. Remember that your weight is at least partially genetically determined by your parents’ weight, and factor in that when you gain weight, you also gain more fat cells, and that makes it harder to lose weight. Losing weight is ...