Alive and Fat
There are several important points to make in this connection: The role of fatness in physical illness has been ruthlessly exaggerated. Unfortunately, some doctors (whether consciously aware of it or not) use terror tactics with their patients, dramatizing the dire consequences of overweight, without adequate proof or rationale, in order to pressure them to lose weight. Of course being 200 pounds overweight is highly destructive, but no more so than being severly underweight. There is simply no proof that ordinary fatness plays a significant role in human disease.
Different people have different predilections, physical as well as psychological. People brought up differently reflect this in their approach to food; often their attitudes are determined by ethnic or regional familiarity. Radically altering food habits can be more destructive than continuation of habits whose roots have been planted in infancy. Many physicians feel taht constant fluctuation -- that is, losing and gaining weight over and over again or the so-called "yo-yo" syndrome -- is much more destructive than sustained overweight. People do not apparently do well when they are required to make a great many adaptations. I feel that undue stress generated by stringent pressure to diet and lost weight is often more destructive emotionally, and eventually physically, than weight itself. I have seen entirely too many people in consultation who generated enormous self-hate whenever they either failed to lose weight or gained a few pounds...Self-hate produces more eating, more self-hate, and more stress and is destructive to both one's emotional and physical well-being."
How fat or how overweight is the significant question here. It is possible for a person to be so fat that he/she is unable to breathe lying down. Being grossly overweight is especially destructive to people who tend to be diabetic or who suffer from hypertension. But the role of fatness and what has come to be called fatness in our society has been greatly exaggerated, confused and over-simplified.
I think one of the worst misconceptions we hold to is that between what we eat and fatness. Some thin, truly thin people eat very little and relatively seldom, but they eat foods consisting mainly of cholesterol and polylycerides as well as a great deal of caffeine. Some fat people eat much a relatively often, but they eat foods that are healthier in terms of their effect on arteries and organs generally.
Physical differences are important in determining fat. The kind of frame one has tin terms of dimension and bone density is relevant. And a person's metabolism, the rate at which he/she burns up food is also significant. The kind of work a person does in terms of amount of exercise and energy-expenditure is important. Age and climate also play a role... Fat people who have the same dimensions and the same weight may have great differences in blood cholesterol, tissue, fat, muscular development, tone of muscles and skin. The blanket dictum that being fat is bad for physical health while being thin is good is a vast oversimplification that has a considerable potential for harm.
It undoubtedly has multiple roots. The biblical injunction against gluttony, the fashion trends of this particular era, preoccupation of the media with diet, overzealous doctors -- all play a role. Once this sort of attitude gets set in motion, roots are not longer necessary. It becomes autonomous and is there because it's there and gives itself life as it continues to be there. This is always true of manifestations that are largely part of the unconscious processes. You see, many people are unaware of their prejudice. But this, if anything, makes it worse. Unconscious bigotry is even stronger and more pervasive than the conscious variety, and often takes subtle but insidious destructive forms. Perhaps one kind of prejudice comes from envy of thin people who perceive fat people as capable of greater exuberance and vitality than they are. Prejudice requires no special logic or rationale other than need to construct a fantasy hierarchy to fool somebody into believing that he or she is better than or superior to someone else. I should say that, being part of the culture, many fat people themselves are also prejudiced and come to respect thin people unduly, while hating themselves and other fat people who remind them of themselves.
It is pretty grim, and this despite the fact that the fat person often has an enormously constructive outlook.
In our society fatness is directly equated with stupidity, laziness, childishness, foolishness, lack of energy or ordinary motivation, inadequate goal direction, asexuality or lack of sexual drive, vulgarity, insensitivity, coarseness, ignorance, apathy, selfishness, cowardice, and ugliness. And this devastating list goes on and on. These stereotypes are largely felt on an unconscious level, but this in no way mitigates their concscious effect. The fact is that fat people suffer from prejudice of all kinds in almost every human relationship and endeavor they encounter in life.
Not only do fat people suffer prejudice and ensuing self-hate, they also endure enormous temptation and conflict. Western society advertises and exploits, for money, every possible benefit for and of thinness. At the same time, and equally as aggressive, it advertises, promotes, and demonstrates food, especially fattening junk foods, and its availability. Our society is largely directed to consumerism, acquisitiveness, and the addition of visible signs of substance and goods to ourselves. But it is hands-down against being fat.
Our culture is schizophrenic on this score. Eating in and eating out -- all kinds of eating and drinking -- is associated with sociability. The ads on television and radio and in newspapers and magazines bombard us with the attractions of potato chips, candy, cheeseburgers, pizzas, pasta, and every variety and kind of restaurant and appliance to prepare still more food. At the same time models, actresses, and cloths designers celebrate the absolute virtue of thinness. Indeed, heroic, ideal and desirable, sexy, happy, powerful people are always portrayed in our society as thin. This kind of double and incompatible standard is especially hard on the vulnerable and already self-hating fat person. Its demoralizing effect may or may not be felt consiously, but it is always felt and invariably leads to serious repercussions.
The fact is that we are at once a food and thinness-oriented and obsessed society. A good part of our business and social lives are conducted either in restaurants or at dinners in one another's homes... Fat people are as subject to cultural pressures as thin people.
The retention of the "fat personality" is important beyond the role this plays in successfully losing weight. The fat person's fear of thinness is an important insight into the reasons behind remaining fat. It is important that we include fear of thinness in this insight into retaining a fa personality. Simply stated, fat people, and especially very fat people, unconsciously fear thinness, even as they desire to get thin. This is so because thinness unconsciously represents having to face the possibility of struggling to fulfill all kinds of standards and expectations which up to that point were rationalized away as impossibilities since the person was simply "too fat to do anything." Thinness represents a change in the status quo and a potential confrontation with "a whole new way of life." Unfamiliarity, plus the possibility of disappointment and failure to achieve what is expected of a newly-thin person creates enough anxiety to give a fat person a phobia when it comes to achieving and sustaining a state of thinness.
Thinness also represents a kind of psychological lobotomy. In the unconscious mind of the fat person, thinness is equated with giving up aliveness, exuberance, vitality, gusto and abandon -- thus, while it is very attractive on the cultural level, it is felt as extremely threatening in personal terms. Therefore, it is necessary to dissociate the state of fatness from the fat personality. The fat person must come to realize that he/she can give up being fat in body, while "fatness of feelings", largeness of spirit is retained. Thinness must be likewise be dissociated from "fatness of feelings or personality." One can become and stay thin while retaining all the psychological characteristics of being fat. But expectations of what thinness will bring to life must be reduced to realistic proportions so that advance fear of disappointment is removed. One also has to be able to give themselves permission to adjust their goals (as in how much they lose) or to re-gain weight.
I am a psychoanalyst and I too believe that self-acceptance is much more important than weight loss. I also believe that fat people must stand up against cultural pressures and in so doing promote acceptance of themselves. Weight loss must be based on personal choice if it is to be successful and constructive. Personality assets characteristic of fat people must not be surrendered or aberrated as a sacrifice to getting and staying thin. Natural proclivities, vitality, and health must be sustained. Thinning must be a benevolent and compassionate process, otherwise it is not thinning at all, but rather destructive, obsessive dieting... We must entitle ourselves to be fat and alive in North America -- either with heavy or lighter bodies -- but as we choose.
Source: "Alive and Fat and Thinning in America" by Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D.
I'd like to add here that each of us needs to be okay with who we are and that includes the size of our bodies. Wanting to lose weight to be thin, to "fit in" to achieve some utopia of a life that it seems that those who are thin (in Hollywood and on Tv, especially) have will only result in a cycle of self-defeat. Life is what you make it. I don't think we have to be thin to have a good life or to be good people. The obsession with "thin" in North American culture is not a very healthy thing. Not all of us can be thin, no matter how hard we may try. Body size, is to some extent influenced by genetics and other factors aside from food. I know some thin people who eat twice as much as I do, yet they remain thin and I am fat....go figure. If you are fat, do your best to love yourself and to find esteem in being the person that you are. Try not to get caught up in the obession of culture. When someone teases you or insults you or jokes at you or about you or your size know that it speaks volumes about that person and not you. There are always things people can find to tease or criticize us about. Being fat is just one of those things. I firmly believe that those who are the most prejudice against fat people and who are the most vocal and abusive are the ones who are most afraid of being fat themselves. It is their very mindset that is what is to be feared, not fat itself.
© A.J. Mahari November 2, 1999