What HAES means to me March 31, 2012
Disclaimer: No one should take this as a personal rebuttal or refutation of their statements elsewhere. This is just me expanding on some points I made yesterday, which I realized would make a good blog post. And so here we are.
You guys, I have to tell you something… I’m pretty sure I’m that person on most everyone’s social media friend’s list. I’m the one in the same corner as people who say that the Egyptians were aliens, pennies are still in circulation to gather everyone’s DNA, and that making the duckface in photos is a good idea. Because I’m saying that it’s okay to be fat. If eyerolls and exasperated noises were currency, I suspect that I might be somewhat well off financially right about now. And I don’t say that to dig back at anyone or make anyone feel bad – that’s not the point I’m trying to discuss here (seriously, I love you guys, unless you eat the adorable kittens – that shit is NOT COOL).
See, yesterday, I posted a link on facebook and google plus to this particular link, titled “The desire for weight loss is never about weight loss”. It’s… not a good article. But I was semi-distracted and at the end of the week, and it hit a positive nerve with me – but more on that in a moment, because it really isn’t a good article. The premise is very absolutist, which when I’m fairly cogent and not a damp streak of exhaustion lying on the floor, is one of my most hated concepts. When we reduce things to black and white, right and wrong, we lose the necessary and vital nuances that make up the whole of it. More often than not, it’s dangerously within straw-man territory. The premise of the article means well, but it fails because it assumes a simple equation that doesn’t exist in two worlds: both the real, meatspace world, and the emotional world that we all also inhabit.
The thing about HAES is that it’s Healthy At Every Size. And the first word in there is “healthy”. A lot of people rightly took the article to task when I posted it, and then listed their reasons for dieting. And I’m not about to sit here like some toad and say that they’re rationalizations in the service of a more self-duplicitous goal – after all, my name isn’t Dick Movington. But I can safely say that that very same rationale has been present throughout my life – the belief that weight loss will be some sort of great structural underpinning to a mass shift in my life to happiness. And that’s the reason that I posted it, because ultimately, I believe that the real foundation to true happiness comes from two things: self-discovery and self-honesty.
Self-discovery can be a bitch-kitty – I’m sure I really don’t need to tell people that, but I sure as hell know that there’s a certain level of commiseration out there with many of you. Because understanding why we do the things that we do is often necessary to actually making changes over the things we do, and it oftentimes can be a pain to do so. But consider it the necessary stretches before any major physical activity – sure, you can run a mile, bike 10 miles, swim a fuckload of laps… but if you don’t actually stretch your muscles and warm yourself up, you’re going to have a rough time of it, and it’s often counterproductive. It’s the same way when you try to break a habit or make a lifestyle change without really digging in and understanding stem to stern why you do something. And speaking for myself, I’ve often found that once I understand an aspect about my emotional or mental self, I no longer want to change it because it’s stopped being threatening.
I bring this all up, because I believe that it’s a very fundamental part of the H in HAES – That mental health is a requirement, and a major component of mental health is understanding your own self and your own motivations. Most people who have been fat all of their lives live in a world where it’s heavily stigmatized against them, and as such, it’s very difficult to make it through life without having to un-knot the ravel of resentment and self-rage in one’s head. And we’re coming to a place in science where we’re finding out that it’s not the being fat that’s a problem, it’s the getting fat that is the root cause of so many of the health bogeymen out there (not all, but many).
(As an aside, I find it really interesting in a so-that’s-how-our-brains-work-way that I’ve seen so many people that are absolutely cognizant and accepting of the fact that living in a sterile environment is terrible for one’s immune system – that you can starve your body of the chance to learn how to defend itself, but set-point weight theory is a difficult concept to embrace… our bodies react to what they do to them, based upon evolutionary templates, and diets will trigger those responses, causing us to gain weight for the next starvation event, which popular culture and society so often tells us is the desirable choice. Lather, wince, defeat.)
So what does this have to do with that article? Well, everything… because while I don’t believe that everyone’s desire for weight loss is motivated by the desire for magical change in one’s life, assuming that it isn’t, or telling yourself that it isn’t – even in a little bitty part of you – is doing yourself a grave disservice. Because really, if you’re telling yourself that you want to get healthy, then that should mean checking in with every part of you to make sure you understand why, and not rush into a race for a goal. Because if I want one thing more than anything, it’s that more people in the world in general are nicer to themselves. Engage in healthy habits to be healthy – and then see where that leads you. Don’t make a goal a yardstick – make how you feel the yardstick, because isn’t that what should matter?
Start with your head and your heart. Because that’s where the you lives.