Week 31 Progress Report: Loving Yourself Back to Health

So here, on time for once, are the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	234.6
Original Target*:	246.8
Adjusted Target:	232.8
Actual Weight:	233.0
Loss/Gain:	– 1.6
Total Loss:	69.6
% of Goal:	50.2%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.2
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

As I reported yesterday, I suffered an inexplicable 2-lb. spike on Thursday which took the burnish off crossing the 50% mark on Wednesday. I lost most but not all of it on Friday and had a completely awesome dinner that night which cost me 0.4 lbs. on Saturday. Compared to the plan-month target line, I’m over by 1.5 lbs. However, considering the two upticks this week, I did pretty good and am still well ahead of where I originally planned to be. One and a half pounds down for the week is much better than a pound and a half up. Take the victories you get.

This morning, one of my Lose It! friends posted a quote from Ijeoma Oluo: “You can’t hate your body into a shape you will love.” (Ijeoma, you will remember, is the woman who lost weight only to come to resent the change in people’s attitude toward her.)

I agree you can’t hate your body into a shape you will love. But by the same token, you can’t wish away obesity’s damage to your health. Losing weight is not about hating your body. It’s about treating your body with the love and respect it deserves. (It’s about treating food with the respect it deserves, too.) My body has been trying to tell me for a long time, in ways both subtle and obvious, that it doesn’t like the way I treat it and that, if I go on abusing it, it will break down good and proper.

Fat-Shaming, Self-Loathing, and Demons

I had thought that today I’d share a recipe with you folks. However, Tuesday night, a friend shared a Facebook essay written two years ago on the subject of fat-shaming and weight loss. It’s a profoundly disturbing piece; while I agree with many if not most of the author’s observations, I cannot and do not agree with her conclusions. I’ve copied the essay into a .pdf file; assume that the essay is protected by copyright law and be careful how you use or re-publish it.

Ijeoma’s Story

The writer, Ijeoma Oluo, tells us she decided to lose weight after a boyfriend sexually assaulted her. This wasn’t her first assault experience; she had been sexually abused as a child and had already left an abusive husband. “And when I tried to figure out why — why someone who so many people had repeatedly said had so much going for her would be hurt so often, I settled on my weight. I decided that as long as I was fat, nobody who wasn’t abusive was going to want to be with me. … So much cultural messaging says that if you are fat, you should be grateful for whatever love you can get — even if that love isn’t love at all.”