Place: Kindergarten class
Age: 4
New girl pointing to the empty seat next to me: “No I don’t want to sit next to her or be her friend… she’s fat”
I was still making sense of this world, barely walking and talking my way through life, when I learned a harsh truth: What some would call “cute chubbiness” was not that adorable after all, but rather a revolting aspect of my being, and it had a name and the name was “fat”.
This moment marked the beginning of a series of fat-defining moments.
So sit back and raise your ice creams for the untold tales of… FAT!
** The green squares below share true stories of my fat defining moments.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room
My weight is the first thought on my mind as I wake up, I am conscious of it as I pick up what I am going to wear before going out and as I glance at myself in any reflective surface. And whether I pick up a donut for breakfast or a salad for lunch, I feel guilty for every single bite I eat.
So what’s new? We all struggle with building better habits, being more disciplined, dealing 
with our shortcomings, accepting who we are and keeping track of our development goals. What’s unfortunate for me, is that one chunk of my bad habits has allied with my genes and manifested themselves in weight management issues that everyone can see. It’s like carrying around your weaknesses and bad choices on display for everyone to see, judge, condemn, shame and resent.
With your weaknesses on display in a cosmetic ruthless world, the shaming never seems to stop; sometimes even disguised as a mere concern for your health and well being. When people need to change bad habits or make a profound change in the way they are, a big motivator for them is to value themselves more, to have more self worth. When you feel valuable and worthy you want to be better, you change and develop. Fat shaming — or any kind of shaming frankly — is destructive in the way it triggers change, by feeding our insecurities and harvesting bitterness. It will often leave a person with feelings of inadequacy and sometimes even hopelessness that they can ever be different.
The truth is, almost everything around us cultivates a bias of how unacceptable fat is. We even connect being fat with not taking care of one’s self. We have stripped down personal progress to a superficial form. So it doesn’t matter how many books you read, how many people you help, how much progress you are making with your own mental, emotional and spiritual well being, or even how many healthy habits you are committed to. As long as it doesn’t show on your physical appearance, then you are seen as “letting yourself go”. It’s one thing to promote being healthy and fit, but to present it as the the only measure for beauty, attractiveness, worthiness, well being and even success is a totally different thing.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have an intention to live on junk, eat my way through life, feed on my emotions, become morbidly obese or die of clogged arteries. In fact, I have been dieting ever since I was 8 years old. Losing weight and being healthy has been on my to-do list for as far as I can remember, it has been a consistent resolution at every birthday, new year and afterthought of an inspiring talk. It’s actually the project I worked on hardest my entire life; though it still remains a work in progress.
There were many times when I thought, this will be it, “I conquered fat” as Oprah once described it. I have tried nutrition and diet doctors, read books and articles about dieting, tried every diet from cabbage soup, paleo, sugar free, gluten free, chemical diets and calorie counting. I have gone to the gym, went for exercise programs and challenged myself with sports. I have actually had the discipline to go on healthy lifestyles and lose weight gradually and find a sustainable way to develop healthy habits for reasonable periods of time … yet I have also managed to fall off the wagon every time and put it all back on and a little more… yes … EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN TIME.
I might have not figured it out just yet but I have no intention of giving up on leading a healthier life. I just wish it was possible to not feel that only when I manage to fit an impossible size 4 will I be worthy, will I be accepted. Neither do I want to spend every moment till that unforeseen skinny future comes along, just hating and loathing the way I look along with my entire existence. I don’t want being fat to mean that I can’t be happy now, that I can’t be worthy now, that I can’t enjoy life and that I can’t accept myself now. I don’t want to miss out on life, I want to just feel that I deserve to feel alive regardless of how I look or what number the scale yells.
Stop the fat defining moments
Next time you see someone who doesn’t fit your standard for ideal shape, keep your judgment to yourself, better yet, don’t judge them at all. They may be happy with the way they are. They are entitled to love themselves the way they are, to enjoy the food they eat and not be ashamed of who they are and how they look. They may not have your insecurities and they may be surrounded by love, success and happiness and leading a healthy balanced life you could only wish for. So don’t plant that seed of “not good enough” in them with your judgments and silent stares.
Next time you want to express concern and help someone be better, be careful of what you feed them in terms of words and feelings. Love and compassion drive change, abandonment doesn’t. Worthiness and appreciation drive development, shaming doesn’t.
Next time you see someone trying to lose weight don’t compliment their looks, but celebrate their achievement, their perseverance, their strength and their effort because, unlike how they look, it is within their control, and that is what deserves noting.
Next time you meet someone who looks like they are struggling with their weight, don’t feel sorry for them, their life maybe full of so many other areas of success and achievement that might not show on their waistline.
Fight how beauty, health and fitness are being promoted. Not everyone who is not a size 2 is unhealthy or unfit. We are different, our bodies are different, and our lives and challenges are different. No one should have to conform with unrealistic body image standards.
The journey to be healthy and fit, just like any journey of self development should not be driven by feelings of shame or insecurities. It’s a journey of pushing one’s boundaries, challenging oneself, finding balance and discovering one’s strengths. Everyone is entitled to get closer to the best version of themselves — and only themselves. Everyone is entitled to free themselves from the labels of how others define them to be. Everyone is entitled to choose to be comfortable in their own skin even as it still covers layers of “fat”.
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