A Healthy Weight
When I was a teen, Frank Frazetta's work was popular as book cover art, puzzles, etc. I was really fascinated with his women who tended to not be wearing much, were attractive but not reed thin and not "classic" beauties.
Unlike most models and famous actresses of the day, they were on the voluptuous side and had muscle and they were often clearly bad asses. Hispanic women somewhat trend that way. They tend to have a little more fat on them even if they are famous models and actresses reknowned for their beauty.
I was a bag of bones the first seventeen years of my life. This is common for my medical condition.
And then I gained about fifty pounds when I was seventeen or eighteen years old and I've never again been reed thin.
As noted previously on this site, well before I was properly diagnosed I made a conscious decision to NOT count calories or try to starve myself into thinness and that helped save my life.
I've written elsewhere about my social experiences with being a plump chick. Contrary to everything I ever heard about how critical it is for me to be THIN to get a guy, this song is the story of my life (and it tickles me that the two singers are not thin themselves): When I was working at Aflac, which is a big company and there were about 500 people in my department, one day some gal I had NEVER spoken with before commented out of the blue about how great I was looking now that I had lost weight. It was while I worked there that I discovered that hot peppers help with edema and lost SO MUCH weight in such a short time that total strangers were stopping me on the street and in the grocery store and at work to say "I see you walking all the time. Wow, you've really shrunk." and then ask me for diet tips.
I would try to make polite noises about walking a lot and trying to eat better and not mention that I have a genetic disorder and I've found an amazing biohack to treat one of the side effects of my condition, the chronic edema I suffer. But this was not that. This was something else.
This was some woman who ONLY "knew" me as a fat chick who worked in her department who IMAGINED she was "being polite" to NOT give me hell about my weight while I was fat and also IMAGINED she was being kind or some shit to admit what a toxic, judgy bitch she was once I "looked better" in her bitchy, butt-in-sky opinion.
Makes you wonder "What in the hell is mentally and emotionally WRONG with you that you have clearly thought THIS MUCH about MY WEIGHT when I'm some chick you DO NOT KNOW AT ALL? You've passed me in the halls a few times. I never knew your name, but you think I want to hear YOUR OPINION about my weight and how I look? WHY????"
My mother, God bless her, grew up in Nazi Germany and was schooled early on how to be really toxic and for the most part she's a sincerely kind person, but wow can she be hell on wheels about fat people. On the other hand, she grew up in a war zone and will follow you around and try to FEED you if you are clearly underweight, so I was NOT exposed to what some upperclass White women get of "You can NEVER be too rich or too thin" to the point of RUINING my mental and physical health.
My ex-husband also did a fantastic job of letting me know how fat and ugly he thought I was. (Notice how he's my EX.)
So I've certainly been hurt by people being judgy about my weight and I intensely dislike the general societal garbage of everyone feeling entitled to have an opinion about a woman's weight or boobs or body generally. Like if you aren't sleeping with me, mind your own damn business. I don't want to hear it and I'm generally NOT going to volunteer unasked for feedback on YOUR body, much less your weight.
That shit can go die in a fire.
So I have been reluctant to write about weight because I absolutely do not want to add to the societal mountain of toxic messages that "YOU need to be THIN or you will NEVER GET LAID and SERVICING some man in bed is clearly your ONLY value in life." and similar. Resisting letting such garbage control me is part of why I LIVED long enough to even GET a diagnosis.
But I am not part of what I have heard called "the fat acceptance movement." The reality is that being too heavy can significantly negatively impact your health and I don't think it's culturally healthy to promote "Fat is where it's at."
I just wish that like with expectations of beauty for women, individuals were not DROWNING in judgy, psycho-controlling hatred by everyone around them and on every billboard about their weight.
And, also, can we NOT make plump people invisible? They EXIST. There are a LOT more of them than you see in movies and advertising.
And make NICE clothes for plump people. STOP insisting that if you are NOT reed thin, you must have NO taste and ZERO self esteem.
If you would LIKE to lose weight or NEED to lose weight to mitigate a health issue, I lost weight by finally getting a proper diagnosis and finding better ways to adequately address my health issue than the lame answers the doctors were giving me.
If your weight is due to EDEMA -- water retention -- hot peppers plus walking may help.
I knew I had edema in part because when I smacked my belly with the flat of my hand like a drum, it sounded completely different than when my plump son did the same to his belly. He was carrying FAT. I was NOT.
A large part of how I lost weight was I improved my nutrition. In a nutshell, I ate a more nutrient dense diet and I write a blog by that name where I also have a post about how our produce has gotten LESS nutritious in recent decades and is likely a factor in the "obesity epidemic."
I also got rid of things and I live a more spartan life now. You can search for "lose weight declutter" and find articles about this with various hypothesis about WHY it helps but it's an established known thing that clutter and being overweight tend to go together.
My opinion: A LOT of things about weight are influenced by your microbiome and your cluttered house is likely not kept pristine and is a means for germs to stick around.
If you want more reading on the connection between weight and microbiome, feel free to google it up and you might also look for info on stunting where it is KNOWN that lack of cleanliness helps keep children in underdeveloped areas underweight and this often CANNOT be remedied by simply FEEDING THEM MORE. You have to clean up their environment and repair their gut microbiome.
We are all products of our environment. If you don't like your body and can't seem to "control" it, try changing your environment.
See also: When in doubt, throw it out. and The Way Back to Life.
Walking and other exercise can also help. I do not personally believe this is about "burning calories' per se. I think a LARGE part of it is that it is how the body "takes out the trash."
See my comment elsewhere about the "water cycle" in the human body.
See also a post titled "Gut Health" in the sidebar whose REAL name is Reversing Severe Acidity and Biofilm.
If you have diabetes, there is research showing that lack of muscle mass -- rather than more fat per se -- is likely the root cause of insulin resistance. Gaining muscle protein may help MORE than losing weight per se.
People with Cystic Fibrosis are at high risk of getting Cystic Fibrosis Related Diabetes (CFRD). There are posts about blood sugar on this site. I encourage you to search the site if metabolic syndrome or diabetes are issues for you.
Inflammation has been linked to diabetes for a long time. Excess acidity and infection both can cause inflammation, so look for info on the site related to both of those, start you a health journal and FIGURE OUT why you can't lose the weight.
I'm still in search of a Frank Frazetta body. Fat is not where it's at but you absolutely can be too thin and having too LITTLE actual FAT in my tissues is a root cause of MY edema because people with CF misprocess fats, so ironically gaining fat has caused me to lose weight.
The brain is fatty. Bone marrow -- where white blood cells are produced -- is fatty, so having ENOUGH fat is essential to a functioning immune system.
If your diabetes is infection-related, getting the RIGHT fats may help boost your immune system and reduce your blood sugar issues.
Unlike most models and famous actresses of the day, they were on the voluptuous side and had muscle and they were often clearly bad asses. Hispanic women somewhat trend that way. They tend to have a little more fat on them even if they are famous models and actresses reknowned for their beauty.
I was a bag of bones the first seventeen years of my life. This is common for my medical condition.
And then I gained about fifty pounds when I was seventeen or eighteen years old and I've never again been reed thin.
As noted previously on this site, well before I was properly diagnosed I made a conscious decision to NOT count calories or try to starve myself into thinness and that helped save my life.
I've written elsewhere about my social experiences with being a plump chick. Contrary to everything I ever heard about how critical it is for me to be THIN to get a guy, this song is the story of my life (and it tickles me that the two singers are not thin themselves): When I was working at Aflac, which is a big company and there were about 500 people in my department, one day some gal I had NEVER spoken with before commented out of the blue about how great I was looking now that I had lost weight. It was while I worked there that I discovered that hot peppers help with edema and lost SO MUCH weight in such a short time that total strangers were stopping me on the street and in the grocery store and at work to say "I see you walking all the time. Wow, you've really shrunk." and then ask me for diet tips.
I would try to make polite noises about walking a lot and trying to eat better and not mention that I have a genetic disorder and I've found an amazing biohack to treat one of the side effects of my condition, the chronic edema I suffer. But this was not that. This was something else.
This was some woman who ONLY "knew" me as a fat chick who worked in her department who IMAGINED she was "being polite" to NOT give me hell about my weight while I was fat and also IMAGINED she was being kind or some shit to admit what a toxic, judgy bitch she was once I "looked better" in her bitchy, butt-in-sky opinion.
Makes you wonder "What in the hell is mentally and emotionally WRONG with you that you have clearly thought THIS MUCH about MY WEIGHT when I'm some chick you DO NOT KNOW AT ALL? You've passed me in the halls a few times. I never knew your name, but you think I want to hear YOUR OPINION about my weight and how I look? WHY????"
My mother, God bless her, grew up in Nazi Germany and was schooled early on how to be really toxic and for the most part she's a sincerely kind person, but wow can she be hell on wheels about fat people. On the other hand, she grew up in a war zone and will follow you around and try to FEED you if you are clearly underweight, so I was NOT exposed to what some upperclass White women get of "You can NEVER be too rich or too thin" to the point of RUINING my mental and physical health.
My ex-husband also did a fantastic job of letting me know how fat and ugly he thought I was. (Notice how he's my EX.)
So I've certainly been hurt by people being judgy about my weight and I intensely dislike the general societal garbage of everyone feeling entitled to have an opinion about a woman's weight or boobs or body generally. Like if you aren't sleeping with me, mind your own damn business. I don't want to hear it and I'm generally NOT going to volunteer unasked for feedback on YOUR body, much less your weight.
That shit can go die in a fire.
So I have been reluctant to write about weight because I absolutely do not want to add to the societal mountain of toxic messages that "YOU need to be THIN or you will NEVER GET LAID and SERVICING some man in bed is clearly your ONLY value in life." and similar. Resisting letting such garbage control me is part of why I LIVED long enough to even GET a diagnosis.
But I am not part of what I have heard called "the fat acceptance movement." The reality is that being too heavy can significantly negatively impact your health and I don't think it's culturally healthy to promote "Fat is where it's at."
I just wish that like with expectations of beauty for women, individuals were not DROWNING in judgy, psycho-controlling hatred by everyone around them and on every billboard about their weight.
And, also, can we NOT make plump people invisible? They EXIST. There are a LOT more of them than you see in movies and advertising.
And make NICE clothes for plump people. STOP insisting that if you are NOT reed thin, you must have NO taste and ZERO self esteem.
If You Want to Lose Weight
Counting calories does not work. If it did, there would be damn few fat people. Most folks who are overweight do NOT want to be heavy.If you would LIKE to lose weight or NEED to lose weight to mitigate a health issue, I lost weight by finally getting a proper diagnosis and finding better ways to adequately address my health issue than the lame answers the doctors were giving me.
If your weight is due to EDEMA -- water retention -- hot peppers plus walking may help.
I knew I had edema in part because when I smacked my belly with the flat of my hand like a drum, it sounded completely different than when my plump son did the same to his belly. He was carrying FAT. I was NOT.
A large part of how I lost weight was I improved my nutrition. In a nutshell, I ate a more nutrient dense diet and I write a blog by that name where I also have a post about how our produce has gotten LESS nutritious in recent decades and is likely a factor in the "obesity epidemic."
I also got rid of things and I live a more spartan life now. You can search for "lose weight declutter" and find articles about this with various hypothesis about WHY it helps but it's an established known thing that clutter and being overweight tend to go together.
My opinion: A LOT of things about weight are influenced by your microbiome and your cluttered house is likely not kept pristine and is a means for germs to stick around.
If you want more reading on the connection between weight and microbiome, feel free to google it up and you might also look for info on stunting where it is KNOWN that lack of cleanliness helps keep children in underdeveloped areas underweight and this often CANNOT be remedied by simply FEEDING THEM MORE. You have to clean up their environment and repair their gut microbiome.
We are all products of our environment. If you don't like your body and can't seem to "control" it, try changing your environment.
See also: When in doubt, throw it out. and The Way Back to Life.
Walking and other exercise can also help. I do not personally believe this is about "burning calories' per se. I think a LARGE part of it is that it is how the body "takes out the trash."
See my comment elsewhere about the "water cycle" in the human body.
See also a post titled "Gut Health" in the sidebar whose REAL name is Reversing Severe Acidity and Biofilm.
If you have diabetes, there is research showing that lack of muscle mass -- rather than more fat per se -- is likely the root cause of insulin resistance. Gaining muscle protein may help MORE than losing weight per se.
People with Cystic Fibrosis are at high risk of getting Cystic Fibrosis Related Diabetes (CFRD). There are posts about blood sugar on this site. I encourage you to search the site if metabolic syndrome or diabetes are issues for you.
Inflammation has been linked to diabetes for a long time. Excess acidity and infection both can cause inflammation, so look for info on the site related to both of those, start you a health journal and FIGURE OUT why you can't lose the weight.
I'm still in search of a Frank Frazetta body. Fat is not where it's at but you absolutely can be too thin and having too LITTLE actual FAT in my tissues is a root cause of MY edema because people with CF misprocess fats, so ironically gaining fat has caused me to lose weight.
The brain is fatty. Bone marrow -- where white blood cells are produced -- is fatty, so having ENOUGH fat is essential to a functioning immune system.
If your diabetes is infection-related, getting the RIGHT fats may help boost your immune system and reduce your blood sugar issues.
