Stop Assuming a Person's Weight Correlates to Their Health

Every single article or photo in which it is suggested that we embrace all body types, love them with abandon, and accept those with a little--even a lot--of extra meat around the middle, there's the inevitable top comment by an average-sized person: "We need to stop glorifying obese body types, because it's clearly not healthy. We're creating an environment in which it's acceptable to be morbidly obese, and that isn't going to lead to a healthy and prosperous life for those people."

All right, a couple of things to address here.

One, I saw this great post the other day that said, "Don't exercise because you hate your body. Exercise because you love it." The more you love something, the more likely you are to care for it--can we acknowledge that that's generally true? So no, we don't need to tell these people to get healthy and THEN love their body. Once they grow to love and accept it, they will be further motivated to put the effort, time, and mental stamina required to make it healthier.

Furthermore, CAN WE PLEASE STOP PRETENDING WE CAN REMOTELY GUESS A PERSON'S HEALTH BY THEIR WEIGHT.

Exhibit A:

Here's me at the start of college. Please excuse the goofy expression--it's shockingly hard to find normal pictures of myself at this age. Probably the least I've weighed in my adult life, around 130 pounds, if I recall correctly. And I was LOVING IT. I think I bought a pair of size 6 pants once, around that time. I was blown away--I was elated. I thought I was ALL that. As you may have guessed, this was when I was diagnosed with diabetes, so my body was depleting all my fat stores in order to survive, because it wasn't able to get the proper energy from food. But dang, I looked hot.

Exhibit B:

Still college. Still thought I was hot stuff. I was gorging myself on all the regular high-fat, high-carb foods that a college student loves, but I was terrified of needles and refused to take much of my insulin. My blood sugars were quite high all the time. If I were to attempt at this age what I was doing back then, I'd land in the hospital within a few days. I think it was largely my young age that saved me--I should have developed diabetic neuropathy, vision problems, etc. You're getting my point. Super unhealthy, but I look fine.

Exhibit C:

As I began to, you know, ACTUALLY take my insulin somewhat properly, the weight piled on. I still wasn't eating healthily, and so I ballooned up. After the birth of Q, I developed hypothyroidism, which also caused me to gain weight. But guess what? I was still healthier than the pictures you saw above, because above, I was quite literally killing myself. Now, for the first time since my diagnosis, my blood sugars were acceptable.

My rollercoaster of weight loss and weight gain has continued, and I acknowledge that it might not ever end. I developed severe anxiety in the winter of 2015 and had to force myself to eat--on bad days, I could barely manage 500 calories. My weight plummeted quickly, but of course it came back just as quickly once my mental health improved. I probably looked "healthy," yet I could not eat, could not leave my house, and was in constant physical pain.

So now, I'm somewhere in the middle. I have a mental and physical history that complicate my relationship with food, but I think I am coming closer and closer to self-acceptance. I don't look at the pictures of me at my heaviest (over 200 pounds, not counting my pregnancy with Q, at which point I was about 250) and hate them. I like that woman. She is me. She is raising her daughter and doing daily battle with a very difficult disease. I. Am. Her.

I'm eating much healthier these days than I was several years ago, and my blood sugars are in better control than they've ever been. I still have some weight to lose, but I don't feel so obsessive about it. I'm more interested in my mental health (which admittedly needs some work right now), and in striving to promote body positivity not only for myself but for women in general (so yeah, you'll see me at the pool with hairy legs and an insulin pod slapped prominently on my arm, because one of the beautiful things about getting older is that sometimes you get less self-conscious).

So, unless you plan to stop every single person you see to request a lifelong medical record, do not assume that their weight is correlated to their health. I understand that there are significant medical problems that can arise from being overweight, but no one is trying to downplay that. But you can never assume those normal-sized people walking around aren't dying. And the more you give overweight people your unconditional love and acceptance, the better it will be for everyone.