You’re not as fat as you think, but you will be

I have felt fat for much of my life. I’ve discovered as I get older that it is, at least in part, a state of mind. In part it is a state of society. There is an image of the perfect body, and I haven’t ever had it. Which is interesting because I look back on how I used to look and what I used to weight and I realize I looked and weighed a pretty healthy amount. But that’s not what the world told me.

I am a big guy, I always have been, ever since that final growth spurt in college. But I’ve been working off charts made by the AMA (American Medical Association) that say I’m obese. Doctors have been telling me for years that I need to get off the excess weight. The result has been occasional “success” followed by my body returning to it’s comfortable weight. In retrospect, my comfortable weight was more of the success.

My mindset that I was fat has lead more frequently to me giving up on eating healthy. My belief I was fat has not lead me to lose weight, it’s lead me to being fat. When I get stressed I eat. When I feel overweight I feel like it doesn’t matter what I eat. When I get stressed and eat it’s usually not good quality food. I very rarely get so stressed out that I need to go eat a salad.

So I came across pictures from 6 years ago. And I look at that young guy in the pictures and think, I was looking pretty good. For an obese man (thanks AMA).

While we’re on the topic of obesity, let me highlight that having a single chart that it supposed to tell you your ideal weight, that doesn’t take into account your frame size, skeletal mass, really anything about you specifically, and then making a medical claim off that average of humanity is TOTAL B@**SH*@. The average person isn’t average and to tell someone what they should do or be based on what the average of everyone else did or was is a complete fallacy.

As a man I get the impression that I’m not supposed to care. Or that I am not a typical demographic that is supposed to mind.  But I do and I have. There is a lot in society that tells me what I’m supposed to be and I tend to internalize this and criticize myself for not being what I could never be.

In a way this feeds into all the messages I’ve ever written on this blog. You are okay as you are. You are not broken, you just don’t conform to a false image of what you should be and what you should believe. You have been fed a bill of goods by society stating what you are supposed to be and how you are supposed to act and what your body should look like, it is a lie.

Be you! Be okay with you!

I’m working on being okay with me, and the first step is admitting that I’ve lied to myself about what I should be. I am F&@#ING AWESOME! And I have the body of an Adonis. Which is nice.

Then again the phrase “Body of an Adonis” has it’s own judgement in it. Body shaming is built into my language. I have the body of a human. I am exactly who and what I need to be for the moment that I am in.

Maybe I’ll lose some weight this year. Maybe I’ll gain some weight this year. But what I really wish for this year is the power to be me, as I am, as I need to be. It is easy being perfect, because I’m already there. Next step is accepting my perfection.

Please look at yourself today and accept your perfection. There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with me.

Namaste and Love, Kevin