Don't shame thin bodies, duh

You do not empower one person by oppressing another person. In the body acceptance movement - all bodies are accepted, period. 

This is NOT the answer. 

Sometimes in an attempt to empower people with fatter bodies, thinner bodies are put down. I have seen memes similar to the one above circulating Facebook and Tumblr. Memes like this are counterproductive to the body acceptance movement. I was glad to see this refute a few days later.

Phew, that is better.

Lets travel back to visit high school Ashley to learn more about accepting all bodies. 

 In high school I attended an event called Challenge Day. I know many schools around the country host these events, and it was even featured on MTV. This was a really powerful event for me, and I am glad more students get to have this experience.

Pink-haired 15 year old Ashley 

Challenge Day at my school included a "cross the line" activity. Statements were proposed and if you identified with the statement, you "crossed the line" by taking a step forward. The question was asked, have you ever been teased because of the the size or shape of your body?

The words stung as memories of being taunted on playgrounds, boys mockingly flirting with me to get a rise out of their friends, and being pelted with crab apples while walking home from school flooded my mind. I took a big step forward. I then looked from side to side and was suprised to see who had also crossed the line with me. A thin, blonde cheerleader stood on the other side of the line, tears streaming down her face. I had always thought she was so beautiful, how could she have possibly experienced the shaming that I did? There had even been times I assumed that if I had her body, all the pain I had felt from bullying would disappear. But then I remembered boys mocking her flat chest, height, and thin "boney" legs in the school hallways. I guess our experiences with our bodies were more similar than I thought.

I wanted to hug her that day but I never did. Therefore, I dedicate this post to anyone who has ever felt shamed about their body. This blog post is like an "internet hug" to all those who have ever felt like either of us did not that day. Be reminded no one should be shamed for being too big, too small, for having too many rolls, not enough breasts or the excess/absence of any other body part. This is an internet hug to any person who has ever felt devalued because of the treatment of others in response to their body.

Be reminded, ALL people and all bodies are valuable.

Letting go of Ashley the "Skinny Bride"

So are you still training for that race? 

No, I am no longer on the training plan I mentioned before. I stopped because I felt pressured to spend my fitness time in a more "productive" way. I started doing HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts, specifically Insanity. After a few weeks I stopped my Insanity workouts, and am now back on a running plan. 

If I didn't like HIIT and Insanity, why did I do it in the first place? 

This really is the tip of a much bigger iceberg in my journey of body acceptance. I felt I needed to do HIIT because these workouts are the fastest way to build muscle mass and lose body fat. If you are unaware, there is a really big day coming up in my life in which over a hundred people will all be staring at me. I felt pressured to "look my best" which pressured me to do workouts I don't like, and diet, which I don't want to do anymore. 

Well, I am officially done. Consider this a public service announcement on all issues of my body and my wedding. 

I, Ashley Thompson, am officially giving up my since childhood fantasy of being a skinny bride. Many girls have their dress, colors or flowers picked out for their wedding long before they have a ring on their finger. The only thing I dreamed about was being a skinny bride. I used to think marriage was a milestone that represented that your life was coming together. You were growing up, starting a new chapter of your life, and had a least some of your shit figured out. I thought that once I grew up, and had my shit figured out I would magically be thin, too. Now I realize that the together-ness of my life has nothing to do with the size of my body. Finally I feel ready to give up fantasizing about being something I am not, and learning to nourish and love what I am, body included. 

If this isn't what having your life together looks like, I don't know does. 

Compared to my current weight, I have weighed more, and I have weighed less. I have spent LITERALLY  spent the last decade of my short life dieting. For once in my life I am going to make a commitment to myself to nourish and take care of my body and love it, not matter what shape it may be. 

For friends and family who think commenting about my weight, or my exercise/eating habits is appropriate - stop. 

It has, and will always, negatively impact my ability to accept my body. Talking about my body does not motivate me to lose weight or improve my health. If anything it fuels self destructive behaviors. Trust me, I literally have a degree in health behavior, if there was a magically way to make people lose weight, I would have heard about it. Also weight loss is not the same as improved health. I am continuing my commitment to improve my health, I am just no longer using the amount of weight I can lose as my measure for success in this endeavor. In my attempts to lose weight I have picked up some healthy behaviors and some destructive behaviors.

All in all, I do have my shit figured out, it just looks different than I thought it would when I was younger. 

I have a job that I love, I spend my time reading about issues I care about, I have an amazing fiance that I am excited to start a family with, and I have my whole life ahead of me. I have yet to figure out the how-to-eat-without-dieting thing, but I am working on it. I do know that being obsessed with my weight has not improved my physical health and definitely has negatively impacted my mental health.


I do know trying to lose 30 pounds before my wedding will not help improve my ability to accept my body or improve my health. 

In case you are still a little confused, here is a recap: 

• No, I am not dieting for my wedding. 
• Yes, my body could change, but that is part of my current journey to find a weight I can maintain without dieting. 
• No, you are never allowed to comment on my body or my physical activity/eating habits, even if you think what you are saying is a compliment. It is not a compliment, by the way. 
• Yes, health promotion is still an important aspect of my personal and professional life. I have just learned that promoting health looks different than I originally thought and a healthy me might look different than I originally though. 
• No, I have not yet learned how to eat without dieting, and accept my body, but I do now those two goals are what will lead to improved health, and happiness in my life - not dieting/weight loss. 

Phew, that feels good to get off my chest! 

My Big Bliss experience

Whenever I got to Toledo I watch unnecessary amounts of TLC and HGTV. After a long week, I love vegging out to an episode of Say Yes to the Dress on a Friday night. I could write a whole book (and maybe somebody has) detailing feminist critiques of that show and wedding culture. Regardless, its my guilty pleasure.

         
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This past weekend I was in Toledo and enjoyed my usual dose of cable TV. Friday night after a few episode of Say Yes to the Dress a new show came on. It was a spin off of Say Yes to the Dress featuring plus size brides, called Big Bliss.

I felt so angry watching this show. Woman after woman came into the shop and express their inability to find themselves beautiful. They would put on amazing dress after amazing dress and still look in the mirror and feel terrible.

They hated the way they looked, hated their bodies, and in turn, hated themselves. I found all of them beautiful. I understand beauty is subjective, but still in each woman I saw grace, elegance, and style. No – I saw a PERSON who had value and deserved dignity. It was literally painful to see the self hate.

Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss Clip

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The whole thing made me angry. 

I was angry at a wedding industry that says only thin brides are beautiful. I was angry at the fashion industry that doesn’t make clothes that fit all people, and perpetuates unreal expectations of beauty. To me the world needs to change not these women, yet I am sure other viewers felt exactly the opposite. I hated that other people are watching this show and victim blaming. I can see them now saying to a friend, if only they would lose 50 or 60 pounds they wouldn’t have a problem. Even the comments on the video posted above made my blood boil.

These women don’t need to change, the world that creates stereotypes, stigmatizes, and disenfranchises people based on the size of their body needs to change. This is blatant discrimination and should not be tolerated. In my rage I vowed to never let anything, a dress, an industry, or a society make me hate myself and my body. I am, like every other person, too valuable to be minimized in this way.

I haven’t mentioned this lately on this blog but personally my body has been changing. I have alluded to the terrible eating and inactivity habits I adapted while trying to finish school and find a job. My clothes fits differently so I was aware my body had changed, but this weekend I became strikingly aware to the magnitude by which my body had changed.


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This realization came at the mall. I went to the mall to spend a coupon I received for my birthday. I was excited to go to the mall and find some new clothes. When I got there I grab literally two arm loads of clothes, and rushed to the changing room. There were so many things on the rack I loved. I thought that I had hit the jackpot.

But then, shirt, after pants, after dress – nothing fit. Not one item I brought in fit. I knew my body had changed, I even made sure to get bigger sizes than I would have 6 months again, but still not one item fit.
I was paralyzed. Less than 12 hours ago I watched women go through these terrible shopping experiences that inevitably fueled their body hate. Less than 12 hours ago I vowed never to let something as silly as a dress make me feel less valuable. Yet there I was, exactly in their shoes.  I was ashamed, frustrated and sad.


I went back out to the store floor determined to feel better. I grabbed more clothes, in even bigger sizes, and even grabbed clothes that wouldn’t traditionally be considered “flatter” for a woman my size. Specifically I grabbed a white dress. I got a size I knew would fit, and rushed back into the dressing room.

Some of the clothes looked ok, and they now fit, but there still was no wow. The usual rush and excitement of new clothes was gone. I was too far in the hole by this point. The last item I tired on was the white dress. It fit well and was comfortable, but still all I saw in the mirror were my flaws. The rolls of fat on my back, the bludges around my hips. There I was, in a dressing room, in a white dress, feeling exactly like those women on TV, also in a dressing room, in a white dress.


I don’t have any answers or profound statements about this experience. I am still processing all my emotions and perceptions.

I guess I wanted to share this story because I know I am not alone in these feelings. I hope to keep thinking about this experience and figure out where I can grow from it. Right now I still feel hurt. I am hoping that time will bring wisdom, and I can share that wisdom here.

I guess the only advice I can give, and am giving to my self, is to not give up. I need to stand strong in my beliefs and figure out how I can use my skills in self reflection, self care, and social justice to address this problem. If anything I hope sharing this story makes others feel less alone, and make people aware that if you feel this way, there is someone with you in your corner trying to find a way to make things better – whatever that means.

This is where I have been so far …

(please note, this post rambles a bit, and I don’t feel like proofing, so deal or don’t read)

This is where I have been so far on my journey to healthy.

The first moment of my life I was aware of my weight was in the 1st grade. I remember before going to school for the first day giving myself a little prep talk. I told myself, you are fat and people will make fun of you for it. If you are nice and don’t cause problems no one will have a reason to be mean to you, and you will be safe. Looking back in breaks my heart that someone at the age of six would already be aware of the social implications of their weight.

My struggle with my weight continued as I got older. Growing up my weight was just part my identity. I was the fat girl and I completely understood how that impacted my life. I had the usual teasing but I don’t look back and think of myself as unhappy because of my weight, but I did always desired to be thin.

Here and there when I was younger I tried to "diet" (i.e. eat only granola bars, terrible idea) but my weight loss journey really began when I was in the 8th grade. January 2000 I began weight watchers with my mom. The whole experience was amazing. I was losing weight and I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was physical incapable of losing weight, but now I was. I hit my goal weight of 144 pounds sometime during the summer 2001, which was the summer before my freshmen year of high school. That fall my crush all through junior high asked me out, I was more outgoing at school and I felt more confident than ever.

Then that winter I moved to Ohio. This was the first time in my life making friends came easy. People wanted to talk to me and get to know me. This was a strange comparison to the way I had been treated in the past.

 

I internalized the idea that it was easier for people to accept me as a thin person. I think this impacted my opinion on weight gain. As silly as it sounds, it made me wonder, if being thin made me likable, what will I be if I gain the weight back? Maybe my change in self-perception is what made it easier to make friend. Maybe the fact that I as older, and people were more accepting at 14 then 12.

 

This question was answered my senior year of college when I gained all the weight, plus 10, back. This experience was well worth it. I learned that when I gained weight, my boyfriend still loved my. I was still able to do everything I did as a thin person, and the people who mattered didn't care. This is an important lesson to learn. While weight has an impact on the way others view you, it doesn't have to impact the way you view yourself, or the way you live your life.

 

Even though this experience taught me that I could be any weight and still accomplish my goals, I still wanted to return to a healthier weight. Losing weight the second time wasn't the same as the first time. When I was younger it was easier. I really didn’t have a negative relationship with food. Weight Watchers gave me the tools to lose weight and I could use them with ease. My mom was on program with me, I had a GREAT support network, and mainly ate at home. In high school new challenges came. I started to harbor resentment and self pity. It wasn’t fair other people didn’t have to think about what they ate. I wanted to go out with my friend, and do everything everyone else did without worrying about my weight.

 

College added a lot of new challenges as well. I was eating in the dining halls, away from home, and really pushing myself academically. My freshmen year I did great, but as I got busier and more involved managing my weight became increasingly difficult.

 

Now here I am. All the experience I have had with food up to this point has led me to where I am. I think the best sentiment to explain how I feel is something I read from another blog. One commenter said, you didn’t get unhealthy overnight, and you don’t get healthy overnight either. I really I identify with that. A lot of the habits I have developed over the years are good while others are not.

 

Also at this point in my life I am tired. I am tired of being told I am the problem and being told If I wanted to lose weight, I could just go do it. Trust, life is not that straight forward, in this matter, or any other matter of self reflection or development.

 

Also I harbor resentment. I resent the diet industry, even Weight Watchers, something that gave me so much hope growing up. While I wasn’t living a balanced lifestyle when I was overweight, I also wasn’t living one at my lowest weight, yet I still received external positive feedback for my “accomplishment.” The whole Weight Watchers thing is a whole other post!

 

Its funny too, I think my insecurities around weight is what lead me to health promotion as a career. I wanted to figure out what was wrong with me, but I ended up completely changing my perspective. As a student of public health, I know all the facts about the relationship between weight and health outcomes, yet there is more to life than that. There is more to life than just finding every way to reduce your risk for certain health outcomes. While maybe diet culture and body shaming brought me to public health, in the end public health brought me to feminism.  My growing ideals and beliefs about feminist and size acceptable (as aspect of feminist theory) have influenced my opinion on healthy living.

 

I know weight loss was never just about reducing my risk for ill health. I feel shame and guilt when I gain weight. I don’t feel shame and guilt when I forget to floss or wear my seat belt. Therefore, it isn’t just reducing risk, it is about something else.

 

My personal experiences from this story reflect a belief that to be loved one must be thin. While my experiences have also discredited this belief, culture constantly throws the message back into my face and faces of other women. See, there is the feminist in my talking.

 

All in all, I am just trying to figure it out from here. I don’t want to be part of the diet culture, but being active and learning about healthy eating is something I genuinely enjoy. I love running, and to run the distances I want to there is a certain level of self care I need to engage in. Being skinny, not so important, fueling properly, a little more important.

 

It is dirty work trying to dig through emotions, beliefs and ideas to find what you truly care about, and what someone over and over has told you to believe or think about yourself (cough socially constructed ideas of beauty, cough). Obviously I am a nurture over nature kind of girl when it comes to the social sciences.

 

Therefore, all I can do is try, and that folks, is what this blog is all about. I thought if we were going to chat about all the crap I have going on in my mind about food/weight/dieting/exercise, I might as well catch you up to speed.

Poem alert: New Beginning

I like to write, what I call, poems. Others might call it rambling or randomly collected phrases. Nonetheless, I plan to start posting them on the blog. Might even go old school and post some cute ones I wrote in the prepubescent phase.

one day at a time

one set

one second

one breath

one bite

it all starts with a moment you decide to change

you decide to live

to not give up on yourself

my weight is a challenge

its physical

its emotional

its mental

its everything

it is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life

yet I keep on going

Today I am choosing to start new

I know this will not be my last do over, my last relapse

this is my first moment to learn who I am

to grow up

to be the woman I want to be

for myself

for ME

this is one of the moments I am changing

the physical weight is just one part of my journey

what else will change along the way

Ambiguity

I have this new goal that is all about being happy. While this goal sounds nice, it is hard to understand what it means. Essentially I decided the way I was living life was not making happy, and therefore, I should do something else. But I had no idea what to do instead. I felt (and still feel) lost, but am starting to find footing again.

As I get older, I try to find comfort and less anxiety in moments where my life is less certain. Before, when I didn’t have a clear goal and method to that goal I would freak out. Being that way actually helped me a lot in life, but still brought on more emotional baggage than I care to bare over the long haul.

On the other hand, in my pursuit for comfort in the unknown, I find myself without any guidance at all. This is how I feel at the current moment. I set myself the ambiguous goal of letting go of my preoccupation with dieting and weight loss, but didn’t really tell myself what to do instead.

It has been interesting the last couple weeks, and I have learned from my experiences.

On things I learned is that at this point in my journey, I still need boundaries or guidance. The two areas where this impacts my eating/weight habits is journaling and weighing. Really that was all weight watchers was, keeping track of how much you eat, and monitoring your weight.

For me, journaling isn’t about keeping track of food to ensure I was eating the right amount to lose weight, but instead a way to be conscious of my choices. Therefore, I still journal when I eat, but do not keep a running tally of my calorie deficit. I find that in general I know how much I can eat and maintain my weight, and some day might stop journaling. For now though, I find it still helpful. It is helping me find a normal with my eating and less eating in the extremes. In the past I would “be on plan” Monday – Thursday eating very low amounts of calories, and then “off plan” Friday – Sunday eating to the point of pain. While the amount I eat changes day to day, it has started to level out, which makes me think I am finding my natural, healthy middle point.

The other piece of guidance I still use is weighing. I still weigh myself, and am slowly trying to make it more irregular. As of now, my goal is to stick to only once a week, and then hopefully even biweekly. Because I have been dieting for so long, I gain a lot of anxiety from not knowing my weight. I hope as I start to find my more regular eating habits, I will worry less about weighing as well. I hope to someday only weigh in once a month, just to ensure everything is in check.

With journaling and weighing, I am not sure what role they will play in my life in the future, but for now this routine seems pretty good. I really take it each day at a time. I look at my behaviors, reflect, and then take a next step forward.

A big accomplishment for me lately has been my cooking! I have made quite a few good meals that were mainly whole foods and vegan. It make me happy to not only increase my skills in the kitchen, but also learn to enjoy more whole and healthy foods. They taste wonderful too!

None of this is perfect. None of this I suggest to anyone else. The point of these blogs are to show my journey to a healthier lifestyle. In my life I seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. I went form inactive and mindless eating to over active, and obsessive eating. Maybe these challenges seem silly, but for me they are real.

I made a choice, I could keep living in diet culture, or I could do something else. With that choice I also accept that the damage that diet culture has brought to me will not go away over night. I hope to each day with each choice get closer to a more balanced lifestyle.

Numbers to Happiness

WARNING: if you suffer from any type of disordered eating this post might be triggering, as it mentions issues surrounding ideal weight and weight loss.
Historically speaking, as the new begins I set a weight loss goal. Well, this year I am setting a new kinds of goal, that is more nebulously related to my weight, but with a  positive twist.

2011 is going to be about finding my happy weight. 2011 is going to be about creating my own plan.


My life up till this point has been about reaching a number, a weight.  Depending on my weight at the time, my goal weight has changed, but in the back of my mind I always wanted to return to my lowest weight, which is 137.



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My lowest weight is this constant thought in the back of my mind. I always have this voice telling me that I need to reach that number again. It feels like there is something magical about it. Somewhere deep inside me, I believe that reaching that number will solve all my problems in life. I will be filled with confidence, self love, and happiness.

This makes no sense. When I was 137 I was probably less happy then I am now. I feel pretty good now, do I even need to lose weight? Medically speaking, I would be at lower risk for certain negative health outcomes if I was within in my healthy weight range, but still, maybe this is the best weight for me.



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There is plenty of research on what is the “healthiest” weight for a person to be at, but like with other health choices, you have to weigh the pros and cons. If I am going to be unhappy living the lifestyle needed to remain within the “healthy” range is it worth the decreased risk? Is it worth it to live a lifestyle to increases my risk for negative outcomes, if the increase risk is slight, maybe even negligible?

This discussion will continue, but for now back to my goals!

My challenge is to find my happy weight and the healthy happy lifestyle that goes along with it.


For so long I felt that my focus should be reaching that number. For so long I felt that the problem was that I couldn’t follow my exercise routines and diets close enough. I was the problem, and the ultimate end goal was a number. Maybe the problem was that my routines and plans were unrealistic for me. Maybe using weight as a goal isn’t what’s best for me. Maybe I stop try something new.

My new plan is to find balance. I know what it takes to be healthy and take care of myself. I am going to try to let go of arbitrary markers of “good health” or an ideal figure go. This is going to be hard for me, and I still have so much to say on this topic, but this is where I am going to live it for now.
I look forward to sharing more as my journey continues.

Oh, and I want to run a marathon this year, but we will talk about that later too!

2010: Time for learning, time for change

2010 has been a CRAZY year for me. Lets take a look back …

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Basically January till July I was exhausted from school and teaching group exercise. July till September I lost hope in my dreams of working in reproductive health advocacy. September through November my passion for advocacy was rejuvenated, but I was exhausted from the election, school, and being away from Kevin. November till now was all about wrapping up the loose ends.

At the beginning of the school year I had to make some difficult decisions. I had to decide to leave Columbus sooner than I originally planned. I had to quit my job, and begin trying to find something new. I was scared. I knew my way around Columbus, I had a job there, I had school, volunteer positions, and friends. In the end I had to decide what was important to me, and in the end decided the “easier” choice wasn’t the “happy” choice for me.

I hope to write a post about my experience with weight watchers and weight loss this past year. This was another point where I had to make a decision between what I was comfortable with, and what would actually make me happy.

I also will write a post on my engagement experience. It was an interesting transition going from girlfriend to fiancé, and it taught me a lot about myself, about my partner and my beliefs about relationships.

A lot of these experiences taught me to follow my heart and do what is best for me, no matter my own expectations.

Some of my good fortune this year was luck. Getting my job was part luck, but it was part me too. I can’t control what jobs are out there, but I can control my background of experiences, and the connections I have. I think if you work hard, the luck/being in the right place at the right time all comes together.

Also I had to take risks this year, I had to do something with out being certain what would happen. I am a girl who likes to plan, so doing something with out a plan scares me to DEATH, but I took a chance and everything turned out great.

In the end, I am so happy. I really do feel like the girl who has it all. While there are new challenges ahead, I just want to take this moment to feel completely and utterly thankful for all that I have in my life, and the amazing journey I have taken the past year to get here.

2011, here I come!