Two different incidents caught my attention recently. The first was an article about a Lizzo concert in Raleigh. The second was when I watched a local Pittsburgh newscast while I was dog-sitting for my neighbor.
I like some of Lizzo’s music. Jerome, Good As Hell, and ‘Cause I Love You are among my favorite pop songs to crank up the volume and drum with.
When I read the article about the concert, I was struck with how fat she was. I’ve seen her before – I know she’s fat. But in the concert pictures, there she is, center stage, in a skin tight outfit that displayed her morbid obesity and quadruple chins in clear detail. Beside her was a troupe of equally obese backup dancers, dressed in similar spandex and lycra attire.
Yuck.
A few days later I was hanging out at my neighbor’s home with his dogs for a while. I turned on the TV and to my surprise found a Pittsburgh news show streaming. Every once in a while, I take a trip down memory lane by watching the news from my old hometown. I like to hear the yinzer accents, and see streets and neighborhoods I once haunted.
The news people have all changed since I last lived there in 2006. The anchors, meteorologists and reporters have all been replaced with Millenial and Gen Z newcomers. And they are all fat. And like Lizzo, they tend to wear tight clothing – although not lycra skin suits. Thankfully.
My point in writing this isn’t to denigrate fat people. I was fat for much of my childhood and much of my adult life. At times, I was grossly obese. I never celebrated it. I was ashamed.
Back then, most actors, newscasters, models and celebrities were thin. There was occasional pushback that they set “impossible standards” for body image, but thin, attractive bodies dominated most every media channel – TV, Movies, Stage and Print.
Now the pendulum has swung the other way. The US is full of fat people. So many, that they are celebrated as “heroes”. So many, that being fat has become the new normal even on TV.
OK. I’m cool with that.
Except…I often hear people talk about how they want to lose weight. So even if they are pretending to embrace being fat, they would rather be thin.
I know. I am thin now. I’ve had periods when I was thin before. In between, it was always a struggle to eat less in an attempt to control my weight.
It’s not a struggle for me anymore and rarely has been for years now.
Because I finally learned, it’s about what I eat. Period.
I can’t eat processed food. I can’t eat carbs. I can’t eat sugar. I can’t eat fast food. I can’t dine on restaurant meals with caloric contents that exceed a full days worth of eating.
When I avoid all of this and only eat meat (or in the past, meat, vegetables and fruit), controlling my weight is no longer a struggle.
I would guarantee that the number of people in the US who are fat and don’t want to be have tried many diets. I’ll bet, like me, they thought eating bread, pasta, starchy vegetables and occasional desserts was healthy. After all, the FDA & Food Pyramid taught us this for decades – right?
My method of eating that worked was different. Vegetarianism worked for me for years. Then Paleo worked for years. Now carnivore works even better.
I wish I could tell the people who struggled with being fat, like I once did, to try this. I wish I could share how I feel mentally, physically and emotionally today. It is so much better than the pleasure I used to get from a bag of chips, a pint of ice cream or a bottle of booze.
There are other ways to celebrate. You don’t have to pretend to like being fat.