What It's Like to Try Out Body Neutrality

I made a conscious decision to stop dieting and now I cannot reach my feet to put on my shoes, and I am trying to be OK with that.

I am resolved that I am not going back to dieting. Dieting is not for me physically and mentally. I have been on a diet since I was 6 years old. Not my choice, but by a mother who decided that I was not good enough and needed to be different than God had made me.

It is hard to not know that my weight is increasing, my clothes do not fit, and I can see it in my face (I have not been on a scale since I started on this journey so how much gained is a mystery). I have also developed diabetes and my blood pressure is high, but I am committed to figuring this out and preserving my mental health. It is also important. I am confident my illness will fade when my set weight is established, and I learn how to be more in my body.

When I say I am no longer dieting people look at me (even close friends) as if I have lost my mind. They are thinking why a woman wouldn’t who is super fat not be wanting to diet and lose all the excessive weight.

This breaks my heart that they do not see how much dieting never worked for me and how it hurt my mental health. I want my friends and others to understand but they are so steeped in diet culture that they cannot see that I could be healthy and bigger-figured. That my weight was not necessarily the determinant of my health.

I feel alone on this journey to freedom from food and dieting controlling my life and feeling that the bigger I get the more society will ostracize me. I will not be attractive to partners, employers will consider me lazy or unprofessional, others will call me fat behind my back and treat me like public enemy number one and doctors will not take me seriously when I need their help.

Even with all the push back and setbacks, I still want to be body neutral. How I present to the world is my business and that I accept my body just the way it is. That I do not have to conform to so called beauty standards set by a misogynistic, racist, sexist, heterosexual, white world.

I am large-figured, black, lesbian and I am OK. I am also bright, intelligent, a good friend, a loving family member, a great mom and grand mom, a formidable advocate for the marginalized, a faithful child of God and have so much to offer the world. My weight should not cloud all of this.

So the people around me are going to be the ones who will need to do the adjusting. I am tired of trying to fit everyone’s expectations of me. I am more than my waist size and so are you.