WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
RBI supports all races, genders, classes, and sizes. We try our best to make this a safe space for everyone. If we are not doing our job or checking our privilege, we invite you to please inform us.
Some of the artwork you see here has been created by our founder or moderators, some sourced when applicable. Please be kind enough to source this blog whenever you share it's content.
We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
This blog is part of the Safe Space Network.
Why It’s Okay To Be Fat: Golda Poretsky at TEDxMillRiver
Watch this. Up-vote it on Youtube. Share it. <3
This video has just been bombarded in the comments by a gaggle of anti-fat, healthist fuckers. Golda presents so much important info in this talk that is being overshadowed by hate and ignorance and its such a goddamn shame. If you have a moment, and the energy, to deal with combating these trolls…please consider helping out down-voting derogatory comments, up-voting constructive ones, and adding your own love to the mix.
Why It’s Okay To Be Fat: Golda Poretsky at TEDxMillRiver
Watch this. Up-vote it on Youtube. Share it. <3
“My name is Rounissha Williams and this is my photo. I am proud to be a belly dancer. I am from Plainfield NJ. I study with Miriam Berger from Highland Park NJ.” -Belly Dance At Any Size
Christine of Belly dance Jakarta from Jakarta, Indonesia
Because it is. What we consider “healthy” is not the same as what is considered healthy in other cultures, nor what was considered healthy at other times in history. Hell, our own definition has changed considerably just since I was born. (This is also how we can tell that things like gender and childhood are socially constructed.) And we know that much of what the public considers healthy right now does not actually give the benefits people think it does (such as the fact that people “overweight” and “obese” by the BMI chart actually live longer than people it lists as “normal” weight). How would you not consider that a social construct? “Healthy” in our culture is constructed from a lot of false ideas and false assumptions about people’s bodies. This isn’t just a HAES idea. (Indeed, there are a lot of parts of the popular idea of “health” that HAES subscribes to.) If you read the actual medical and scientific literature that’s out there, you’ll find all kinds of things that contradict our idea of health.
And, of course, the popular idea of health leaves out a lot of people, especially people with disabilities, and makes it something they can never attain, but are told they should strive for constantly.
-MG
rebloggable by request
Woah woah woah.
Yes, the definition of WHAT IS HEALTHY FOR YOU is a “social construct,” but what is healthy for your BODY is a construct based off research, experimental results.
Other cultures may have differing opinions on what’s healthy /for someone/, but they absolutely cannot dispute science and what is physically healthy. What bloodletting healthy? Were lobotomies? Trepanation? You can’t just DEFINE what is good for you physically — in that case, why don’t we just throw all medical research that’s ever been done away.
Okay, so, to be clear: what you’re SAYING (I hope) is referring to the /idea of what is healthy/, not what is ACTUALLY, medicinally, healthy.
Is gastric bypass surgery healthy?
Weight loss diets, especially yo-yo dieting?
Consuming large amounts of fake sugar?
Over-exercise to the point of repetitive stress injury, in the name of weight loss?
Spending a quarter-time job on dieting and exercising in combination with a stressful full time job, family, and other obligations?
Putting kids on diets?
Diagnosis #1 of all fat patients being fatness, and Treatment #1 to lose weight, regardless of their complaint, regardless even of whether weight gain was caused by an underlying factor?
Being told to lose weight during pregnancy if you’re over a certain BMI?
Being labeled as high-risk and oftentimes banned from every birthing practice except surgery because you’re over a certain BMI?
Because these (and many more) are all things that are currently considered ‘healthy’ by modern medical ‘science.’
Our collective scientific handle on what is ‘healthy’ is not anywhere near accurate. It’s largely skewed by political considerations like the vast amount of funding available for anti-obesity research, and the agendas of certain politicians who want to link unhealthy lifestyles with whatever kind of lifestyle they personally oppose, moral panics like the obesity epidemic, commercial interests, and private biases.
If what we know about medical science was the size of a frisbee, half of that frisbee would be under dispute, and what we do NOT know would be the size of the entire fucking planet.
I know people who buy into the cult of healthism are prone to buy into this ridiculous worship of current medical science, but please, PLEASE, think a little more critically first.
-ArteToLife
The Big Ballet
Russian Dance troupe the Big Ballet bring their unique comedic take on classical ballet to the county through their 17-stone dancers.
Love them. <3
So I’m definitely one of those people who weeps both when something makes me sad and also when something makes me very happy. This qualified for a happy tear. And it wasn’t because this segment was particularly emotional in its subject or narration, but more that… here are these lovely fat women doing something they love and doing it well, and the way it was addressed was so… matter of fact. I’m so used to anything fat related in the media here in the United States being an all-out attack, or at best, an unequal, biased debate. This brought a tear to my eye because it said, in a nutshell, “These are some fat women doing something spectacular. That is all.”
Fucking awesome. Fat ladies dance circles around the haters.
There are a number of very real direct “costs” to individuals, communities, and societies resulting from the current “war on obesity.” The direct consequences of this “war” include disordered eating practices, weight cycling, body dissatisfaction, bullying, weight stigma, bariatric surgery, insurance exclusions, and a general reinforcement of fat-phobic, weight-centric health ideas that don’t really serve to improve anyone’s health or wellbeing, regardless of their weight or size. These consequences are costly indeed in both economic and human terms, and collectively have a profound impact on health.
But what about the opportunity costs? Opportunity cost is a term of art from the field of economics, and may be defined as:
“A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else. Since every resource (land, money, time, etc.) can be put to alternative uses, every action, choice, or decision has an associated opportunity cost.”
A key feature of opportunity costs is that they do not appear on any balance sheet. However, according to economic theory, they should be taken into account in any sound decision-making process.
It’s high time we started to account for the opportunity costs of our culture’s declared war on obesity. In other words, what do we forego as a society when we allocate precious social, economic, cognitive, emotional, and physiological resources toward pursuing and maintaining our weight-based paradigm of health?
To read the rest of this blog, click here!
Am I missing something? Is there a food diary app in existence that doesn’t focus on weight loss, or shame and grade your food choices, or base everything off of fucking calories?
I just want to keep track of my food intake (mostly things like fiber, protein, sodium, and vitamins) without being triggered back into disordered eating habits.
I’ve been trying out a few apps (of course ALL OF THEM based off of weight loss goals and calorie-counting) and I’m thinking of reviewing them all from a HAES perspective…
Or I could just design my own, find someone to develop the code, and become rich.
But if there’s an app out there that exists already, that’s cool too.
Asked Anonymous
I think it is awesome, although my knowledge and experience with it is relatively limited. HAES (Health at Every Size) is a way to think about health that explicitly rejects weight loss as a productive goal. This makes total sense to me. Most of the studies I’ve looked at about the issue show that A) fat doesn’t necessarily make someone unhealthy and hasn’t been proven to cause the health problems it is often connected to (correlation is NOT causation) B) even if fat DID cause said health problems, there has never been a statistically significant weight-loss study where the majority of participants went from obese to normal weight and stayed there for the long term so science has no idea how to achieve weight loss and C) healthy habits make healthy bodies REGARDLESS OF WEIGHT.
By rejecting weight loss as a goal, HAES refocuses the conversation about health on habits, which is much more effective and much less stigmatizing. It also says that health looks different for every body, and encourages people to find paths to health that work for them, and not feel like they need to conform to an approved set of behaviors to be healthy. I think this is all to the good, and I always encourage people who ask me about fat and health to look into HAES.
All that said, I think it is important to recognize that health isn’t a productive or achievable goal for everyone, nor does it EVER determine a human being’s worth. I think most people want to be healthy, but for those who don’t or can’t be, it is important to remember that EVERY PERSON DESERVES RESPECT REGARDLESS OF HEALTH. All human beings have value, and all bodies deserve dignity.
Image is Powerful: Cameron Russell (by TEDxTalks)
This woman has been a model for 10 years, and she draws on that experience as she explores the consequences we face by idealizing beauty through the media. She acknowledges that in meeting this superficial standard of beauty (by winning a “genetic lottery”), she’s been granted unearned privilege in an appearance-obsessed culture that subsequently oppresses women the further they get from what we have defined as “beautiful”.
She encourages children to pursue a career path (!), and notes that the modeling world is where the most physically insecure people -including herself- can be found. These insecurities could not exist outside of a culture that constructs what beauty is and places so much emphasis on the it. Watch this. It’s honest, surprising, and refreshing. And if you know any young girls, I encourage you to send this video and/or this message their way. It could make a larger difference in their life than you may ever know!
I think this is a very powerful and illuminating point and I don’t just mean her words. I also mean that because she is thin, white, beautiful, and priviledged she is able to get up on this stage and make these points and be taken seriously. There are women and especially WOC who have made these same cases a thousand times are their voices go unheard because they aren’t a privileged model type. But I do very much appreciate Cameron for owning her privilege.
Secondly, this video should be shown to women and girls but this video should also be shown to everyone. The modeling industry is still a patriarchal free for all where much of the industry is controlled by men.
This is Redefining Body Image’s go-to list of resources, articles, research, videos, etc. providing facts and information regarding health and body image, especially dedicated to debunking the everyone’s favorite myth that fat = unhealthy.
If I referred you to this page and this way of thinking about fat and fat health is new to you, I encourage you to have an open mind.
If you have something to add, please submit! The more this list grows, the more ammo we have to back us up in our fight against the body positive nay-sayers.
Let the facts come marching in.
- Big Fat Facts: The truth about fat, obesity, gastric bypass, and weight loss. Focuses on many aspects of fat health that are widely accepted but never challenged, targets the claims, points out the faults, and highlights the truth.
- Articles and Evidence by the Fat Nutritionist that go into some of the controversies around dieting, weight, and eating.
- A massive list of resources discussing the truth behind fat health can be found over at Big Liberty Blog, titled Truth Behind Fat: References.
- One of my staple resources, Kate Harding answers the ever popular question directed at fat activists: “But Don’t You Realize Fat Is Unhealthy?”
- Some more from the lovely Kate Harding: “Reality vs. Relativism“ and ”Diets Don’t Work”.
- A scientific study helping to prove how diets really work by, Junkfood Science - How We’ve Come to Believe that Overeating Causes Obesity
- More of Me to Love discusses fat health, fitness, and health at every size.
- Everyone Knows Obesity Is Hurting Us, But Is the Fight Against Obesity the Problem? - Linda Bacon, Ph.D.
- The Health At Every Size® Manifesto.
- Heart Surgeon Speaks Out Against What Really Causes Heart Disease - A very interesting and informative piece that details new studies on heart disease.
- Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift
- Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer.
- The TRUE Cost of Fatties - Looking closely at how obesity impacts gas costs and health care, which is to say not at all.
- More on Obesity and Healthcare Costs here.
- Stereotype Management Skills by Deb Burgard, PhD. discusses how to refute fat shaming propaganda, among other helpful things.
- Uncommon Knowledge About Changes in Body Weight by Lily O’Hara
- Things Obesity is Not by Ragen Chastain
- ‘Everyone knows’ obesity kills, but is weight loss the answer? by Lydia Turner
- Above-Normal Weight Alone Does Not Necessarily Increase Short-Term Risk of Death, U.S. Data Suggest - Science Daily, July 2012
- Among diabetes patients, the obese outlive the trim - a study that cracks fat health stereotypes about type 2 diabetes
- ‘Fitness and Fatness’: Not All Obese People Have the Same Prognosis; Second Study Sheds Light On ‘Obesity Paradox’ - People can be obese but metabolically healthy and fit, with no greater risk of developing or dying from cardiovascular disease or cancer than normal weight people, according to the largest study ever to have investigated this seeming paradox.
- This TED talk by Julie Rochefort called “Shift the Focus” discusses and displays a lot of really important data based around the fact that health is possible at EVERY size. A short 8 minute video that covers a lot of ground in a short amount of time.
- This extensive article by Glenn Gaesser, Ph.D. called Obesity, Health, and Metabolic Fitness debunks a number of myths regarding fat health. Many important topics are covered, from “thinner is not necessarily healthier” to “emphasis on weight loss” being “misdirected and hazardous”, to challenging the link between obesity and heart disease. A very comprehensive and informative resource.
- Fear Mongering for the Nation by Fat Body Politics - A critical look at the HBO documentary Weight of the Nation.
- Why Diets are Harmful and Counterproductive by Linda Bacon challenges conventional wisdom regarding obesity and weight loss to support the conclusion that “Weight is a baseless measure for health, and weight loss a counterproductive goal.”
Fat Acceptance/Size Discrimination Related Resources (WIP)
- Ever wanted to learn more about Fat Acceptance? Check out the Fat Acceptance FAQ over at Spilt Milk, complete with a list of links to some great health-related info.
- 5 Fat Acceptance Myths Debunked - Debunking myths such as “Fat acceptance demands complete confidence and self-love at all times.”
- NAAFA Official Website
- The Association for Size Diversity and Health // Research Articles
Body Positivity Resources (WIP)
- Body Positivity 101 by The Ellipses Project
Thank you.
Reblogging this because we had some recent asks along these lines. Also, anyone looking for articles/references just check our resources or references tag and that should help you out!
When Thanksgiving rolls around every year, you’ll almost always hear me spouting on and on about how much I love turkey dinner. The whole shebang - stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy.. mmm! But what do I do every year during these holiday dinners? I eat so much that my body gets really upset with me afterwards. I know that I’m not alone in this.
So this year, I’m trying out something new. This past year I’ve learned a ton about HAES and about listening to what your body tells you, and I feel like I can finally put it into motion. This is like the big game after lots of practice. My practice hasn’t been too horrible, but I’ve had my share of slip-ups.. and pretty often. When dinnertime comes around and I haven’t eaten anything all day for example, I tend to get a little excited and forget to listen to my body. This leads me to eating more than my body can handle, and I end up feeling like a big shitball. Yeah, shitball.
In terms of listening to my body, I’m going to actually start feeding it in the morning when I get little grumbles, which will help with my binging at night out of excitement, starvation, or whatever it is. I’m also researching how to quit smoking, which is something I so terribly want to accomplish, but am torn about because I, like many other smokers, like smoking.
An important part of my life, though, is NOT to body police. So I’m not here to say, “Hey, don’t eat two, three, four servings of turkey and gravy. Don’t do this, don’t do that.” That’s not my mission. My mission in this journey of body positivity is to be in touch with my body. Not your’s. I finally have the tools to know HOW to be in touch with my body, I finally know how to listen to it, and I finally know that I want to listen to it.
What a perfect time to explore how my body feels when I feed it things! Thanksgiving?! Yay! Buuuut, having a history (and present, who am I kidding?) of eating disorders, and being insanely obsessive can make it hard to understand these things in reference to my body. My relationship with food has been and will always be a struggle, we’re almost always at a conflict, so I’m working to get away from that, obviously!
So here are a few steps that I’m taking to be my best Cortnie this holiday:
Relax, breathe. It’s just eating.
Take what you want, but know that there will always be more where that came from. (Privilege? CHECK!)
Why don’t you smell the food? Look at the food. Think about how it makes you feel when you eat it.
Binge eating may feel good at first, with the tastes and textures of the food, but come on Cort, afterwards you’re going to feel like shit.
RELAX.
So those are just some things that I needed to regurgitate out. I know they may seem crazy simple and childish, but sometimes exercises like this can really help you achieve goals and understand what’s happening in your brain.
Who else has these issues? What do you tell yourself?
xo Cortnie
ps here’s a picture of me looking weird after jumping in the air. I look even shorter than I actually am.
YAAA you are awesome! I love this.
As for what I like to tell myself - Y’all know how I feel about pie.