So is it fatphobic to lose weight? The answer is maybe. The reason why maybe is the reasons behind why you have lost or are losing weight. If you intentionally lose weight, that act of intentionally trying to make your body smaller is inherently fatphobic and you are not therefore, acting in a body positive way.

The fat acceptance movement was created so the fat bodies were no longer erased and marginalized and discriminated against. By intentionally losing weight, you are erasing a fat body if you have a fat body, and you are buying into the rhetoric that being thinner means that you are more worthy, more desirable, and a lot of people say, "Well, I'm losing weight to become healthy." You are also buying into that rhetoric that being thinner means that you are a healthier person, which is not based in science.

So if you happen to lose weight just because oh, you got sick, all of a sudden you happen to be thinner and it's not something that you're intentionally doing, then that's fine. That's just what bodies do, right? We go up and down and it's not a big deal. But if you are intentionally trying to make your fat body thinner, that is fatphobic and it is not body positive so you cannot actively diet and also claim to be body positive or fat positive.

So if that's you, then that's fine. I understand a lot of people do want to lose weight. But you cannot then say, "I am super body positive, I love fat people but I just don't want to be fat myself." It's not the way it works, right? I just want to recognize, living in a bigger body is very difficult. I don't blame people for trying to lose weight, especially if they have other marginalized identities that they are dealing with. Say if someone is a fat person of color; a fat trans person; someone who is a fat gay person; a fat, gay, trans black person. They are dealing with a ton of shit and if they can control the way the world views them by losing weight, then I totally get it and I totally understand that. So I just want to recognize that because it's really difficult to live in a fat body.

But just a reminder, trying to erase your fat body or any other fat body is based in fat phobia. If you say, "I want to do it for my health," then I get. We have been told that having a thinner body means that we are healthier but that is not based in fact. Again, you should look up Healthy At Every Size, the acronym is HAES, and if you do want to be healthy, how you can be healthy in a big body. Because, a reminder, diets don't work anyway. You can be trying to [inaudible 00:03:16] in terms of level of health or acceptability and 95% to 97% of the time, you're going to fail, and a lot of the time, you actually are going to become bigger, put on more weight than you started. So a waste of time most of the time.

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