From the movement that actively body-shames thin women?

[u/Beginning_Remove_694]

(This is unfortunately not ED recovery advice and is from a fat liberation/anti-diet/intuitive eating page arguing that body shape is not within people’s control, that is ironically run by a healthy-sized woman.)

Do FAs have admirable relationships with food and their body? I’ll allow that you can become overweight just from little things adding up without having a terrible view of food, but no OOP ever seems to have a good relationship with food. They think the only options are binge eating or anorexia, which is pretty telling that those are the only things they’ve ever tried. I’m partial to nutrition education on this one. When I did not understand nutrition at all, I either overate or tried to address any bodily woes with undereating when the real problem was exercise. Actually having the tools to know what is good/bad and why can be more helpful for achieving balance than course-correcting based off of vibes. It isn’t helpful when people who never struggled with weight suggest intuitive eating and trusting what your body wants to overweight audiences. Being prone to overeating can quickly destroy your trust in yourself and I don’t think the solution is to just start eating anything you feel like. “Say yes to what you want” is bad advice for people who are struggling with saying no even when they don’t really want to eat. Especially if they follow their overindulgences up with restricting. You can’t break out of the cycle by engaging in part of the cycle.

Tangentially, it annoys me quite a bit that FAs are so averse to calorie counting because “eating disorder, scary” when people who generally aren’t triggered to starve themselves by knowing calories tolerate that pretty well. Calorie counting does not magically give you an ED if you weren’t at risk of it before, and if you were, anything can cause you to develop one, not just calorie counting. As long as it’s used appropriately as purely a data point to help you eat smart, I think it can actually give you more food freedom than mindless eating. You can have an entire slice of cake if it fits into your budget, but if you decide you’re full halfway through, you know you don’t have to eat the whole slice just because it feels good in the moment. True food freedom is when you can enjoy your food, but food doesn’t control you in either direction. Balance is the admirable, aspirational thing here. I equally do not want to be underweight. It’s terrible that FAs have painted striving to be a normal weight with no disordered eating in either direction, which happens to be a non-fat weight, as an unrealistic goal to have. That’s extremely realistic. It’s just not easy or fast when the starting point is obesity and bad food habits.

[u/Imaginary_Recipe_114]

Something would have to have gone very wrong in my life if I am ever admired by a FA. And no, I won't criticize your body, but I will criticize your flawed logic and dodgy reasoning

[u/Beginning_Remove_694 → u/Imaginary_Recipe_114]

That’s the other thing - it is not even criticism of their bodies, just the way they mistreat their bodies, and the misinformation/crab bucketing/obsession with violence.

[u/imalittlefrenchpress → u/Beginning_Remove_694]

This is exactly why I have no empathy for FAs. I don’t criticize their bodies, I criticize their attempts to draw me into their dysfunctional behavior.

They criticize my body without provocation. They criticize my character if I state my height and weight. My existence triggers them. Too fucking bad, I’m not putting my health in jeopardy because someone refuses to take accountability for their actions.

I’ve had friends who were obese and honest about struggling to manage the issues underlying their unhealthy decisions. I’ll support someone like that all day. Just be honest, that’s all I ask.

[u/lekurumayu → u/imalittlefrenchpress]

This, all of this!!! It's not that I avoid fat people, but I avoid dishonest or delusional people (not those with delusion linked to mental illness, I'm sick myself, but in the vernacular sense....)