Are you fat positive?

For some time I've been following a small number of 'fat positive' blogs. These are blogs from the 'fatosphere' which encourages positive attitudes towards one's body no matter the size (although sometimes this falls into 'fat is better and how dare you be skinny'). Seems like a good attitude to have - that it's more about being happy with who you are and what you look like, than it is about conforming to society's norms and trying to become something you're not.

I fit into the fat side of things and am inclined to agree with the view that people have a natural 'point' that their body weight trends towards (but that they can buck this trend through diet and exercise or lack thereof). Some people's natural point is higher than others, some lower, and I'm not sure there's such a thing as normal. But then you could take the view that this is a useful excuse for not exercising more and not eating 'healthily'.. And maybe it is. I have observed that those in the 'fatosphere' are often women (almost always women) who incorporate some level of activity into their lives and generally don't have high degrees of health issues (or not that they talk about on their blog - which is fair enough if it's not about that). They are generally white, and often some level of 'middle class'. I'm not meaning to pigeon-hole but it's easier to talk about positivity if you're not coming from a position of zero..

Anyway I was reading a blog post about one woman's experience losing a fairly large amount of weight. And I was thinking about how some of the people in the fatosphere would consider this to be traitorous behaviour. But the woman telling her story sounded so positive.. Viz:

There will be such an huge weight lifted - literally and figuratively - from my life. I am going to be strong. I am already stronger than I remembered I could be.

So being overweight had a negative impact on her life. It sounds as though she was quite large (talks of not being able to fit into seats etc) - but I still wonder if the fat acceptance movement would tell her to learn to be happy with who she was..

Nothing is ever as simple as it would like to be.

Gratuitous links to websites on or around these kinds of topics that I have on my regular reading list:

http://www.definatalie.com/
http://www.dietgirl.org/ (Shauna has a great book out as well about how she lost half her body weight..)
http://www.bfdblog.com/ - I find this one a bit more challenging as they're more along the lines of fat positive