Weight loss: NOPE!

Content note: weight talk

I quit weighing for No-Scale November and hadn't since. I knew I had a little bit of holiday weight gain because I fucking love egg nog, y'all, but I was working at accepting it from a weight-neutral perspective, which was easy since I knew it would come right off once I got back into my regular fitness routine, so it's not like I really had a lot of mental work to do on the issue.

Saturday someone—a man—commented, "You're losing weight!" in a congratulatory tone, and I shot back nastily, "NOPE!"

"What kind of a twisted world do we live in where the state of our bodies is fair game for comments from whoever feels like making them?"

Because a) Don't ever congratulate people on weight loss, and b) Don't fucking comment on people's weight. Period.

Words and language are powerful messengers and what we say to each other impacts the way we interact with our bodies, especially when it comes to our weight. Often we talk about weight unconsciously, in the social norm women have become accustomed to, but to me, remaining unconscious and complacent in this norm is a form of fat-phobia and perpetuates body hate.

"Oh, well, it looks like you have."
"Hm, thanks."
My outfit was kind of awesome . . . in a stretch-velvet, witchy, 1990s flashback sort of way.

This morning I was weighed at the doctor's office and was surprisingly disappointed to see the number, even though logically it's hardly a significant change, and I still know it will come off easily with my half and full marathon training this year. But I was there today to discuss treatment options for depression, so I was not in a good place emotionally. The weight thing is not a big deal, just uncomfortable, I suppose.

Maybe next time I'll muster the nerve not to look and to ask the attendant not to read it aloud. This is not out of fear of how high it will be but an act of activism to completely quit weigh-ins and find other metrics to measure my health. Because it's really easy to measure harder, better, faster, stronger, and weight is not a way to do so.