The other day I read a book by Dr. Robert Schwartz called “Diets Don’t Work!” The author’s thoughts about diets and the process of losing weight completely coincide with mine, which I have already shared with you more than once. Therefore, I decided to briefly summarize the essence of the book in this post.

The main idea that he wants to convey. Many overweight people find this very difficult to believe. But have you ever tried to feed a child who doesn't want to eat? What's happened? He was spitting out food! How does a child decide whether he is hungry or not if he doesn’t even know what time it is? He feels it!
But if there is a thin person inside everyone, then why do half of us struggle with excess weight? Yes, because we have allowed the “diet way of thinking” (or “diet mentality”) to entangle us.

Have I confused you? :) Now let's talk about everything in order.

Diets are like a river with crocodiles.
Imagine that you are on the bank of a river infested with angry, hungry crocodiles. On the other side is a happy country,

where do skinny people live? Only a river separates you from your cherished goal. There are two hundred people in front of you. They jump into the river and the crocodiles immediately attack them. After several tense minutes, the only survivor makes it to the other side. She waves her hand at you and shouts: “Hey, get over! It’s so great here!”
You are in the next group of two hundred people. Will you take the risk? Probably not.
This river is the diet. You'd have to be crazy to throw yourself into it. Yet we do it again and again.

Statistics.
Out of 200 people who go on a diet, only 10 lose as much weight as they intended, and of those ten, only one maintains their desired weight. Think about it: the percentage of “losers” is 99.5%. Over the past seventy years, more than 26,000 types of diets have come into fashion and sunk into oblivion, and still only one person out of two hundred manages to lose weight and stay in shape with the help of a diet.

Twenty-five again, or what happens to the body during a diet.
When you go on a diet, you consume fewer calories than your body needs. You are losing weight. Then you return to your usual diet and, oh my God!, you gain even more than you weighed before the diet. Why? It’s just that the body has decided that the food supplies on the planet have come to an end, and is trying to protect you from starvation by slowing down metabolic processes. You go on another diet, history repeats itself. You start to get angry at yourself for not being able to finish the job, but with each new diet you manage to lose less and less, and at the end of it you gain more and more. Why? Because when you resume normal eating, your metabolism Not returns to its pre-diet state.
One day, you discover that the pants you wore before you got involved in this diet fever are too tight for you, and you become depressed. Whole life begins to revolve around nutrition, and weight loss becomes an obsession.
Conclusion: dieting to lose weight is like adding fuel to a fire in order to extinguish it. You use a method that doesn't work and then blame yourself for the lack of results.

Ponder at your leisure: what would numerous psychologists, doctors, nutritionists, business owners in the field of dietary nutrition and people in the diet industry, what if someone told the world the secret that diets don't work?

What is a diet mentality?
Diets give rise to the so-called diet way of thinking or diet mentality. We have developed a diet mentality because we grew up in a society that believes diets work. Most people still think that the most important thing in losing weight is to go on a suitable diet.
Remember: Whatever a human being is deprived of becomes an obsession.
Diets are designed to make you think less about food, but just the opposite happens. When we go on a diet to lose weight, we start thinking about food all the time. The key element in the diet mentality is the mechanism of self-restraint that settles in the brain of the dieter.
The diet mentality prevents you from seeing that the cause of your excess weight is overeating. Even if you accept that overeating is a source of excess weight, you will believe that the solution to the problem is not to eat (fast).

We talked about people on diets. Now - about those who have never been on a diet - naturally thin people.

What is the skinny mentality?
Have you ever asked naturally thin why do they eat? They will most likely look at you like you're crazy and say, "I eat because I'm hungry." It is extremely rare for you to receive such a response from overweight people. Overweight people use food to satisfy all other types of hunger - emotional, intellectual, even sexual. They passionately desire something and are accustomed to replacing these desires with the desire to eat. The problem is that you cannot satisfy all desires with food.
For thin people, food is a kind of fuel that is used for normal functioning body. They don't associate food with solving a problem. She does not confuse physical and emotional hunger.

After studying thin people over a long period of time, the author comes to several conclusions.

Four facts:
- slimness- this is the natural state of everyone;
- you can lose weight the same way easily, how to dial;
- thin people do four simple things that overweight people don’t do (more on them below), and never go on diets;
- any of us can without effort and stress become thin and enjoy the process.

What is the way out
You can put an end to the problem of excess weight in your life once and for all by replacing the diet mentality mentality of a naturally thin person. You will enjoy joy, peace, completeness in your life - everything that you could only dream of.
Start acting and thinking as if you are already naturally thin. It will be strange at first, but you can handle it!
Naturally thin people:
1) eat only when hungry;
It would never occur to skinny people to combine sadness and buns, as overweight people often do. They don't think about food all the time. Food is just food. Food is not love, not relaxation, not sex, not friendship, etc.
2) eat only what they really want to eat;
3) enjoy every bite they put into their mouth;
Thin people eat consciously; they will never unexpectedly find their hand at the bottom of an empty popcorn cup, wondering who ate the popcorn. Conscious eating is like driving a car with manual drive: At first it is difficult to learn, but when you get used to it, you no longer think about changing gears.
4) stop eating as soon as they stop feeling hungry.

But this is exactly how children and animals eat. This is the most natural approach to nutrition.

All that's left to do is start living, begin think like a naturally thin person .The very first step to this is admitting that you are a habitual overeater and have deliberately gained weight for good reasons. You need to create conditions in which the naturally thin person inside you will feel safe and begin to express himself. No matter what happens, always think of yourself as the person you want to become—the naturally thin person.
Get rid of the diet mentality, and it will only be a matter of time before your body reflects your inner being. Once the new natural slim mindset becomes a habit, you will change in appearance.

Psychology of weight loss: thin and fat

But, and this is known to many, as soon as you let go of the reins a little, the weight immediately begins to increase, and sometimes even so quickly that we realize when we weigh even more than at the beginning of our weight loss.

The statistics are inexorable: only 5% of those who lose weight manage to maintain the achieved result over the next 12 months.

Causes of failures in weight loss

The causes and mechanisms of these failures are discussed. The versions they call are absolutely fantastic. Like, somewhere inside we have a kind of clock/scale hidden that has lost its settings and now perceives this obviously excess fat mass as normal. And they are trying their best to hold on to it and restore it. I wish we could identify these clocks/scales, understand how they work and “reconfigure” them!

But maybe everything is much simpler? Maybe overweight people DO NOT KNOW how to live the easy, cheerful life of a slim person? They know how to lose weight, but they don’t know how to live as they should. So they take back everything that was thrown away!

And I like this idea much more than fantastic assumptions about built-in regulators. After all, if I turn out to be right, all that will be necessary is to notice the differences in the diet and behavior of slim people, learn to behave the same way, and at least there will be no problems with maintaining weight, and perhaps with losing weight too.

Of course, if these differences were obvious, we would have identified and corrected them long ago. For example, if everyone fat everyone would be gluttons or lazy, then there wouldn’t be a problem: get up, go for a run, don’t eat anything, and you’ll thin!

But firstly, if there is among full people are gluttonous, then there are no more of them than among thin. This is confirmed by serious statistical studies.

Secondly, thin For the most part, they eat quite a lot and don’t particularly exhaust themselves with training. And they don’t go on diets, and they haven’t weighed themselves for years. However, this does not prevent them from remaining year after year. thin.

Thirdly, and from fat Many people try to fast and run, but even if they lose weight, it most often does not last long. So if they are different thick from slim, then these differences are by no means obvious.

From what other direction should we come? Yes, even with this one! A person’s given weight is most often the result of his given lifestyle in a very broad sense of the word. And the way of life consists of a whole mass of elements that are sometimes in rather intricate interaction with each other.

Lifestyle components can be divided into those related to nutrition (more or less fatty meals, frequent or rare, plentiful or not, rich in spices and delicacies or not, with or without alcohol, and so on), related to the image of mobility (physical or mental work, the presence and nature of loads, their nature, intensity, duration...) factors of a psychological nature - temperament (excitable, fast or, on the contrary, slow, phlegmatic), character (irritable, conflictual or, on the contrary, flexible), attitude to health, your appearance, etc.).

What is the interaction between these factors? Look! The person has had enough sleep, his mood is rather good and he needs much less food. And you can tell the fat person all you want about the diet, what he can and can’t do, but if he doesn’t get enough sleep, following any diet will be painful for him. After all, with food he will “treat himself” from depression associated with lack of sleep.

One moves a lot, plays sports, and he likes it. The other moves even more, spends even more time on training and his training is much more intense. But he doesn't like it at all. He is forced to force himself, to overcome. And it seems that we already understand why he struggles and struggles every day, but cannot lose weight - a constant background bad mood, anxiety, despair, breakdowns...

Now, without even for a moment forgetting about complex nature we will try to carry out the interaction of factors related to nutrition, physical activity and the psycho-emotional background of a person comparative analysis thin And full of people. Maybe we'll find something?

The role of nutrition and food in weight loss

The eating behavior of people has been studied quite thoroughly. So far, science tells us that thin and fat people eat about the same things in approximately the same quantities. And there is not a single convincing fact that fat people eat more. Gluttonous and small-fed ones are found equally often, both among those and among them.

However, the very formulation of the question, do they eat full more than thin, seems to me methodologically incorrect. Full even if they eat no more than thin people, they clearly eat more than they need, given their tendency to be overweight! Otherwise, we will not explain in any way why they have this excess weight, and we will not understand how they can get rid of it. The main thing here is not to rush to conclusions, not to rush to accusations of gluttony. The so-called positive energy balance in people prone to obesity may not occur every day, but only in short periods of life, and not only (and not so much) due to overeating, but also due to lack of energy expenditure.

Conventionally, we can say that full people are either too gluttonous for their given energy expenditure (maybe even relatively large), or they spend too little energy for a given (sometimes very moderate) food consumption.

How to fix the situation? So far, two exits are being looked at. The first, for the gluttonous, is to get used to eating little, to become a little eater. The second, more suitable for fat little ones, is to get used to moving more.

But how can you determine what type of nutrition you are?

I suggest the following - for one to two weeks we carefully keep a food diary. Then we calculate the calorie and fat content of the daily diet, and at the same time note the frequency of meals and the difference in calorie content between individual meals.

If it turns out that the calorie content of your diet is on average more than 2800-30002, the fat content exceeds 50 grams per day, you eat less than 3 times a day, your diet contains meals (say, dinner) that account for more than half of the daily calorie content, for You are characterized by so-called food excesses, when for several days under stress or under the influence of reasons unknown to you, you consume an unnatural amount of food, then you need to spend more effort on correcting your diet.

How to reduce its calorie content? It is better to approach this issue without fanaticism. Remember slim The people we strive to become, most often do not go on any diets and do not exhaust themselves with prohibitions. So we shouldn't. It will be enough to make meals more frequent, reduce portion sizes, redistribute foods so that there are more low-fat foods than fatty ones, treat treats wisely, at least try to eat them after meals, and not instead...

If the calorie content of your diet does not exceed 2000 - 2200 kcal, you do not particularly abuse fatty foods, eat at least 4 times a day, and food excesses are not particularly typical for you, then you should not particularly worry about your nutrition. Most likely, the matter is not in relative overeating, but in some lack of physical activity.

Of course, some principles of rationalization of nutrition will not hurt you, but you should not especially nightmare yourself with diets - this is not your case. The most common reaction of your body to a half-starvation diet will not be weight loss, but an even deeper suppression of energy expenditure.

If the prevailing tendency cannot be identified, then correction must be carried out in both directions - both activating mobility and learning to eat little.

Physical activity and weight loss

Now let's talk about how to increase your motor activity. I would advise everyone to get active. Especially when you consider that nutrition and mobility are related in a rather bizarre way.

For example, under conditions of physical inactivity, food consumption increases. This can be confirmed by a phenomenon known to many - on weekends, the calorie content of our diet is on average 20-25% more than on weekdays.

But excessive activity, the so-called high-intensity training, which leaves behind a long trail of fatigue, also contributes to overeating.

It turns out that moderate-intensity exercises are optimal for losing weight and maintaining weight - walking, recreational walking. After such exercises, muscle tone increases, and, therefore, the consumption of nutrients, including fat, increases.

What healthy walking helps you lose weight much better than intense running, are now being confirmed more and more scientific research. And this is good: we will walk, especially since it is much more pleasant than running.

But I would like to draw your attention to the following circumstance: I have often noticed that thin people, unlike fat, seem to be such fidgets. They move and make a lot of small movements. They will stand up, sit down, stand up again, rearrange something on the table, adjust it... And even when they sit, they are also in motion: they gesticulate animatedly, sway, they have an active posture, they don’t spread out in the chair, their face is filled with facial expressions...

Of course, such “groovy” people can be found among full, but, it seems to me, still less often than among thin. But we don’t say that the overweight people are all couch potatoes. In our case, we are not talking about laziness, but about an imbalance between consumed and expended energy. A person can be short-lived but still spend energy very sparingly. If only he could become such a fidget! But how, how?!

I assure you, it is not difficult - in the arsenal of each of us there is a complete set of all behavioral programs characteristic of people - from the quiet “quieter than water, lower than the grass” to the fire-breathing dragon “just touch it!” It’s just that in our daily lives we use a very limited set of programs.

So, feel free to turn on your “fidget.” Sit with your back straight, maintain tension, rock back and forth or side to side, shake your head, move your arms. Do this whenever you remember that you should do it. Of course, at first it will be unusual and awkward, but gradually you will get used to it.

I recommend the following as exercises. Surely you have a girlfriend, a kind of fidget. Wonderful! Chat with her, visit her, take her to the cinema or to shopping mall. And while she goes about her business, try to copy her posture, gestures, and repeat movements. This is probably how, or something like this, the artist gets used to his new role. Speaking of actors, try playing a role for a few days, say Julia Roberts or Yulia Rutberg. But these are very lively, active and slender people!

Some of my patients were helped to rebuild their motor image by a technique that can roughly be called “Live by dancing!” They imagined that nearby there was music suitable for a fast dance, say rock and roll, and they seemed to be listening to this music dancing. And indeed, at the same time, their gait changed, it became more springy, their posture changed, and their tone increased.

Finally, the psycho-emotional sphere of a person and weight loss

No one disputes the fact that the anxiety we feel can prompt us to consume more tasty foods in order to calm down. Indeed, treats are comforting. And since these are mainly excess fatty and excess fatty foods, it becomes clear that the more anxiety, the greater the likelihood of being overweight.

However, according to science, overeating during anxiety is not typical for all people. There are also those who, under the same conditions, on the contrary, eat less, but move more, fuss, run from corner to corner. As we say, they can’t find a place for themselves.

And we can hear a story about how a girl changed jobs and ended up in such a quarrelsome team that she ate and ate due to constant stress, and gained 10 kilograms in a year. And then another girl will tell us that, having found herself in the same conditions, she completely lost her appetite and lost the same 10 kilograms from her worries. What I mean is that the point is not in the nature of the conflict that generates anxiety, but in the nature of the response. Under the same conditions, some eat more, others eat less.

But if you have problems with weight and also overeat when anxious (even if not every time), or, which is also important, you feel increased anxiety when you try to “go on” a diet, you need to take action. Which? Or worry less or use “sedatives” not related to food. Or somehow combine the first and second. Regarding the first, the most effective advice looks like this.

If you are haunted by conflicts, if anxiety and depression interfere with your life, it’s time to work with a psychologist. Mental pain is, in principle, not much different from toothache. Both of them spoil your mood and prevent you from sleeping. But for some reason, if something happens to our teeth, we don’t run to a friend and tell her for hours how painful it is and how bad we feel. Because we know that with a toothache you need to go to the dentist. But when we experience mental pain, instead of turning to a specialist, we start calling our friends and complaining about those around us: how callous and heartless they are, how they don’t love us, don’t appreciate us, but only offend and frustrate us.

And naturally, we should remember that not only food protects from stress, but also nice bath, a walk and a good night's sleep. Try doing tonic exercises or dancing when you're nervous! You will see - the anxiety has decreased. Why? Because the brain is saturated with nerve impulses from working muscles, from moving joints. These impulses increased tone, improved mood, and gave rise to more pleasant thoughts.

These are the tips we got. We agree that they are not yet in the mainstream. More often than not, to lose weight, people figure out what they can and cannot eat, and how long (and at what intensity) they should exercise. However, for most, all these diets and workouts do not help. So let's try to get closer in nutrition and lifestyle to those we are trying to be like.

Some of us will become more moderate in our eating, others will be more active and fussy, others will learn “non-food” techniques for getting rid of stress, and others will gradually gain a little from both nutrition and mobility. In any case, it seems to me that they will benefit from this much more than from newfangled diets and grueling workouts.

So, we continue to understand the problems that plague overweight women in family relationships. It often happens that the once happy mother of the family becomes the weak link. And all because she feels insecure and ugly, especially when she catches her husband’s interested gaze addressed to another girl. Let's think about why a woman develops an inferiority complex?

1. Public opinion says that beautiful woman- This is a thin woman. Looking at the overly slender models rattling their bones on the catwalk, you involuntarily begin to doubt your own attractiveness. Although many male fashion designers are different gay, which explains their love for broad shoulders, skinny butts and size zero breasts. Don't forget this the next time you watch a fashion show.
2. For overweight women, it is much more difficult to choose clothes that would look harmonious on a plump figure. As a rule, numerous blouses and dresses treacherously emphasize every fold on the body. It's definitely frustrating.
3. But what makes you even more upset is the sight of your own body without clothes. This is where you can’t convince yourself that bones don’t keep you warm, or “but there’s something to hold on to.” Practice shows that they stick mainly to slender beauties.
4. Health problems also do not inspire optimism. Excessive obesity automatically leads to shortness of breath and disruption of the cardiovascular system.
5. The final point in matters of the formation and growth of complexes is put by the people themselves, who from time immemorial have been distinguished by cruelty. Make a remark to a woman who occupied 1.5 seats on public transport; tell the customer that “the company does not sew such parachute dresses”; to ask how old the “grandmother” of a grown-up son is - our society is happy to come up with new taunts for obese women.

But not all overweight ladies need psychological support. We present you with a series of questions. If you agree with most of the statements, then there is a problem and it needs to be treated.

1. You “eat up” stress and any unpleasant situations.
2. Your obesity is a consequence of a change in your lifestyle (moving, marriage, childbirth).
3. You dislike thin people, unwittingly implying that they are ill-wishers.
4. You often lost weight, but when you lost it, you gained the extra pounds again.
5. You don’t like unfamiliar companies and try to be as inconspicuous as possible in such an environment.

If you answered yes to half of the questions, then follow our further publications, and we will help you get rid of psychological problem and live a new, full life without looking at the readings of the bathroom scales.

Fat shaming is, in essence, bullying people who are overweight (or simply overweight): fat shamers constantly remind overweight people of their weight, publicly accuse them of not wanting to lose weight and openly insult them, calling them “fatty”, “fat pigs” and “piles of fat”. " Moreover, the objects of ridicule and insults are most often women, not men. This is a serious problem. IN modern world Fat shaming has reached such proportions that in response, the “Body Positive” movement emerged, the main goal of which is to encourage people to accept other people’s appearance as it is. But, alas, this idea has not yet found a response in our society. Let's find out why.

“Fat is ugly, I don’t want to look at it.”

Not really. Fat is not ugly in itself, fat is considered ugly now. At the same time, everyone knows that this was not always the case: few people have not seen figurines of Paleolithic Venuses or reproductions of paintings by High Renaissance masters. Our personal criteria of beautiful and ugly are not personal at all, they are based on society's ideas about beauty, and a beautiful body has been a thin body for many decades. It was either simply thin (from Twiggy to “heroin chic”), or athletic (from supermodels of the 90s to modern fit girls), but it was not fat. But times are changing: plus-size models began to appear on the catwalks, plus-size actresses began to be invited to lead roles, but society is still not ready to accept this. Why?

Because we began to confuse ideal pictures with real life. There is too much visual information around us - information that is not real, made up: pictures perfectly smoothed in photo editors, films with special effects. We see beautiful things very often, so often that some have decided that they have the right not to see what they consider ugly. “Be fat, but don’t show your photos to anyone, we hate to see it.” And some people find it unpleasant to see fat people in tight or open clothes: “Ugh, cover yourself.” But why, exactly? Why not then prohibit people with malocclusion from talking and laughing? And people with crooked or wide noses should wear medical masks - thin, straight noses are in fashion.

Popular

But no, only excess weight is a reason to openly insult people and demand that they not “stick out their fat.” Because…

"Fat people are just lazy"

Lazy and weak-willed people, unable to “just pull yourself together and lose weight.” Having attributed the sins of laziness and gluttony to people with great weight, society went further. Fat people are considered stupid and face discrimination in education and career: if you're not stupid, why can't you figure out how to lose weight? Being overweight is also associated with poor hygiene: since a fat woman is too lazy to go to the gym, then she is probably too lazy to wash. Thus, society stigmatizes people with large weights and puts a stigma on them. And this seems to give indulgence to fat shamers: they don’t just insult and humiliate people, they expose the “terrible” vices of fat people, which means they allegedly commit good deed. Who, if not them, will point out to these fatheads that they are living wrong?

And this problem is not only the problem of excess weight. This is a problem of a society that creates artificial frameworks so that there is a reason to kick those who do not fit into them. And women are prime candidates for positions outside the frame. Because “a woman should.” She must be beautiful, she must take care of herself and her figure - first of all. A typical patriarchy, in which you cannot be a worthless commodity, otherwise you will become a pariah.

“Obesity is unhealthy, these people are sick!”

A frankly hypocritical statement: no one, except neophytes of a healthy lifestyle, condemns people who are not passionate about physical education. Nobody worries about how often strangers do fluorography. Nobody wants to know how smokers and alcoholics harm their health - until they invade someone else's space with their stinking smoke and drunken brawls. No one is interested in how long ago your neighbor took a blood test. staircase and what is the condition of his blood vessels and joints. But for some reason everyone is interested in the vessels and joints of obese people. Why on earth, it would seem? Everyone takes care of their own health, who cares about other people's hemorrhoids?

The point is very simple: this is not a question of health, it is a question of power. Thin people love to tell fat people exactly how they need to eat to lose weight, how to take treatment to lose weight, how to move to lose weight. The very fact of excess weight in an overweight person seems to turn any thin person into a strict teacher Maryivanna: “Now I, fatty, will teach you to live correctly, and you will listen and obey. Come here, you pigs, I’ll tell you the truth.” Thus, any person who is unable to achieve success in his chosen field of activity has the opportunity to amuse his sense of self-importance, to assert himself at the expense of another: I am thin - that means I am more successful than a fat man, smarter and generally better. I have the role of teacher and mentor. And the more aggressive the fat shamer, the higher the likelihood that small size clothes are his only achievement in life. It is likely that it is simply genetic.

Another important point- accusing fat people of promoting an unhealthy lifestyle: “Our children are watching this! They may think it’s okay to be fat!” Children are generally a universal shield; they can cover anything. Including our own reluctance to educate these very children in any way. Because it's a habit to healthy image life as a norm is brought up by personal parental example. But doing exercises in the morning with children is too hard. It’s easier to stigmatize fat people. True, some overweight people are still children, and it’s a sin to bully children. But you can persecute their parents who allowed this to happen. “Yes, that’s right, it’s their fault, not ours at all,” that’s exactly what fat shamers think.

“It’s your own fault, how could you let yourself go like that!”

In general, the feeling of guilt for weight as such is imposed on people with a lot of weight by default. The only question is the degree of this guilt. There are those who are not very guilty - these are those who have gained weight due to health problems. There has long been a fake circulating on the Internet that there are supposedly only 5% of such people. This is absolutely not true, but this is an excellent reason to stigmatize everyone who is overweight in general: you are simply overfed and it is your own fault! This is typical victim blaming. In fact, everyone understands that humiliating other people for your own pleasure is not good. But if you make these people guilty, then it seems possible. After all, they themselves chose this path for themselves, they voluntarily grew fat, which means they must be prepared for the role of outcasts. He who does not want to be humiliated does not eat in three throats. another indulgence: it was not I who was cruel, it was me who provoked them, they themselves wanted it.

The other side of this coin is hypocritical pity. At the expense of a fat person, you can always be kind: I’ll tell you how bad it is to be fat, and I’ll immediately become good and caring kind person. Thank me! Who else will open your eyes to how you have let yourself down?!

“Fat people have no right to happiness”

And this is where fat shaming comes into its own. ugly face exclusively to us, women. Because an overweight man has the right to happiness, but a woman does not. At the same time, both camps will attack it. And if men with their valuable opinion on the subject, “I wouldn’t fool you!” can be ignored, then women cannot be ignored. Because this is a question of hierarchy in a patriarchal society: you are fat, and I am not, which means my status is higher. It would seem, well, be happy, because the more fat women there are, the less competition for status males, who naturally prefer thin ones. Why bully losers, they are not your competitors?

Everything is very simple, let's return to point 1: beautiful is what society has agreed to consider beautiful. If you don’t poison fat people, tomorrow, God forbid, they might even be considered beautiful. And this means that all the benefits due to beauties will go to them, and not to you. Because benefits are provided by status males.

The second point is the idea that happiness must be earned, preferably through hard work and severe restrictions. Years of working in the gym and sitting on chicken breast with buckwheat - and for what? So that some fat woman who has been chewing cakes all her life gets the same piece of happiness? Why on earth? Let him achieve it first!

But the point here is not that only fat people supposedly do not have the right to happiness. The fact is that women do not have the right to happiness. Not for any happiness other than the one that society has recognized as the most correct: be thin and beautiful, attract the attention of men, grab the right one for yourself and never, never get fat or get older.

If you think about it, living in this paradigm is a great misfortune. For all of us.

03/2019

ATTENTION There are contraindications,
be sure to consult a specialist

Fat like me

Leslie Lampert
Ladies' Home Journal, May 1993

I lived one week of my life like a fat woman. This week was truly terrible. Every day of this week I suffered from the arrogant contempt of others. Thin people never experience this. If you've ever laughed at a fat person - or you're overweight yourself - then you should read this story.

In one morning I gained 70 kg in weight and my life changed radically. My husband began to look at me differently, my children were discouraged, my friends pitied me, strangers expressed their contempt. Small joys, for example, going shopping, going out somewhere with the family, going to a party - turned into great torment. The very thought of having to do something, for example, go grocery shopping, or go to the video cassette store, put me in a terrible mood. But most importantly, I had a feeling of anger. This feeling came to me because this week (while I was wearing a “fat suit” that made me look like a woman weighing about 130 kg) I realized that our society hates obese people, we have a prejudice against them that is in many ways consistent with racism and religious intolerance. In a country that prides itself on caring for the disabled and the homeless, fat people remain a target for cultural abuse.

For many, obesity symbolizes our inability to control ourselves in terms of our own health. Fat people are considered smelly, dirty, lazy losers (who use their large layer of fat as a shield to protect themselves from insults and contemptuous attacks). In addition, the issue of personal space plays a large role in the development of prejudiced attitudes towards them. Many people believe that fat people unfairly borrow too much large territory on the bus, in the cinema, even in the aisles of stores. Based on my experience as an allegedly fat person, it seems to me that we are much more tolerant of slender rude people than we are of respectable but overweight fellow citizens.

We are a society that idolizes thinness and fears fat figures. I am no exception. After I gave birth to three children, said goodbye to my 30th birthday, the law of gravity affected me, and I gained about 10 kg, which I could not calmly look at. Anyone who knows me can well imagine my struggle with excess weight through various diets, when my weight either decreased or increased again. However, this did not prepare me at all for the disdainful attitude that people with clinically significant obesity (that is, being 20% ​​above ideal weight) are subjected to in our country.

When actress Goldie Hawn was added an extra hundred pounds in the movie Death Becomes Her, I thought: what does it really mean to be that big? How would I feel at that weight? This is how my experiment was born.

Every morning this week I put on a special "fat suit" that was made for me by special effects artist Richard Tautkus from New York (who works with many film studios and Broadway shows). This costume allowed me to enter a world where I was either ignored or looked upon as some kind of spectacle. So here's my diary:

Friday

10 a.m. I take a taxi from the editors of Woman's House magazine in Manhattan and go to Richard Totkus's studio on Long Island. Richard and his assistants, Jim and Stephen, are going to work on my new look. For some reason I'm nervous, especially when I read in the newspapers about formerly fat people (all of whom had lost a lot of weight after gastric bypass surgery) who said they would rather go blind, deaf, or lose a leg than become fat again. Is everything really that terrible?

Even the authors of the fat suit themselves could hardly believe that the suddenly bloated creature in front of them was me. The suit, made from air conditioning filter material, was surprisingly light, but the inside of the suit was very hot and I sweat a lot. I was brought to large mirror at full height. I'm just shocked. I look very natural. Too natural!

When I look at myself in the mirror, I feel bad. “You’re not bad for such a fat girl, pretty,” one of the assistants reassures me. I'm not laughing.

12 a.m. This is my first time taking a taxi in a fat suit. The driver seemed to chuckle at me. Or did I just imagine it? It took me longer than usual to get into the car. Is the driver in a hurry? I arrive at the photo studio and have difficulty getting out of the car. Did I say something funny? The driver openly laughs at me.

8 pm. I show my husband and children my before and after photos of the suit. My husband immediately reconsiders his desire to go out to lunch with me in my disguise. "I'm sad that you're fat," he says. “I won’t feel comfortable with people staring at you and laughing at you.” The children say in unison: “You don’t need to pick us up from school like this.”

We're talking about discrimination against fat people. My 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, says, "It's not that I don't like fat people, I just don't want to have a serious conversation about it." Nine-year-old Amanda said in an indifferent voice: “You're scaring me.” Alex, my seven-year-old son, laughs nervously and tries on a suit.

11 p.m. I'm trying to sleep in my own body. The husband snores quietly. I'm scared of his reaction to me, fat. So far, he hasn't made any negative comments about my body in our 12 years of marriage. I felt terrible when I saw his face when he looked at photos of me in a fat suit.

Monday

7 a.m.

I put on a suit and take the train into the city. No one sits next to me. I feel extremely awkward. People look at me for a long time, expressing obvious disapproval, then look at the newspaper. Two women went so far as to openly look at me and whisper. I take up one and a half seats, and of course I’m embarrassed. On the other hand, I'm outraged. How dare these people judge me based solely on my size?

8 a.m. In the office everyone wants to hear my impressions and see what I look like. One editor noticed that in a fat suit my movements seemed more aggressive to him. One employee asked how I would feel if I encountered my ex-boyfriend. Another thought I was depressed. Yes, I'm depressed, and besides that, I'm really hungry.

1 p.m. I went out for lunch with two colleagues at a restaurant in the city. I feel clearly not okay because everyone is staring and grinning at me. The helpful waiter moved the chair further away from the table so I could sit down. As I tried to squeeze into a chair with cramped armrests, my embarrassment was clearly noticed by everyone present, and now they carefully avert their gaze.

Well, okay, I may be fat, but I am a thinking creature. I'm willing to bet that among you restaurant patrons there are drug addicts, thieves, people who cheat on their spouses, bad parents. It would be good if your shortcomings were as clearly visible to you as the non-standard size of my body (by the way, many doctors consider this a genetic problem, and not a weakness of will). We refuse dessert and leave.

17.30. I'm driving from the train station in the car. I stop at a red light. A car with two teenagers stops next to me. The guy in the passenger seat looks at me and puffs out his cheeks. Then he starts laughing.

18.30 I pick up the children from school. We are going to eat at a cafe. The children tell me to walk along the road separately from them.

I order two fried chicken, potatoes, vegetables, gravy, corn and six mini brownies. Some kids in the restaurant say "That fat woman" about me. The adults giggle along with them.

When the person at the cash register punches my order, he asks how many people I'm going to feed. I answer indignantly: “Six. What?” He says if he had known, he could have offered a cheaper family meal. I wonder if he's laughing at me or not?

Tuesday

10 a.m. On the way to Bloomingdale, I stop at Haagen-Dazs for ice cream. I order two scoops of chocolate chip ice cream. I watch as the teenager standing behind me judges my size. The desire to say something in my defense boils within me. When I was walking home and eating ice cream in a cup, I met a well-dressed man who looked at me and shook his head disapprovingly, and when he passed by, he began to laugh loudly.

Walking around Bloomingdale is not easy. First of all, I had a hard time getting through the revolving door, and when I was inside, I saw that everyone was looking at me. Interestingly, I was not ignored in the conventional sense. Two perfume sellers just pounced on me, offering me the latest perfume. One man behind the counter asked me if I wanted a complete makeover.

I squeezed into the elevator. The two women began to giggle. I asked the salesperson in the sports section to help me choose clothes. He politely sent me to the "big girl" section.

On the way home, I bought ten donuts. I ate one on the train. Why do people hate to see how fat man eating? I don't pay attention to the frowns. I want to eat.

Wednesday

10 a.m. I came for a consultation at a beauty salon near my home. I tell the stylist, who is as thin as a sliver, that I want to change my appearance. She gently explains to me that I need a fuller hairstyle to balance out the fullness of my figure. I take no offence. She was just being honest. She didn't hurt me. We talked about the difficulties of dieting. We became friends.

One o'clock. I have an appointment with friends at a restaurant in the suburbs. They are eager to see mine new look and hear my story about this project. I feel depressed and don't want to go anywhere. I'm already tired of constantly defending myself. Friends joked that if you sat next to me, you would feel like a skeleton. I was glad when another plump woman entered the restaurant and sat down at the next table. She ordered a salad. Me too.

2.30 p.m. I'm at the grocery store. Everyone looks in my cart to see what the fat woman is buying. Two women were angry that they couldn't squeeze past me in the canned food aisle. I apologized and left. I hate the candy department, but I promised to buy something for the children. I took the package of chocolates and looked around to see if anyone was looking at me. In the cart, I covered this bag with other purchases. I feel like a criminal.

4pm. I become paranoid about how people react to me. I decided to discuss this issue with one overweight woman. It turns out she has the same emotions. "I can't stand comments about what I eat anymore," says Denise Rubin, a 32-year-old lawyer. Her weight is about 100 kg. "I'm tired of the injustice. I'm valued less than I deserve just because I'm bigger than others. When will we finally understand that the word 'fat' is an adjective, not a noun?"

I listen to her with sympathy, but I don’t know what to answer.

Thursday

Elizabeth told the school about my experiment, and the teacher asked me to come to school and tell the students about my experience. My daughter is no longer embarrassed when her friends see me. We have all changed this week. We willingly tell everyone about my experiment in order to explain to people the injustice of the existing attitude towards fat people. The kids in the class - especially those who know me - laugh at first, and then start asking questions faster than I can answer. What I feel? What is people's attitude towards me? What does it mean to be fat?

2 pm. I'm going into town by car to finish some work at the office. Yes, I’m ready to admit that driving a car with such weight is not an easy task. In order to sit comfortably, I had to move the seat as far back as possible. In this position I can barely reach the pedals.

19.30. I'm having lunch at a trendy hangout in town with Richard, the designer of my fat suit. We had a plan to meet in the hotel lobby nearby so that I wouldn’t have to go to the restaurant alone. Richard is late, I'm alone, wandering around the hall, as if in a shop window, and everyone is looking at me. Richard finally appears at 7:45 p.m. We kiss: “Hello!” We go arm in arm to the restaurant. I feel safe.

The nightmare begins. There is a sea of ​​beautiful people at the bar. There are so many people that I can barely take off my coat. From behind I hear a whisper addressed to Richard: “What a handsome man!” When our turn comes, I tell the woman manager that we have arrived. She pretends she doesn't hear me. Richard himself tells her our names, and then she escorts us to the table.

We asked for a table in the front. We are seated at a table in the back. Two women in their thirties barely hide their horror as I squeeze between two tables. Glasses of water shake when I accidentally hit tables. Richard and I order drinks and I take bread from the basket on the table. The two women stared at me. I order a salad with goat cheese, pasta with... cream sauce. They giggle. The rest of the dinner continued in the same spirit. Richard and I look at the dessert menu, ignoring these women.

I apologize and go to the toilet. In the toilet I take off my fat suit and put on regular clothes. I know I'm crazy, but I'm sick of it all. These two women were simply stunned when they saw me again. Richard told me that when I was in the toilet, they asked him: “What are you doing here with this fat pig?” He replied: "This is my girlfriend." They were indignant: “Yes, this is simply impossible! In this case, you are probably a male prostitute.” My blood is boiling. Richard tells them about the project. They start to get angry at me. Imagine, they are angry with me! They quickly pay the bill and disappear.

Richard and I drink coffee and leave. The same men who had previously looked at me contemptuously see me off with flirting glances.

Friday

16:00 pm. The children and I are going to the store to buy clothes for a trip to the south. During the purchase process, I heard “Wow!” twice, received many disdainful glances and once heard a nasty chuckle from stranger. But now I don't care what people think anymore. Perhaps it’s because the project is coming to an end, or maybe I’ve just come to terms with people’s attitude towards me, a fat woman. I still feel the daily pricks from those around me, but the desire for revenge has almost disappeared. I'm just exhausted.

19.30 I go to dinner with my husband (no longer in the fat suit). I feel sad and not at all happy about my sudden weight loss. Instead, I feel a sense of shame for the culture of my society, for how much pain we cause to people who do not fit into our ideas of ideal. I think about how I can instill confidence in fat people. That they need to feel their fullness. And that I need to muster all my willpower and refuse dessert.