So you may have noticed that, asides from a couple of recent event posts, I've been 'absent' for a few months. Being a student, I went home for the summer and worked full-time; consequently I neither had the time nor energy to blog, network or anything of the sort. It does make me wonder what I will do when I finish my studies and if I will give blogging the commitment it both needs and deserves when I return to full-time, permanent employment...but I'm back, for now.
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Images © Big Fat Betty | You may be wondering what this is all about...well, over the summer I decided that I needed to make some big changes in my life, and subsequently decided to embark on a journey of improving my health and wellbeing. This, I quickly realised, is somewhat tied to weight loss; whether I want it to or not, making positive changes to my lifestyle is inevitably going to result in losing weight. This presented me with a dilemma, how can I purposely lose weight and yet still portray body confidence and embrace the fat activist community that I have become a part of? (Answers on a postcard - or a comment would suffice!)
I started to be concerned with the perceptions of my weight loss and healthy eating regime, and although I have had positive conversations with one or two close friends in relation to this matter there is still a little 'niggle' somewhere in the back of my mind. I'm hoping this post will help with that. I'm not looking for reassurance per se, but in some way reassuring myself by being open. I am following a well known 'diet plan' of sorts, though for me I view it as making healthy choices and considering the balance of this with my intake of...not so healthy choices. I wasn't terribly unhealthy previously, but seldom cooked from scratch and ate very little fruit or vegetables.
I've been very conscious of the mixed views of 'dieting' and, although I've been proud of my weight loss, I haven't shared it with many people because of this. I'm comfortable with being proud of it because it is not a case of being unhappy with my body or wanting to be 'thin', but knowing that by eating healthily my body is not storing the fat (substance) that it doesn't need which could potentially cause (or be the cause of) other health problems. At my 'starting' weight I was borderline diabetic and had (and still have) undiagnosed/treated sleep and fatigue issues which are blamed on my weight.
I know I will always be fat (descriptor) and I wouldn't want to be any other way, but that doesn't mean that I have to stay at an unhealthy weight.
This will probably seem like common sense and somewhat stating the obvious to the majority of readers, but there are some to whom it won't, and that's one of the reasons I'm writing this. I feel as of late that I am being forced to fit some sort of social norm of being fat which irritates me to no end, having escaped the battle of having to fit into other social norms and choosing instead to follow the path of body positivity, I resent being faced with yet another mould in to which I do not fit (quite literally in some aspects!).
I'll be writing more on the social norms of fat later on...
Anyway, people were bound to notice at some point (and some already have) so here it is, out in the open. I'm fat and healthy (or healthier, at least!), get over it. Over and out.
Images © Big Fat Betty | You may be wondering what this is all about...well, over the summer I decided that I needed to make some big changes in my life, and subsequently decided to embark on a journey of improving my health and wellbeing. This, I quickly realised, is somewhat tied to weight loss; whether I want it to or not, making positive changes to my lifestyle is inevitably going to result in losing weight. This presented me with a dilemma, how can I purposely lose weight and yet still portray body confidence and embrace the fat activist community that I have become a part of? (Answers on a postcard - or a comment would suffice!)
I started to be concerned with the perceptions of my weight loss and healthy eating regime, and although I have had positive conversations with one or two close friends in relation to this matter there is still a little 'niggle' somewhere in the back of my mind. I'm hoping this post will help with that. I'm not looking for reassurance per se, but in some way reassuring myself by being open. I am following a well known 'diet plan' of sorts, though for me I view it as making healthy choices and considering the balance of this with my intake of...not so healthy choices. I wasn't terribly unhealthy previously, but seldom cooked from scratch and ate very little fruit or vegetables.
I've been very conscious of the mixed views of 'dieting' and, although I've been proud of my weight loss, I haven't shared it with many people because of this. I'm comfortable with being proud of it because it is not a case of being unhappy with my body or wanting to be 'thin', but knowing that by eating healthily my body is not storing the fat (substance) that it doesn't need which could potentially cause (or be the cause of) other health problems. At my 'starting' weight I was borderline diabetic and had (and still have) undiagnosed/treated sleep and fatigue issues which are blamed on my weight.
I know I will always be fat (descriptor) and I wouldn't want to be any other way, but that doesn't mean that I have to stay at an unhealthy weight.
This will probably seem like common sense and somewhat stating the obvious to the majority of readers, but there are some to whom it won't, and that's one of the reasons I'm writing this. I feel as of late that I am being forced to fit some sort of social norm of being fat which irritates me to no end, having escaped the battle of having to fit into other social norms and choosing instead to follow the path of body positivity, I resent being faced with yet another mould in to which I do not fit (quite literally in some aspects!).
I'll be writing more on the social norms of fat later on...
Anyway, people were bound to notice at some point (and some already have) so here it is, out in the open. I'm fat and healthy (or healthier, at least!), get over it. Over and out.