Tag: Weight

Categories
Health

Can We Please Stop Talking About Weight Loss During a Pandemic?


“Due to coronavirus, my summer body will be postponed until 2021.” Usually this kind of garbage only hits my feed when Jameela Jamil is ranting about #teatox. I’ve worked hard to unfollow any content that’s generally annoying or makes me feel like shit. But since the government issued its guidelines to shelter in place, there’s been a particularly insidious undertone to the posts popping up that I just can’t shake.

Despite the fact we’re going through an unprecedented health crisis, the prevailing message on social media right now is that we’re somehow supposed to be “making the most” of our time spent indoors. Write that novel! Organize your closet! Bake bread! Get quarantine fit!

Now, I don’t blame anyone for taking up a new hobby in order to distract themselves. You can only have so many conversations with your cat until you begin to feel completely deranged. But that last one—the idea that we should be using all this “extra time” to lose weight, or at least not gain any—moves beyond feeling productive and gives into a societal fear I thought we were moving past: Getting “fat.”

The collective fat panic I’ve seen as I scroll through social media is, frankly, appalling. “So will the producers of 600-Pound Life just find me or…” reads one meme that’s surfaced more times than I can count. A photo of Barbie next to a heavier “Carbie” (get it? She ate too much during quarantine? LOL!) has more than 120,000 likes on @girlwithnojob.

But it’s not just the obviously offensive fat jokes that meme accounts and out-of-touch influencers are posting. What’s more shocking are the dozens of frantic weight gain comments—almost all masked in sarcasm or wry self-deprecation—I’ve seen close acquaintances post. These are smart women—the ones who usually rally against diet-talk and fatphobia—that are sharing photos of cookies with captions like, “Going to have to buy a size up after this” or “Looks like I won’t be wearing jeans ever again.” Eating the pasta is what you’re worried about? OK.

A small sampling of the memes going around on social media right now.

Instagram

It’s not just within my circle of friends either. An alarming amount of people, it appears, are publicly broadcasting their fear that this time indoors will cause them to gain weight.

“I’m seeing so many memes that show before COVID-19 body and after COVID-19 body, or jokes comparing ‘COVID-15’ to the Freshman 15,” says Elizabeth Denton, an L.A.-based writer. “At first I chuckled, but then I thought about what that means. Whoever posted that thinks ‘fat’ bodies are funny or something to be ridiculed.”





Source link

Categories
Health

Shrill Season 2 Review: Weight Is Barely a Topic—and That's a Good Thing


Coincidence is a good word to describe the dynamic between narrative and body type in Shrill‘s second season. Annie’s weight is only really alluded to twice, and both times the storylines are nuanced. In one, Annie takes her boyfriend, Ryan (Luka Jones), to meet her parents for the first time; instead of the night centering on that, though, it becomes about her mom’s obsession with food. Annie tries to steer the conversation toward other topics, but her mom keeps on—which, in turn, makes Annie second-guess all the self-confidence she’s built.

“I think that is how a lot of fat people experience the world in a lot of ways,” Bryant says. “Where someone else’s experience of food or their own body or their own clothes comes to reflect on you in some way.”

She cites a wedding toast she once heard as an example: “In the toast they were saying, ‘Oh, this night we felt so thin and that was so good!’ I remember feeling like they were saying, in their minds, the best night of their life was the night they looked nothing like me.”

Bryant’s real-life anecdote, in a nutshell, reveals the main issue in Shrill‘s next chapter: How do fat people who love their bodies go about navigating a world that constantly tells them they’re wrong? “I think that is part of what we were trying to circle around [in season two],” Bryant says. “Annie feels better about herself, but everyone around her is still stuck in that dark mentality that she was in at the beginning of season one.”

Shrill isn’t presenting an idealized world. It doesn’t gloss over the fact that living life as a fat person can be difficult, regardless of self-confidence. The season, in subtle ways, explores the push and pull of being body-positive in a culture that actively works against plus-size women (and men).



Source link

Categories
Health

Weight Stigma Is Real—It Almost Caused Doctors to Miss My Cancer


My five-month-old baby girl was shrieking into my left ear when the oncologist sat down. Our friends had come with me to watch her in the lobby during my appointment, but she was having none of it. So we all piled into the exam room and heard him say the words: “You have bone marrow cancer.”

Everyone was staring at me. The baby was screaming hysterically. All I could think was, Let’s get on with it; this kid needs a bottle.

The first trimester of my pregnancy had been pretty uneventful, but during my second trimester, my blood pressure started creeping up. On a visit to the hospital to have it monitored, doctors found elevated levels of protein in my urine—often a sign of preeclampsia. But something didn’t quite add up. My high-risk OB told me she didn’t like how much protein they’d found. She wanted me on bedrest at home for the duration of the pregnancy. No going to work, no major chores, and constant monitoring. Ideally, she said, the protein in my urine would go away within a few days of having the baby, which is how preeclampsia usually resolves itself, but we had to make sure. She recommended I visit a kidney specialist as soon as my pregnancy was over.

On bedrest, I did a lot of puzzles and pretended I was going to knit a blanket. I was induced at 37 weeks (i.e., eight and a half months), and the baby arrived, no problem. She was tiny, strong, and stunning. We named her Rose. A few days later, the high-risk OB called to remind me to follow up with a kidney doctor. “To check on that protein,” she said.

We were getting used to a new normal at home. The dog was licking Rose nonstop, I was regularly peeing my pants before I could make it to the bathroom, and nobody was sleeping. At some point amidst the chaos, I logged onto my insurance website and found a kidney doctor who was covered by my plan. After lab work, I sat down with my doctor to go over my test results. The protein was still there.

We sat for a moment. “Can you start dieting and exercising?” she asked. “Try to lose some weight.”

Huh? I’d been through dozens of medical appointments throughout nine months of pregnancy, and no one had mentioned my weight. But I didn’t want to argue with her—she was the expert. “Okay, yeah. I can do that,” I said.

“Take the baby out for walks, eat less salt, nothing from a box, eat plants,” she instructed. She didn’t have to explain it to me. As a 38-year-old woman, I was painfully well-versed in how to lose weight. From the media to my own family, the world constantly encouraged me to stay obsessed with my size, and like literally every other American woman I knew, I’d spent a lifetime consumed by how I looked, and haunted by the number on the scale. It was inescapable.

I didn’t want to sound defensive, so I didn’t tell her that I already knew all about weight loss, or that I’d lost 115 pounds with diet and exercise at an earlier time in my life when my body image had been an emotional burden for me. I didn’t tell her that I lost that weight for vanity and to please my family, not for health reasons. I didn’t tell her my weight had never actually been a health issue for me, because I didn’t think she’d believe me. And I didn’t tell her that the idea of losing weight to fix this current problem sounded like a bunch of bullshit.

I didn’t tell her any of that because that’s not the kind of thing a doctor prescribing weight loss wants to hear. So I just played along. “And if I lose weight, the protein will go away?” I asked. “Yes. Lose weight, the protein will go away. Come back four months from now.”



Source link

Categories
Health

Hunter McGrady Is Calling BS on The Pressure Put on Brides to Lose Weight


Hunter McGrady made history in 2017 as the curviest model—a size 16—to ever appear in Sports’ Illustrated’s swimsuit issue, amplifying her platform for body positivity and inclusive sizing. Ahead of her wedding, she opened up to Glamour about the pressure put on brides to lose weight, why she thinks that’s bullshit, and how she focused on feeling confident and excited—not thinner.

When I was younger, probably 18 or 19, I used to watch shows like Say Yes to the Dress, and Four Weddings and hear women say over and over “Well, this is great, but I’m planning on dropping about 30lbs.” I remember thinking, When did your wedding become your weight loss journey? Society is always trying to dictate what a woman’s body should look like and that’s especially true when women become brides. We’re told we have to lose weight, that our arms have to look a certain way, that we need to change everything about ourselves before we walk down the aisle.

Planning your wedding is supposed to be so much fun, but the emphasis placed on weight makes it tainted, stressful. I made a vow with myself and my fiancé that I would not get stressed over this wedding—so I called bullshit on the idea that I should lose weight for my wedding.

When I started dress shopping, one of the first questions sales people asked me was if I was planning on staying this size for the wedding. It made my heart sink. I walked in feeling confident and dreaming of a dress that was romantic and whimsical and suddenly all I could think was, Wait a second, should I lose weight? I even had salespeople say that they could cover certain areas to hide my hips or my tummy. Are you kidding? I want to accentuate my curves! Here’s another thing: we need to start educating the people that work in retail about how to speak to customers, because if they want to help, they need to do it the correct way.

Not every woman is ashamed of their body. We need to stop pushing that narrative.

The sizes on wedding dresses don’t help. In the wedding world, the number is actually higher than the sizes of your street clothes. I’m a size 16/18, but in a wedding dress I’m a 22/24, which is wild to me. As women, we’re constantly pressured to fit into a certain size. There’s so much pressure placed on the number inside your dress and we’ve been told our entire lives that larger numbers are bad—society has brainwashed us to believe that being anything larger in a number-size is worth freaking out about it, and that’s bullshit.



Source link

Categories
Health

A Bride Got Dragged for Wanting to Replace Her Maid of Honor Because of Baby Weight


There have been plenty of stories about controlling brides this year—tales relayed back to forums by wedding party members and wedding guests who need a place to vent (and gather some support, or answers). Some highlights? The bride who kicked a guest of her wedding…for wearing a patterned dress she thought was too white. Or, there was the bride who fired her bridesmaid over email. Granted, weddings can be a super-stressful time, especially if the bride-to-be is carrying an outsized share of planning it, but civility is still alive in 2019! Still, we don’t usually hear from the brides themselves—that is, until one bride reportedly posted in a mom’s forum (the post is now deleted) and, according to Fox News, asked if she could fire her maid of honor because of her baby weight.

“So my friend who is my maid of honor in my wedding recently gave birth and she hasn’t lost the baby weight,” the anonymous bride started her post, according to Fox News. Apparently it had been three weeks since her friend had the baby, and “she still looks pregnant.”

It was another three weeks until the bride’s wedding, she reportedly wrote, but she wasn’t “confident” her maid of honor would lose the weight by then.

“She may not even fit her dress. I refuse to have it altered again,” she continued. “It was already altered multiple times for her and she said she’d fit into it.” The bride then asks forum users if it would be “wrong” to find another maid of honor, adding she had “someone in mind” already.

“She said she has a back up dress and I’m saying hell no to that,” the bride finished. “I’m not fat shaming but come on. My wedding is only one day and I’m not having it ruined by her or her baby weight.”

Naturally, people had a lot of thoughts about the bride’s ask.

“Does she not realize what the body goes through in order to hold another human? It takes much longer than 3 weeks…” one pointed out, according to Fox.

“This bride is an idiot. You don’t just drop postpartum weight within a few weeks of giving birth. Sometimes it takes months,” another reportedly wrote.

“What kind of shallow person is this? If your friend is a good enough friend to be your [maid of honor], then YOU ought to be a good enough friend to care more about them than how they look in a picture,” another commenter said, per Fox.

It does take months to lose the weight from pregnancy—extra pounds are part of what’s involved in creating and delivering a new life. Although it sometimes seems like celebrities are shedding points in a matter of weeks, everyone’s bodies are different, and the level of access they have to trainers, nutritionists, and doctors is quite a bit more than most of us mortals enjoy. In the meantime, a general reminder: Body-shaming new moms (or anyone else, for that matter) is never a good wedding-day look.



Source link

Categories
Health

I Got a “Mommy Makeover”—But It Wasn’t About Losing Weight


The term “Mommy Makeover” is misleading; there is no single surgery that reconstructs the body of a mother. Instead, with the help of a board-certified plastic surgeon, a woman can customize a series of operations specific to her body. For many women who have breastfed, a Mommy Makeover will mean breast augmentation rather than breast reduction—a less expensive and less invasive surgery. But a Mommy Makeover nearly always includes a tummy tuck, a surgical procedure designed to eliminate the loose skin and excess fat apparent after childbirth.

40 weeks pregnant

pTwo weeks postpartump

Two weeks postpartum

pThree weeks postsurgeryp

Three weeks post-surgery

As anyone still reeling from a cesarean can confirm, abdominal surgery forces a slow, painful recovery—and a tummy tuck is abdominal surgery at its very worst. Part of the procedure involves tightening the abdominal wall by suturing together the musculature. For the first few weeks after my surgery, I could neither lie supine nor stand up straight. My sore body existed in the limbo of the permanent forward-leaning crouch. In the shower, I sat on a library stool, unable to stand fully.

For one week, there were drains and plastic tubes running through my lymphatic system and routed outward into egg-shaped containers I had to empty of blood and fluid daily. There were daily, self-administered shots of Lovenox, a blood-thinner used to prevent post-surgical patients from developing deadly blood clots.

There were compression garments, required for anyone undergoing large-scale skin or fat removal. Patients should expect to wear them for up to six weeks, day and night. For the first few weeks, I couldn’t pick up my children because heavy lifting can impair the healing of the breast and stomach tissue; and the anchor-shaped suture line at the base of my breast is particularly prone to pressure. As someone accustomed to caring for my children and cooking their meals, the concession of forced relaxation felt like imprisonment. I wanted to have my house clean. I wanted quality dinner with my children at night. Most of all, I wanted to pick my toddler up when he came to me, arms outstretched. If you can’t comfort your child when he comes to you in need, are you doing your best as a parent? I hoped that, in the broader sense, the answer to that question was yes.

Like all plastic surgery, the Mommy Makeover—no matter its iteration—comes at a cost. In my case, insurance covered the majority of my surgery, owing to several medical conditions that required attention (severe muscle separation, an umbilical hernia, large breasts that were coverable under my insurance’s necessity provision). That meant that the expenses for which I was responsible were far less than the average woman’s. I paid for medications out-of-pocket, as well as the negotiated rate ($1,000) for a required hospital stay, the result of severe anemia.

pThe author with her kidsp

The author with her kids

But for most women, the cost of a Mommy Makeover hovers around $20,000 for outpatient surgery. Many plastic surgeons can help with financing plans, and certain credit cards like Care Credit and Alphaeon, have 6-, 12-, and 24-month offers at zero percent APR. Still, the surgery is, admittedly, not cheap—and, as is often the case, this brand of empowerment can be prohibitive. Forget, for a moment, the sheer cost, which could easily impoverish a family. Surgery like this, a massive undertaking, requires help in the form of sick leave, childcare assistance, and a partner willing and able to up the ante on domestic duties. Not every household can accommodate these needs; in fact, most cannot.

The hard fought reward? I have reclaimed myself. My weight has not changed (that was never the point), but my body has. The sweatpants that signified my prison are back in the drawer. I’m not consumed with dread when I look in the mirror. Best of all, I can be a fearless, fun mother, which an immeasurable gift. I haven’t started running again yet; most patients aren’t cleared for rigorous exercise until six weeks after surgery. I have dusted off my double-jogger, though, and I hope to take my children, and my new-ish body, out on the pavement again for a 5k in July. The road ahead seems bright.



Source link