Body Positivity

It's Different Over The Hill

The body positive movement is both wonderful and terrifying to me at the same time. I love seeing so many people, mostly women, loving their bodies and not allowing the number on a scale to define their identity as beautiful, valuable, and healthy. We gave power to the unrealistic body ideals the media held up for us for far too long and this is the inevitable swing of the pendulum to the far opposite direction.

While I celebrate this shift and do believe that many health care providers and people in general automatically regard overweight bodies as unhealthy and overweight people as fundamentally flawed, I cannot help but be concerned about the other side of the conversation. Our hearts do have to work harder to pump blood through a larger body. It is harder for our lungs to work hauling around an extra hundred pounds. We do store estrogen in our fat cells, so that when we have extra fat cells, our menopause gets screwed up and predisposes us to cancer because our endometrium does not get the message to stop producing a period because of all the stored estrogen.

How we eat does affect important aspects of health. Transfats are bad for us. Of that, there is no doubt. Frankenfoods cause damage in our bodies. Sugar is wildly addictive and has horrible effects on our hormonal function as well as our physical bodies. Most of the meat available in stores is deeply saturated with chemicals and additives designed to make the animal fatter to produce more meat and tastier meat, which then makes us fatter and tastier.

If we ate healthy foods in larger quantities and gained weight, I would not be nearly as concerned as when we eat food that is essentially poison to us and pretend that it does not matter. One thing I notice is that most of the people who are involved in the body positive movement are significantly younger than I am. Our next generations are the ones who change the world. They are the influencers, and I get that. They see people from my generation as ignorant boomers who caused them to inherit a horribly fucked up world forced them to think fast to try and fix it.

When I see these beautiful young people working so hard to master their self-confidence, I am excited for them and I know they are leagues beyond what many people in my generation felt at their age, but the other side is their total disregard of what we feel at our age. When I was 30, my knees did not hurt and I could move fluidly and easily. When I was 40, my mortality was more of a concept than a looming reality. When I was 40, I could scurry up a flight of stairs without holding a rail or getting winded.

I am blessed that I am healthier than most 62-year-old women and I am healthier than most 257 pound women. My body is forgiving (to a point) and tolerates a great deal from me. I can still walk a few miles without being sore the next day. I can sleep through the nights most nights.

My blood pressure wants to creep up, but is still in the normal bracket unless I am stressed and then it gets a little jumpy. I do not, however, feel as amazing physically as I did 30 years ago. Being obese at 60 is waaaaaay different than being obese at 30 and had I known then what I know now, I really do believe I would have made different choices.

That also prompts the question of what the next 30 years will feel like. How long can I coast the odds like this? If I break a leg bone, how much harder will it be to rehabilitate because of how heavy I am? For that matter, if I fall down, how many people will it take to pick me up and carry me to safety?

Those are the real motivators behind my weight loss attempts. It does not matter how pretty I feel or how much I love my body if my body causes me to be immobile.

So yes, dear, beautiful young ones, love your body… every juicy, precious inch of it. Revel in your curves. Don’t let anyone treat you as if - or worse, tell you that - you are not worthy of love and adoration and respect.

But when you start to have to employ heroic measures to push yourself up off the floor or when you need a C-Pap machine to breathe at night or when your body you love so much gives you that first indication of, “Hey, Houston, we’re in trouble here,” show it respect and listen. By the time it starts screaming, you’ve already made some career decisions that are tough to roll back.