missmisandry:

I’ve always been chubby. Always.

When I was about seven,  I started getting these episodes where my heart would race and I would get light headed and even faint. My mom would call the pediatrician and he’d tell us to come in, but by the time we got there my heart had slowed down and, according to him, he had no way to check what it was. 

He advised my mom to put me on a healthier diet and make me exercise more because it was probably my weight, even though  I wasn’t that much overweight and I practiced softball for an hour a day.

So my mom did as he said and I didn’t really lose any weight. Also, the episodes continued to happen. They always ended before we could get to the doctor’s office. The doctor never ordered any kind of tests on my heart, though he did test my thyroid and scold my mom for apparently not trying hard enough to get me to lose weight.

This went on for five years. I’d be laying in bed and suddenly my heart would start beating so hard, my shirt would move. I’d stand up out of the bathtub and black out, causing me to fall out of the tub. I’d be playing softball or in gym class or just playing with my friends and suddenly I’d get light headed or my heart would race.

There would be several fruitless calls or visits to my doctor, who would insist that it was complications due to my weight and they would continue until I was a normal size. My mom was scolded. I was body shamed. I had blood drawn twice a year to test my thyroid. And yet the episodes continued.

Then, the week of my 12th birthday—also, the week I started my very first period— I didn’t want to go to school because the day before, a girl who had seen me in the bathroom had told everybody that I had started my period. In 6th grade, being chubby with frizzy hair and huge teeth, that was pretty much a social death sentence and I was mocked mercilessly for it.

So the next morning I woke up and begged my mom not to let me go to school. I cried and begged and she still insisted I go. So I went to change when suddenly, I felt an attack hit and I blacked out and fell, knocking things off of my desk. My mother heard the noise and found me dazed on the floor. I told her I could feel my heart beating hard again. You could see my shirt moving over my chest from  how hard and fast my heart was beating.

My mom loaded me up in the car and took me to the pediatrician. This time, my heart continued to race and I remained light headed. They had to bring out a wheel chair to get me into the doctors office because I was too dizzy and weak to walk.

Once there, I was ushered into an examination room and I just laid down on the table. I couldn’t even sit up. They took my blood pressure and of course it was high, but they took it as a sign that my mother was feeding me salty, fatty foods instead of fruits and vegetables. they made me wait on the table for like two hours until an EKG machine was available in the office. I fell asleep for like half an hour because I was EXHAUSTED. Eventually, they sent us to the ER.

At the ER, they ushered me into a small little room with an EKG machine. They hooked it up and like fifteen seconds later, the nurse flipped shit. She called a “code blue” and about fifteen nurses rushed into this tiny room and then they raced me to another part of the ER. Didn’t tell my mom what was going on, just left her there and took off with me in the bed. They hooked me up to a ton of IVs and monitors and gave me medication to slow my heart that caused me to vomit everywhere.

Then they did a bunch of x-rays and EKG tests and kept me overnight. They found out that I had WPW, which is a tiny hole in the walls of the chambers of the heart, which caused my heart to beat so rapidly. They explained to my parents that this hadn’t happened as an effect of diet or habit, but that I had been born with this hole.

They also told her that me playing softball and being active with this condition was incredibly dangerous, because this is the condition that causes athletes to die on the field for seemingly no reason. The heart starts beating fast through exertion, the signals that cause the heart to beat get all scrambled and the heart beats so fast that it just gives out.

And the reason this particular attack had lasted so long was because it had come dangerously close to causing my heart to give out, which would have killed me. I ended up having to have heart surgery,  something that should have been done 5 years earlier when I first started having the attacks.

But, because I was overweight, my doctor was more concerned with thinning me down than providing me with the treatment I needed to live a healthy life.

youknownothingjimkirk:

thisisthinprivilege:

nbcbiggestloser:

Jillian is really pushing the contestants to dig deep this season.

Actually, you want to abuse fat people because it’s good TV. 

The Biggest Loser isn’t “healthy.” It’s a staged horror show. 

You brainwash your contestants into thinking they’re “so lucky” to be there. That they should be grateful to be forced to work out while severely injured, and if they complain to working out with bad knees and torn muscles, even if their doctor is saying, ‘she shouldn’t work out,’ you’ll edit footage to make it look like the contestant’s just a ‘lazy fatty who doesn’t want to do what’s best for her.’ 

You profit on the fat hate and discrimination that already exists in the culture, and you work to perpetuate that. As long as you keep viewers believing that fat people are lazy, broken, and stupid, you can frame yourself as the good guy who’s reforming them away from their ‘bad behaviors.’ 

You encourage the development of eating disorders, which have the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder.

You put your contestants in mortal danger for ratings, and when they or their doctors try to do what they need to do to protect their LIVES, you edit the footage to make them look like they’re rejecting this grand ‘gift of health’ that you’re offering them.

In 100 years (hopefully sooner) humanity will look back on the Biggest Loser as the barbaric torture-game it is. Your producers should be in jail. No one can sign their bodily autonomy away. All it takes is a few contestants who are willing to speak out, and you’re going to get a huge cultural lashback. You can’t plug that many leaks. And just wait until your trainers and ‘program’ put someone into cardiac arrest. How are you going to spin that? Are you going to blame it on that person — “Oh, we tried to save them, but we were too late, all those years of obesity finally killed them!” 

You immoral fucks at NBC — producers and trainers participating in this torture scam — are the subhumans. Not fat people.

-ArteToLife

boom roasted

the-exercist:

thisisthinprivilege:

I don’t agree with anyone saying that thin =/= fit. There is a very good reason there are no fat athletes. I guarantee no Olympian participating in an athletic sport of any kind cares more about winning than personal image. So they do what’s best to be the best. Which leads to them being more fit and therefore not fat. Being able to do what the average human can do is not “fit”.

(mod note: OOPS EXCEPT FOR FAT OLYMPIANS.

Holley Mangold

Sarah Robles)

Oscar Brayson and Ricardo Blas Jr!

Leisel Jones!

God on Earth, Reese Hoffa!

Chiara Rosa!

Jillian Camera-Williams!

Vanessa Zamboti!

And there are so many more. Olympians, every last one of them, and in better shape than I am. 

ladydrace:

So, I made this fat rant video, and today I am getting some truly spectacular comments.

This guy first tells me that it’s simply in humans’ genes to be dickheads to fat people, because “they disgust us”. I really wanted to say something to that, but in the end I could only laugh. Jesus.

Then when he realizes that I’m basically sitting here crying with laughter, he comes back with “laughter makes you fat!”

Not helping, dude…

Ah, the ever interesting discussion school of “make shit up to support my argument”. Let me count the ways the person in question is out on a boat without sails or rudder.

1) “other people act like that because you disgust us. It’s in our DNA and trying to change that is like trying to change the trajectory of the Halley comet.”

Wrong, very wrong. My greatgrandma used to be left at home when their family went to parties, because she was too skinny; her more curvy sister got to go along, because she was “pretty”. The whole fat = ugly thing is just a thing made up by society and it’s changed a lot over the course of history. Read a book.

2) “Laughter makes you fat”.

Seriously? How can you in any way possible think this could be true?

3) “If you had to compete with me for survival, i’d outrun you and hunt you like a wild pig, and while i’m skinning you alive to preserve the quality of the leather you can shout about me being judgemental all you want. Let’s see what good will it do to you. “

O_o …yeah, whoever this person is, they clearly need to seek help for their irrational hatered towards fat people. Fat people aren’t digusting, but people who want to skin other humans alive are.

Also, just being able to run fast doesn’t guarantee you hunting skills. You know who run fast? Rabbits. You learn to make some weapons and shelter, and then you can come talking about survival; until then, I’m just going to imagine you trying to gnaw on ladydrace’s arm, before she easily flings you off into a river.

therapeuticmetaphor:

fat-grrrl-activism:

★ this is a nice video about how you can react to fat shaming. i like how it focuses on empowerment (although being confident is not easy in a fatshaming world, so it’s also perfectly fine if you have other strategies to deal with fat hate.)

★ in dem englischen video geht es um schlagfertige antworten auf beleidigungen im alltag inklusive einer guten portion empowerment. selbstbewusstsein ist cool, aber da jede*r von uns anders mit normierenden situationen umgeht, sind auch andere reaktionen, die sich für dich gut anfühlen, cool.

This is brilliant and helpful. Also, the woman in the video is GORGEOUS.  

My favorite line: “Are you pregnant?” - “No, but the night is young!” 

I also really appreciated the interaction with the little kids, because I never know what to say when a child says something negative about my body. Either the kid is really young and just making a judgementless observation, or they’re repeating something they’ve heard from adults. I loved her response in the video because it doesn’t shame the child and it teaches as an important lesson. 

I approve of this video! Mocking people for any part of them, be it weight, sexuality, and so on. The general acceptance of mocking people for their weight is a horrible thing and I wish people who choose to comment on other people’s size would wake up and realize what douchebags they all sound like.