The Fat-Acceptance Roller Derby Workout Challenge

The Fat-Acceptance Roller Derby Workout Challenge

1. Love your body. 

2. Eat food that nourishes your body. 

Once you stop treating food like the enemy, you can listen to your body and it will tell you what it really wants and needs. Make all food legal. Eat because food gives you life, and celebrate the amazing flavours the world has to offer you. 

3. Move your body because it feels good. 

Exercise increases your endorphines. It empowers you. It strengthens you. Don't go to the gym because you "should" or participate in roller derby to lose even one pound. Do it because it's fun, and because derby is the best sport in the universe. 

4. Be confident as a derby skater.

Aim to increase your speed, agility and strength in roller derby - regardless of your weight! Know that your weight has no bearing on your skills as a skater. That's not to say that you don't have to modify your training to accommodate your body - tall skaters and short skaters train differently, just as fat and thin ones will have to. But don't ever let your fat keep you from skating. 

5. Learn to see fat as beautiful. 

Find a person you consider frighteningly fat, and learn to see them differently. And I don't mean that you should discover their "great personality." I mean that you should actually learn to see those rolls and mountains of flesh as lovely, soft mounds of beautiful person. Imagine having sexy time with a big old fatty. Practice this. You will find your attitudes change. 

6. Don't weigh yourself. Ever again.

The number on the scale is completely arbitrary in regards to how "fat" you feel. Countless articles and studies will tell you that BMI is bullshit. Get rid of your scale. 

7. Don't participate in diet and fat shaming conversation.

Talking about how much you hate your body with other people isn't cool, and listening to other people tell you how fat their thighs are is just dumb. If you hear someone talking negatively about a fat person, tell them to shut their pie holes. The same goes for skinny gals - don't complain about your tiny boobs and hips, and don't point out girls who look anorexic. Their body is none of your business. 

I encourage you to write Facebook notes or blogs telling me how your Fat-Acceptance Roller Derby Workout Challenge goes in 2011! 

Read about what inspired this post here.