As an advocate of fat acceptance, one of the most challenging times of the year for me is right around January 1st. Everyone starts talking about losing that last 10 lbs., TV adverts for weight loss are pumped up and your gym is crowded with people punishing themselves for eating too many sweets over the holidays. Even CBC radio isn't a safe haven, with its special reports on lap band surgery and its promos for a new TV show about a village that loses a metric ton of weight.
Disappointingly, even roller derby isn't safe from the New Year's dieting craze. Enter the Roller Derby Workout Challenge. The goal is to get derby girls to be more healthy and in shape, applaudable ideals. There's a DVD you can buy (yeah, figures money is involved, as it is in most diet initiatives) and a group on Facebook. The DVD actually looks kinda fun, and I like working out in my living room. But I was deeply saddened to see the first post on the Facebook group involved a detailed diet plan.
Sigh.
Participants are asked to blog their experiences in Facebook notes, and I clicked on a few and read comments like this one:
To feel better about myself as at the moment i feel like
im falling into a black hole....i cant even go shopping coz i think urgh what is that thing in the mirror.
Yikes. That's not really the kind of female empowerment I expect from derby culture!
I hope to reign in my awful diet ... so I don't feel like a total heiffer on skates!
Terrible!
"That photo makes you look pregnant, are you trying to win by showing fatty photos!"
"I'm not really interested in the prizes, they're skating things, what the hell would I do with roller skates? I just nearly cried when I saw this pic so wanted to remind myself of why I want to do this!"
In response to this heinous garbage, I've decided to make my own Fat Acceptance Roller Derby Workout Challenge for the coming year (see my next post). I know a lot of derby skaters are doing the challenge - A LOT. And I know not all of them are about body shaming. But this is the problem with diet programs: they infer that there is something wrong with you. If the aim is to increase health, a whole new approach is necessary.
Haters, I direct you to this post by Kate Harding.
I'd like to end with a shout out to Knuckle Slamwitch, a skater with Toronto's Rollergettes, who helped me out with a listening ear the other night at our local roller rink. No matter how strong I might seem to others in my fat-acceptance stance, after years of hating my body and feeling ashamed of my fatness, it's easy to slip into those old mindsets once in a while. It was a derby sister who reminded me to love myself, unconditionally, and stay strong. I hope I can do the same for all of you!
Food is awesome, but if you fuel your body with nothin but junk, your performance will be affected, hence "diets"... or maybe we can call them "performance enhancing meal plans" or something less stereotypical of a body hating yo-yo dieting society
ReplyDeleteAlex, I agree - but let me point out that if you don't have animosity with food, your desire to eat garbage is very likely to disappear. This worked for me. I still have favourite foods, but some things, like highly processed foods or buffets, that used to be my go-to's for binge eating, are just disgusting to me now. Once I told myself I was allowed to eat anything I wanted, that no food was more special than another or less horrible than another, and listened to my body, my desires changed. Any time you restrict eating, whether with a healthy food plan or a destructive one, you create that animosity. A food plan is a diet, and a diet can't work. We have to change how we relate to food.
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