I’ve been fat all of my life ever since I can remember and have just turned 16. In the past year I have gone from 250 lbs to 198 lbs. I think that physically I am healthy, I can run a mile in under 10 minutes, go to basketball every day, and on days that I dont go to the gym or play basketball I feel akward.

The problem is that I’m pretty sure I’m depressed, but I dont want to admit it. I’ve lost the weight, not the amount that I want, and had comments about it, but I cant see the change.

I’m stuck and dont know what to do. I’ve been at a weight loss record of 52 for about 3 months and get more and more depressed by the week as the scale doesnt budge. I made the decision to lose the weight not just because I wanted to change my life, but because I wanted to be healthy.

I found this website while google searching “never been kissed,” I figured that maybe if I told the truth to people that I will never come face to face with in person, it could possibly help.

Thanks for your writing!

Here are my suggestions for learning to love and accept yourself for who you are:

1) Take lots of clothed full body pics of yourself and spend some time looking at them. I started doing this when I joined the Fatshionista community on Livejournal about 4 years ago. The folks on Fatshionista like to post “OOTDs” (Outfits Of The Day), in which they pull items from their closet, or things they’ve just bought online, put them together in fabulous outfits, and take pics of themselves wearing them. When I started doing this, taking clothed, full body pics of myself, downloading them on my computer and spending some time looking at them, it helped me become more visible to myself. The more I looked at pics of myself and saw what the camera and the rest of the world sees, the more I began to accept what I was seeing for myself. Becoming more visible to yourself by looking at photographic images of you is one of the best ways I know of to learn to accept yourself. (To describe how I do it, I use my digital camera and a small flexible tripod called a Gorillapod. The Gorillapod attaches to the base of any digi-cam, and then you can flex the Gorillapod legs and pose them or wrap them around a dresser or tall bookcase to get the best camera angle. Then I set my digi-cam on timer, move far enough back from the camera and pose. I do this several times for each outfit I put together, then download them on my computer, look through all the pics and choose the ones that I like the best. These are the pics I save and periodically return to and look at them again. Sometimes I do it just for fun, have a little fashion show of my own, just for myself, and don’t post the pics on Fatshionista. Other times, I post them. But doing this for the past few years has helped me become more visible to myself and more accepting of my body.)

2) The second thing that’s helped me become more accepting of myself is participating in lots of size acceptance communities, particularly photo-oriented ones like Fatshionista, Deathfatties, and the Fatshionista Flickr group. The more pics I see of fat folks wearing great outfits, looking confident in their pics, the more I realize that I’m not alone, that there are other people in the world who are fat like me. Some have different body shapes than mine, and some look more like me (belly-centric, broad-shouldered, big boobs, not much going on in the hips/butt area). Some people share my fashion sense and personal style and others have their own wonderful senses of style. But the more I look at pics of other fat folks out there in the world doing their thing, the more I feel confident about being my own fat self out there in the world.

3) The third thing I’ve done to help with self acceptance is read lots of size positive literature, such as Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby’s book Lessons From the Fat-o-Sphere, Wendy Shanker’s book The Fat Girl’s Guide To Life, and Marilyn Wann’s book Fat?So! I also love reading Marianne Kirby’s blog, The Rotund, and another favorite size positive blog (besides this one!) is Lesley Kinzel’s Two Whole Cakes.

The more you read, learn, look and participate, I can guarantee you’ll begin to accept yourself for who you are. It’s worked for me, so I can speak from personal experience. I won’t tell you that I’ve never had another day when I didn’t have issues with my appearance, that all my negative self-talk has disappeared, that I don’t have issues with my excess adipose tissue (my fat!). But I’ve come to recognize that self acceptance is a journey on which you have good days and bad days, and you’re never going to reach a point where you can accept yourself 100% of the time. My goal is to have more good than bad days, and not beat myself up emotionally when I have a bad day, week or month. My goal is to learn from my experiences and become more accepting and forgiving of myself.

Lastly, I want to address a couple of problematic elements of your post. When you describe your friends and family as “normal sized,” I can see a problem in your rationale. Consider that you’re “normal sized,” too – you are the size that you’re normally supposed to be, so your size is normal for you. There is no “norm,” no “average” when it comes to body size, as much as the popular media, the medical and weight loss industries would like us to believe there is. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, all equally valid and normal for the person who lives in that body. Start telling yourself that you’re “normal,” too: normal sized for you.

And while Drop Dead Diva is a fun, generally lighthearted show with the lovely, talented Brooke Elliot as its star, consider that the premise of the show is not exactly size positive: inside Brooke Elliot’s attorney character Jane is the ‘soul’ of thin model Deb… basically just a rehash of the tired stereotype that “inside every fat woman is a thin woman trying to get out.” Consider this: why can’t the show just be about an intelligent fat attorney and her life? Why does it have to hinge on the premise that her ‘soul’ is that of a thin model/starlet? When I think of my “inner beauty” (which is not something I waste a lot of time considering), I don’t picture a thin model or a thinner version of myself. I see myself as I am now: short, fat, brunette, intelligent, independent, sarcastic, witty, with a unique sense of personal style. There’s no thin girl in me, and there never has been. Self acceptance means you stop looking for that “mystery thin girl” in you, and see yourself just as you are, with all the things you have to offer the world.

I’m not much of a pudding eater, but when I do, I like that two-toned Jell-O stuff, the chocolate and caramel kind, although the chocolate/vanilla kind isn’t bad either. I’ve been known to occasionally consume some rice pudding, too.

My hopes and dreams are being able to one day live on this planet as a fat person and have it be a helluva lot easier than it is today, without the fat hate and fear that seems to consume so much of our society, popular media, medical and weight loss industries. And also to find a community of people of all sizes and shapes who support size acceptance, preferably in my neck of the woods. It gets kind of lonely just talking about size acceptance online and not having folks in my area who I can relate to. …Ah, well. Until then, here I am. I’m a fat woman.

I have been big as long as I can remember and – of course – started many diets in my lifetime. No need to tell you that after all those I’m bigger than ever before.

During the last years I have made quite some progress in accepting myself, unfortunately I am still not completely ok with my ‘fatness’. I have always been a happy girl, just never about my body. But after reading this blog (and also Kate Harding’s post ‘the fantasy of being thin’), I realize that I should be!

This might as well be a ‘confession’ though: I still want to lose some weight. I feel that I ‘need’ to lose some weight to improve my sleeping quality. It was better when I was a bit less heavy. But that is a whole other starting point than ever before.

Reading this blog has already helped me in accepting my body and I plan on keeping that up. I want to stay (not become!) healthy and that is the most important. If that means that I lose some pounds along the way, that’s fine; if not, no problem.

Ok, my post is already longer than I wanted it to be, so I’ll end it here.

Thank you for this amazing blog!

In June of 2007, I weighed over 430 lbs and was told I had stage 4 uterine carcinosarcoma. No one said it out loud but my chances were grim. After 2 surgeries, 5 units of blood, 78 pounds of tumors and organs removed, 27 days of my poor husband sleeping slumped in a reclining chair next to my bed, countless bags of noxious chemicals going into my body, 3 more units of blood for transfusions, years of watching my friends in the chemo room wither and die, after all of the years of fighting June 9, 2011 it’s over…I am cancer-free. Then on June 23 five days before my 35th birthday, my best friend dies of cancer. She leaves behind her amazing husband, a one year old boy and a 9 year old daughter. Her boy will probably not even remember what she looked like. We need to delete cancer.

I am now 315 lbs. Most people would consider that their worst weight but for me it feels almost like it’s where I’m supposed to be.

I led a lot of my life ashamed of my size, wrapped up in untreated depression….I spent years beating myself up for not looking like some ideal everyone says is only thing that can be sexy.

But now I have realized being happy has nothing to do with the number on a scale. Happiness is simply being able to go to the beach with my nieces and nephew and seeing the look on his face when my nephew sees the ocean for the fist time. THAT is happiness…and it don’t matter how big my butt gets I can always smile at that!

Then one day, I found this site when I typed “Fat Girl” on google, unintentionally. Believe it or not, I felt that I’m not alone. I’m proud with all those fat girls who can accept who they are and know how to wear everything without feeling unsatisfied with their bodies. But, I still have to try to accept myself :).

And I hope someday I can be the girl who proud with herself, no matter what. Oh, pudding? Emm… I like all kind of puddings! But yeah, chocolate pudding is number one. Haha.

Keep trying to proud with yourself~!