Comments for Problem Chylde

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by Joel

Joel — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:46:44 +0000

Glad to hear that you have got some exercises to do at home, that’s what i do now as i can’t get to the gym that often. It seems to work for me but the hard thing is motivating myself to do them, when i go to the gym it is a lot easier to stay consistent. Everyone is different in terms of how easy it is to lose weight, i have been exercising regularly now for two years and i’m much fitter than i use to be but still pretty much the same weight. It ain’t easy.

Comment on Danger by Olivia Bovia

Olivia Bovia — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:32:58 +0000

Hey, you used to write wonderful, but the last few posts have been kinda boring… I miss your tremendous writings. Past few posts are just a little bit out of track! come on!

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by problem chylde

problem chylde — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 23:07:58 +0000

I’m sorry it took so long for these comments to show up. For some reason, all my comments go to moderation, and when I don’t log in for a million and eleven days, they can’t make their way to my posts.

Thanks everyone for the supportive comments; I’m checking out some of the links now. And Tim, I don’t mean to paint the whole fitness professional industry as callous. To the gym employee’s credit, she has put me in touch with a personal trainer to give me exercises I can do at home when I cannot make it to the gym. We’re working together to match up our schedules. So there was a good outcome to a not-so-good meeting.

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by martina

martina — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:23:31 +0000

I had a similar experience at a gym recently. A trainer made me feel ashamed and guilty about my weight, body fat percentage, lack of recent physical activity, etc. Everything I said to defend myself was “just an excuse”. Like you, I did not feel motivated when I left. So I quit, and I don’t have a gym membership now, for the first time in my adult life. It feels really really good.

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by Tim Haft

Tim Haft — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 18:24:53 +0000

So when you say “shouldn’t people in fitness be aware of these obstacles” it might be better to say “shouldn’t the people at your gym be aware of these obstacles” because you don’t want to play the game of painting a whole category of people with one brush when you haven’t actually interacted with them. I’ve worked in fitness for 14 years and while I do regularly criticize the industry, I’m well aware that there are many sensitive, kind, loving fitness professionals (like me!) who do get it. Would it be nice if there were more of them? Absolutely. It would also be nice if there were more doctors with a bedside manner and more lawyers who weren’t pricks, and more teachers who give a damn about their students. But, ultimately, it is our responsibility as individuals to make the changes that are going to bring us what we want and to do that we need to seek out the people who are going to support us.

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by M

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:54:28 +0000

I have a chapter in the book I’m writing that talks about pretty much precisely this.

Thank you for your eloquent post — you broke it down and I’m wondering if the post shouldn’t be handed out en masse to a fair percentage of folks styling themselves “trainers” in all sorts of gyms these days.

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by Rachael Acks

Rachael Acks — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:46:04 +0000

Fitness absolutely has to be something that you do for yourself. It ain’t easy. Anyone who claims fitness (or losing weight) is easy is lying.

The hardest thing to lose is self-hatred. (I wrote about my own experience here: http://geo-geek.blogspot.com/2012/08/losing-weight-sucks.html It’s a work in progress.)

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by Gillian

Gillian — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 05:55:23 +0000

I think a huge part of the problem is that it’s exponentially easier to stay thin if you were thin to begin with. I have this issue with my mom: she’s always been thin and she’s pretty fanatical about staying that way. She walks every day but apart from that gets very little exercise and she stays thin by eating very little. I eat enough that I’m not hungry and I do a lot of cardio and weights, over the summer it was 2-3 days a week but now I’m ramping it up to 5+ days a week. And she thinks I must be lying about my eating and/or exercise because I’m not losing weight and what I’m doing should be guaranteed to cause weight loss, is what she seems to think.

If she wants to lose about 5lb, she just diets and abuses laxatives for a few days (she sees nothing wrong with this, she laughed when I said that’s what people with bulimia do) and she loses weight. I told her about one time when I had a bad stomach flu and I basically ingested nothing but water for about 5 days. And I did not lose a single pound. She flat-out refused to believe me. Because calories-in-calories-out! She just kept saying “how is that possible” and “that doesn’t make sense” and then she changed the subject.

It drives me nuts. I’m the one with a biochemistry degree but she just refuses to believe me that weight and metabolism are more complicated than she thinks they should be.

I think it’s the same problem with a lot of people who work at gyms, they’ve never been fat so they’re like my mom, they think it should be as easy for you to lose 100 pounds as it is for them to lose 5, just whatever they do to lose the 5, you do for 20x longer and boom, magic weight loss!

It sucks. I’m sorry.

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by Quercki

Quercki — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 16:06:10 +0000

I’m sorry this happened to you. And that it is the usual state of affairs.

It shouldn’t take enormous self-confidence to be able to increase one’s fitness. The ability to tell other people, particularly gym employees, to stop shaming you. To demand that they do the job you are paying them to do. Which is to help you become more fit.

I have become better at dealing with this as I get older. But I wish I didn’t get so much practice at it. The last time I asked a gym employee to modify how she was teaching to include me, she got huffy and told me that another teacher was even more impossible. I firmly pointed out that “I am in your class, so I’m having this discussion with you. What can you do to help me?” She calmed down and came up with something. (She has me work near her so that she can give me individual modifications when I need them.)

Instead of trying to “justify” your lack of results, perhaps you can look at your obstacles and enlist the gym’s help in overcoming some of them? For example, “I haven’t been able to get here as often as I would like because I don’t drive. How can you help with that?” Maybe they have a car-pool system or a transit-buddy system or they should set one up!

Everything you do to get more fit is good. No matter how small. And you start from where you are instead of trying to catch up. Over and over. You are building healthy habits. Shame and guilt don’t work well to do that. Celebrating every positive step works better.

In my experience, another thing to watch out for at the gym is some white man trying to intimidate you off the machines before you are through.

Comment on On Shame, Fitness Consciousness, and What Fat Friendliness Means by tinfoilhattie

tinfoilhattie — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 01:24:23 +0000

THANK YOU for this post. I am constantly astonished by how little these supposed “experts” know about helping people who have a very long fitness journey ahead of us. I’m so sorry the employee at the gym resorted to fat-shaming, and then was shocked – shocked! that you weren’t grateful. Gee, first person ever to have tried ridicule as a motivator: if fat-shaming “worked,” we’d all be in great shape!

The message I see is: “You’re way too fat for public viewing, you lazy fat person! But I can’t be bothered to research anything about people with great fitness challenges ahead! Also? Workout clothes are for people who are already FIT, Fatty! No t-shirt for you!”

Try, just TRY, to go into a sportimg goods store, running store, or the “active wear” department of any department store, and find workout wear above a size 18.

I have even googled “online trainer very fat” and varieties thereof. I get endless variations of “I’ll help you eat less & exercise more! Because you’re too stupid to have ever tried that approach!” So I read fat acceptance and HAES material for help.

Hang in there, and thanks again for this great post.