on fat neutrality
I have always been fat. My youngest memories of spending time with peers have myself being made fun of for being the fattest kid on the swim team or in class. I struggled to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle throughout my youth, hindered by a combination of behavioral meta-preferences, clinical depression, pervasive developmental disorder, and other problems of living. Not until college did I lose much of my bodyweight and slowly approach the "healthy" range for my height, while discovering the obvious joys and subtle miseries that correspond with fat loss. I regained most of my weight I had lost and then some in the years following Covid lockdowns.
On 3 March 2026, I had enough. My total weight was around 430 pounds and after a pair of personal trips surrounding a business trip, I felt exhausted. My personal worth was at a low, and felt my level of body fat was not helping. It was difficult to move around. I missed swing dancing and sitting more comfortably in airplane seats. Over the last 5 months, I've managed to lose about 14% of my body fat while maintaining low but solid numbers on the big five barbell lifts. Little did I expect this recent fat loss to make me feel more empathy for those, like myself, who've never had a conventionally attractive body.
Ironically enough, my constant companion throughout my attempt to lose weight was Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes's Maintenance Phase. Most episodes follow the same format, with either Aubrey or Michael walking the other through some bullshit fad diet or wellness product that has plagued the marketing hell of late stage corporatism. By in large, their analysis is thorough, and it had me come out the other side more sympathetic to my fat self than expected.
I have long been skeptical of the language of self-love, or at least the version put forward by much of the mental health industrial complex. Love is something we reserve for those close to us, a point of human nature I think broadly unavoidable. Loving ourselves when we do things against our professed values, then, seems unjust, though maybe that's my college Randian self speaking. With that said, I arrived at a position somewhere between my previously self-hating anti-fat self and Aubrey's fat positivity: fat neutrality.
Society hates fat people, and maybe that fact warrants activism in the far opposite direction. I, however, am neither an activist nor a politician trying to get fat people healthcare. This is not a post about political tactics. This is how I think about fatness as an adult trying to lose weight. I may write more on this in the future, but below is a cursory review of my position.
- Body fat percentage is not a reflection of moral status, good or bad. Much of a person's shape and propensity to hold fat is down to luck.
- Anti-fat bias is ever present, and unlikely to change, so some fat people may want to make changes to their body, and they should be free to do so.
- Some fat people find life trying to lose body fat so self-depriving and unpleasant that they choose not to, and they should be free to do so. Some people can't lose weight due to other health factors. All people should be treated with the decency we owe any stranger.
- Insulting others into fat loss is always ungentlemanly and likely unhelpful. Such behavior should be looked down upon as clownish and rude.
I hope I can keep body fat off and that my reasons for doing so become less vain over time, but I also hope if I do, I don't stop treating those who can't or choose not to with the decency I wish I was granted.