I wasn’t a particularly fat kid, but I was always slightly larger than average. I was heavier, and a little taller, than most of the kids my age (until they caught up with me, height-wise, later on — then I was just heavier.)

And though I’m a naturally pretty strong person (HULK SMASH), and have always had a freakish ability to do sit-ups, I have never been athletically gifted. There are lots of reasons for that, biomechanically and personally, but I’ll just leave it at that to avoid the million-word rant on growing up a flat-footed, bookish girl in contemporary America.

Nevertheless, the memories of my childhood are filled with movement, with gleeful sweat and breathlessness. I was terrified to learn to ride my first bike, but I did it, goddammit, because there is pretty much nothing better than the feeling of being on two wheels, of that flexible, dynamic balance that depends entirely on speed.

Before we were old enough to know better, my girlfriends and I spent large chunks of our adolescence doing insane shit on bicycles. Unfinished construction sites, vacant lots, empty meadows, random kid-created trails through the forest tracing the precipices of ravines that would’ve made our parents shit their pants if they’d known what we were up to — that’s where we spent our time as girls, just average girls, none of us particularly athletic — on mountain bikes in Oregon.

Then there were the summers spent in pools, developing underwater sunburns, learning to hold our breath for a solid two minutes, sinking to the bottom of the pool and screaming to each other in a cataclysm of bubbles. My dad would hide quarters on the bottom of the pool, and this chubby, short-sighted kid would surface dive eight or ten feet to retrieve them, sans glasses or goggles, with absolutely no problem at all.

And then there was the issue of gym class.

It started off well enough, in elementary school, when it was just glorified indoor recess, with floor hockey sticks, pillow-soft dodgeballs, and the occasional “slightly irregular but for-reals” parachute donated for the purpose of making little kids pee themselves with joy — and, once a year, the climbing rope that only one strangely monkeyish kid would ever be able to climb. (Thank you, Mr. Jukkala, for the memories.)

At the end of the school year, we’d have a field day, where everyone ran in goofy obstacle courses and sack races, just for the excellent ridiculous fun of it, and — God’s honest truth — I even once did a charity run when I was ten, because I had two secret weapons: Fleetwood Mac on my dad’s cassette Walkman, and I skipped the entire way. Because I sucked at running even then.

In short, I had a pretty happily active childhood, despite being the unathletic and slightly fat child of two decidedly unathletic and slightly fat parents. Until gym class became a “thing,” that is. A graded, micromanaged academic requirement, starting in junior high — unhappily coinciding with the absolute social, emotional, and physical nadir of human existence. Or at least of mine.

If you want to destroy all the inherent joy in something, slap a grade on it. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Put a grade on your bleary, early-morning coffee-making skills, or set a number of minutes of daily television-watching required to achieve aptitude, or hell, challenge yourself to finish peeing in record time, and watch as the fun (or even the absolute neutrality) of these things is eroded, little by little, until it becomes a chore to drink coffee, watch TV, or take a leak.

Then compare how well you do on those chores compared to your peers, and watch your self-respect begin to circle down that little, demoralizing drain shaped like a “C” — a statistically average mark — written in red ink.

Now, this isn’t something I’ve made up for the benefit of a bunch of lazy icky fatties who want an excuse to feel like they’re not total losers. It’s a phenomenon confirmed by behavioural research — and one of many reasons why I hate school in general, though I’m naturally a good student.

But it’s one thing to destroy the intrinsic joy of doing, say, a set of math problems or memorizing the names of the presidents of the United States — and if a kid has a good enough teacher, or naturally enjoys a subject enough, they might even make it through school without having their spirit crushed in a particular topic.

It is another thing entirely to interfere with a person’s joy in one of the basic requirements of biological life.

When you put a hamster in a cage, you’re preparing to give it a pretty bare-bones existence. And what do you provide it? Food, of course, and definitely water. A place to poop and a place to sleep. And a hamster wheel.

It’s considered cruel to keep a dog tethered to one spot without a place to run, or cooped up in a tiny apartment unless the owner is really dedicated to going on walks. Even my cats, the most indolent creatures ever to occupy the earth, need strings and foam balls and random, crumpled up pieces of paper to bat inconveniently beneath furniture. They sleep, eat, and poop for twenty-three-and-a-half hours of the day…but for the remaining thirty minutes? They are tearing shit up like it is their mission in life.

Animals need movement, and even have an appetite for it, just as they do food and sleep. Also, humans are animals. We need to move. All of us — even those of us who are not physically gifted. But, just as with eating, external pressures and expectations get in the way of our ability to negotiate this very primal urge.

People say we need gym class because OMGCHILDHOODOBESITY!!! People say that this generation of children is hopelessly addicted to screens of every variety, that they will be the first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

People, in short, say a lot of stupid shit.

You want to help fat kids move? Help them enjoy moving. Help all kids to enjoy moving. And how do you do that? Well, I can tell you how you don’t — by throwing a bunch of them together like army recruits to do bootcamp calisthenics, and then give them mostly-arbitrary grades for it.

Just like with eating, helping kids to move well requires a division of responsibility — which, strangely enough, is pretty much what happens when you turn kids loose on a playground: the adults choose when and where and what to make available, and the kids take it from there. They get to decide how much, and whether, and which. And, unless you’re a disgusting misanthrope, you’ll trust the kids to work to their own level, to their own strengths and capacities.

You won’t interfere, you won’t get heavy-handed, you won’t suck all the natural joy out of it. And you’ll leave the red pen in the classroom.

So, I’m working on this thing I like to call my Unified Theory of Kicking Ass. What that means is, I’m reading and learning stuff about normal eating and nutrition and how people change their behaviour.

I have a pretty decent understanding of this stuff already, since I’ve almost finished my nutrition degree, but I’m looking for something more.

Something that will really help people. Something that will totally kick ass.

The thing is, there are a lot of useful theories around. There’s intuitive eating, and eating competence, and demand feeding, and health at every size, and various non-diet approaches to good nutrition. And we’re going to discuss them all on this blog.

They’re based on solid evidence. They work. And a lot of people really, really like the idea of putting them to work in their own lives.

But that can be really, really hard to do.

I know because I went through it myself.

I had a serious Dieting Incident that really messed me up. It took me five years to relearn to eat, and move, and feel normal with my body again.

I’m not perfect by any means, but I’ve reached a place that is, apparently, enviable: I feel comfortable around food.

I don’t think of food as “good” or “bad.” I don’t see my weight as a reflection of my character. I combine what tastes good and what feels good without a lot of thought. I mostly get hungry at regular times, and I mostly eat until I feel just right. My weight is stable, finally.

I’m cool with food. And I’m pretty cool with my body, too.

Five years ago, I literally thought I would never get to this place. I cried just thinking about it. (Yeah, I’m emotional like that.)

But I’m here, and it’s every bit as awesome as I’d hoped. And the reason I’m writing about it is because, after being involved in the Fatosphere, and reading so many discussions about food and intuitive eating and whatnot, I know there are tons of people out there who feel like I did — that normal eating will never happen for them.

Well, I think it can. And I’m here to help.

Normal eating is what we’re born to do — and I truly believe we can relearn how to do it, if it’s necessary. (And it is.)

So, you’re here. I’m over the moon you’re here, because I really need your help with this.

I’ll tell you what I figure out along the way. I’ll bounce ideas off you. In return, I hope you’ll give me your suggestions, your thoughts, your stories and your support.

Help me develop this thing, this Unified Theory, and I’ll be your biggest fan. Seriously. How could I not?

And here’s the second thing: people are really goddamn preachy when it comes to taking the stairs. I was at work recently when an older man, likely in his 70s, made the morally reprehensible decision to take the elevator down one floor. And when he exited that elevator, the tidal wave of vitriolic spew that issued forth from my young, elevator-taking companions etched a new high-water mark on the jetty of my astonishment. Because an old man in the hospital had chosen the elevator over the stairs.

And a third thing: not only am I fat, I have a weird heart condition (since I was 15 — before I was fat, for the record.) It’s an apparently non-threatening arrhythmia that occurs randomly, and I went to the cardiologist when I was 18 (and still not fat, again, for the record), but no definitive diagnosis was given. Just that, you know, it hasn’t killed me yet, so that’s good. I was rushed to the ER for it a couple years ago, and again with chest pains a few months ago, which turned out to be a false alarm, but which I had to take seriously because of this weird heart thing.

Fourth thing? I just hate climbing stairs. I’ve had foot injuries, knee injuries, and just a plain lot of weight to haul around, such that, in addition to already taking the stairs daily because I live in a walk-up (with the laundry room in the basement), I am just not real enthused about forcing myself to take additional stairs at every opportunity in some bid for moral superiori — I mean, for the sake of my health.

Last semester, when I decided to walk up three large flights of stairs with my schoolmates to visit a professor, we all got to the top somewhat winded. I thought to myself, “Huh, I feel funny,” but I just caught my breath along with everyone else and carried on. Ten minutes later, I felt a sudden, chill-inducing thunk-thud in my chest. It was the familar feeling of my heart recovering normal rhythm. That’s when I realized — I’d been having a tachycardia episode and hadn’t even felt it (these things normally knock me backward, as though the wind has been punched out of me) and it was, apparently, brought on by climbing the goddamn stairs.

As it is, I have to climb a fair number of obligatory stairs each day. (If you live in a city as inaccessible as Toronto, you’ll understand what I mean by “obligatory stairs.”) Whenever I go home to visit my parents in suburban Oregon, I am amazed at how easy the life is. There’s no hauling 100 lbs of groceries home on foot and then carrying them up the stairs. There’s no sprinting for the subway or streetcar. There are no obligatory stairs to the bathroom in every restaurant. No eternally-broken escalators. No walking to work in 100 F heat/90% humidity, or back home in -20 F/three feet of snow. Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, you simply get into your car, drive somewhere, walk a few feet, and go inside. It’s the most amazing thing in the world, and as much as people complain about how bad being sedentary is for one’s health, I always feel about ten years younger when I’m there. I find myself running on the treadmill, or taking nature walks, or even doing calisthenics because daily life is not kicking my ass into the ground.

The life in downtown Toronto is just plain hard on me, and clearly, the stairs are not helping my heart. So I try to make it at least a little easier on myself by taking an elevator or escalator when convenient. I like to think of this as having compassion for my limitations, though I admit, I am often embarrassed to be standing by the elevator — even though I am registered as disabled at my school, and have to wear special orthotics in my shoes and blah blah blah. I am still embarrassed because I know what people must be thinking of me — the fat lady taking the elevator instead of the stairs.

In the back of my mind, I always have this episode of Mystery Diagnosis running whenever I’m confronted with too many stairs. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a woman with undiagnosed pulmonary hypertension who, in her chubby adolescence, became reluctant to climb stairs and run and things, because she felt instinctively that it would kill her. Naturally, they blamed this reluctance on her weight, shamed her for being lazy — and then she almost died from increasing her exercise.)

I feel this same reluctance when I have more than two flights of stairs to climb, especially if I’ve got textbooks on me. I feel trapped, pinned in a corner, and in grave danger. My heart simply doesn’t want to do it, and who knows — maybe the body has its own rationale behind making me fat enough to slow down my mobility when it comes to really strenuous pursuits, thereby keeping me safer.

So, when I see these little signs start to pop up around school or work, I inwardly groan. I can’t tell you how many times, aside from the episode mentioned above, I have heard people castigate others for not taking the stairs. I myself was harassed by a janitor as I waited for the elevator at my school (which has a large sign, mostly ignored by the other students, to please reserve its use for disabled students), and I had to calmly explain that it was hard on my injured foot to take the stairs.

I shouldn’t have had to.

With the coming of the signs comes the upping of the intensity of the judgments thrown at people who don’t follow them. Personally, I climb stairs (and a loft ladder) every single day in my apartment, but I must reserve the right to make my own judgment about when to conserve my efforts, when it is better for me, in fact, not to take the stairs. For the girl with pulmonary hypertension, stairs are potentially deadly. For one of my (very young, very fit) professors with knee trouble, taking the elevator just makes sense. But when it comes to public health campaigns of this stripe, there are no exceptions, no grey areas — there is only healthy or unhealthy, fat or fit, elevators or stairs, righteous or lazy. And I don’t like it.

One more reason I dislike this program? They measure the “health benefits” of taking the stairs solely in calories burned, not enjoyment had, or mastery gained, or strength attained. Lastly, there is, of course, no mention made of those who cannot or should not take the stairs — we simply do not exist. Maybe because, in some people’s minds, we’re already as good as dead.

A famous actress was quoted in the newspaper regarding a role that required her to gain weight. Something about the quote struck me as odd. To paraphrase, she said, “Sure, it sounds great to gain weight. You can indulge all your fantasies of endless chocolate, unlimited pasta and garlic bread…but after a while your blood glucose goes crazy, you’re all over the place, and it doesn’t feel good.”

At first blush, the quote makes sense. It’s true; if you’re eating too much for your needs, or a diet nutritionally unbalanced for your needs, it’s not going to feel good — it’s going to feel gross. Fair enough. But the thing that stuck in my craw was the idea of someone even having fantasies about unlimited chocolate and pasta and garlic bread in the first place.

Now, food fantasies probably won’t sound weird to most people, because most people — and forgive me if this sounds mean — live with a slightly eating-disordered ideation about food, thanks to our culture. But in my experience, having these fantasies, and looking forward to any ‘excuse’ to indulge in them, is highly dysfunctional.

The fact is, a person who restricts their food intake, especially due to weight concerns (or the myriad related ‘health concerns’ that are just an attempted sublimation of the desire to lose weight, look better, gain social privilege, etc.) will have food fantasies. As the food restriction gets more severe, the fantasies get wilder, and the food behaviours more erratic. Remember the details from the Ancel Keys study, “The Biology of Human Starvation.” Recall the food compulsions reported among anorectic patients, people who are supposedly ‘not hungry’ (I assure you, they are, and they obsess about food more than they would if they actually ate it.) Think of the hot-fudge-sundae fantasies that most likely drifted through your dreams last time you were on a diet; craving pasta and potatoes during Atkins’; longing for cream sauces and marbled steaks on Pritikin.

Maybe it’s not enough to do damage, the type of moderate-to-mild food restriction that goes on commonly in the culture, prompting these harmless-sounding, Willy-Wonkaesque food fantasies. Maybe not. But maybe it is.

To divert for a moment, let’s consider the Willy Wonka river-of-chocolate, candy-growing-on-trees fantasy. Who is this designed to appeal to? Children.
Because their food intake is restricted? Well, perhaps in some cases, but I think the larger reason why the Willy Wonka fantasy appeals to children is that children are at their most metabolically active. They are growing; they have huge energy and nutritional requirements by unit body mass, much larger than adults, and in such a state, it’s natural that someone would fantasize about food, crave candy and sugary treats, adore birthday cake and cookies and, well, to do all the funny things with food (and particularly, sweets) that children are renowned for. Much the same goes for pregnant women, who are nourishing a rapidly-growing bundle of cells with their own bodies.

But is it normal for most adults — who should be in a metabolically stable state — to have these types of longings and fantasies and cravings? No. It is a sign that something could be wrong with your food intake and your nutritional status, or even out-of-whack metabolically, hormonally. Maybe nothing severely wrong, not yet, but definitely trending in that direction, and definitely taking away from your quality of life — even if it’s ‘just’ from your emotional well-being. The plain fact is, if you’re not getting enough to eat, it will eventually catch up with you. You will feel tired, hungry, or irritable. You will be distracted by food fantasies and maybe by the restrictive food rules you impose on yourself. You won’t be able to enjoy social meals as much. Your quality of life will suffer, and your performance in all areas of your life will suffer.

Any why infantilize yourself like that? Why subvert your real goals, your real life, to dream about food all day long? One of the first areas where a child learns to exert control is in eating. It is an area fundamental to the awakening of human autonomy. We are big boys and girls now; we get to choose what to eat, and how much of it.

In my experience, when you do two things — 1) stop food restriction, and mentally grant yourself permission to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, however much you want — and 2) pay attention to how eating makes your body react, so that you can balance short-term pleasure with longer-term well-being, so that you are nourished both physically and mentally — when you do these things (and they are not easy, not as simple as they sound, and can take years of effort), the food fantasies will end.

Because do you find yourself fantasizing about breathing air and drinking water on a daily basis? No? Enough said.

P.S. To bring this full-circle: when looking up “The Biology of Human Starvation” on Google Books, the first ad on the side of the results page said “How celebs stay thin.” Terribly apt.