Passing the crutch

..to DH, that is, who twisted his knee carrying a heavy box upstairs last week and is now limping badly.
I dug into that umbrella stand by the door I did mention once before and gave him a cane I had in there.
He wanted to know where that came from, and I had to tell him that I had bought it for myself when I had become unable to walk without one due to my weight gain.
Being able to give it to him to use, for the duration of his injury, feels good, because it means I do not use it any more. And it reminds me to be careful not to slide back to that place.

That is, actually, the thing that is difficult for me about the fat acceptance movement.
Namely, that I know from my own dire experience that for every body there is such a thing as being "too fat".

I define that as the point where the size of one´s body interferes with everyday functioning.

If I can´t walk without crutches any more because my muscles and bones refuse to carry my body weight, I am too fat for my body.
If I am unable to perform a proper personal hygiene because I can´t reach around myself because of my fatness any more, I am too fat for my body.
If I am unable to lift myself up from a bed any more, being pinned down by the mass of my own body, I am too fat for my body.

Now, as you can see from these examples, I am not talking about body shape. I am not talking about matching any optical ideal.
I am talking about the things that the body of a non-handicapped person ought to be able to do easily.
Where the breaking point is will be different for everybody. But it is a matter of quality of life to heed it and to stay below it.

Discriminating against anyone because of their body shape is wrong, of course.
And it is good to promote acceptance of the fact that we cannot all be conforming to some cookie-cutter ideal. 

But I think it is as wrong not to encourage everybody to treat their one and unique body like the fantastic  work of Nature´s (you may of course replace that by the deity of your choice) engineering it is.

Besides, some of the side effects of being very fat are cumulative, as in "you won´t notice when you are twenty but you´ll sure wish you had noticed by the time you are forty-five and the joints that used to just creak are beginning to croak from overuse".

It´s something I think about every time I see a picture of one of these proudly self-styled "death fatties".

For one, that´s bad latin. "Morbid" in medical parlance means "having to do with sickness" originally, and is derived not from "mors" for death but from "morbus" for disease or illness, so being morbidly obese means literally being fat to the point of becoming diseased. Doesn´t sound as heroic as the other version, does it?

And it is also, in my opinion, the wrong message to give to anyone who is in danger of gaining fat beyond the point where their bodies will be able to function normally. 

I have been telling myself the same lies about my body for a long time, and only now that my physical abilities are returning, as in being able to ditch that crutch and walk without it, do I realize the extent of what I had been missing out on.
It had become quite natural, unfortunately, to stay at the bottom of a staircase or a hill and tell DH to bring down a picture of what I could have seen from up there.To not even attempt to go to some places because I was afraid I might not have the stamina to do it.
Today, I am able again to climb that hill. And I have to tell you, the vista from up there is a lot better than even the best of DH´s pictures.
And, I am determined to get my body back into a shape that will permit me to do all the things that everyday life demands of me.


Julia