Fat Week, Day 5: Harmful or Healthy? Thinspo vs. Fitspo

“Thinspo” and “Fitspo” stand for “thinsperation” and “fitsperation.”

Fitspo people focus on being the healthiest they can be while the Thinspo people focus on being the skinniest they can be.

Fitspo people promote exercise and eating right while Thinspo people promote not eating at all (and presumably they haven’t got the energy to exercise).

The images below were taken from Thinspo and Fitspo tumblr blogs. (For those who are not familiar, tumblr.com is a blogging community where people can easily post and share information.)

From what I can tell, all of these blogs are curated by young women who are striving to feel “beautiful” and/or “healthy.” Click on an image to be taken to the associated blog / tumblr account.

Thinspo

Definition from Urban Dictionary: Thinspo is used by people suffering from eating disorders to help keep them inspired. The idea behind thinspo is that it helps motivate and inspire you to lose weight and become or stay thin. Thinspo is usually of photos of skinny or bony celebrities or models. It sometimes takes the forms of celebrities who have lost a great deal of weight. Thinspo can be anything. Book quotes, song lyrics, films…

Source: Skinny Mini Warrior

Source: ED (Eating Disorder) Girl Problems

Source: Black Girl Thinspiration

Source: Skinny Binny or Die

Source: Let’s Just Be Perfect and Thin

Source: Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels

Source: The Pursuit of Pretty

Source: Just Another Teenage Experiment

Source: Unperfect

Source: Fuck Fat Let’s Get Skinny

Fitspo

Definition from Urban Dictionary: Images of active, strong, and fit women that promote proper exercise and diet. May also include images healthy foods much like thinspo (images of dangerously thin women used by people with eating disorders to motivate) but healthier.

Source: Believe to Achieve

Source: My Perfect Skinny Story

Source: My Perfect Skinny Story

Source: Get Skinny With It

Source: Healthy Sexy Bitch

Source: Fuck Fat Be Slim

Source: Skinny Flower

Source: 100 Pounds 100 Days

Source: To Shock Those Who Thought I Couldn’t Do It

Source: My Slim-down Journey :)

Guys Feel It Too

How do males fit in? Do they have an outlet on tumblr? I was curious and did a search, which turned up a Facebook page titled, “Boys with a tumblr are like girls with a penis.” I did, however, find some blogs on tumblr by males and about them being skinny or losing weight. They were from “aspiring models” or gay boys.

The following tumblr is quite sad. It’s a message posted to her son’s account where he had been connecting with others about anorexia.

Source: Starving Boy

Source: The Skinny Boi, Changing Beauty Into Perfection

Source: Boys Need Help Too

The caption for the above image reads, “My goal is to be able to fit into a pair of Abercrombie and Fitch jeans…”

Source: A Boys Thinspiration

Source: A 90 lbs. Boy

Source: A Skinny Man

The Mind-Body (Advertising) Connection

I am fascinated by the people involved in Thinspo and Fitspo and the way they create media. Slogans are written by the people who make the blogs. In some cases the images appear to be made completely from scratch by the author of the blog. Advertising images are reworked to encapsulate an idea rather than a product. This is powerful stuff. It’s as if they are crafting a media campaign to promote the mindset to which they’ve subscribed.

The Thinspo people seem much more obsessed with fetishizing thin, sexy girls than the Fitspo people. Thinspo is about being frail and weak while Fitspo is about being strong in mind and body. Thinspo people are hurt while the Fitspo people are empowered. Oddly enough, both groups are making and sharing media to support and commune around their approach to weight loss, health, and beauty.

If Fitspo is positive and Thinspo is negative, which one do you most identify with? When you see these images, what alienates you the most? Size? Hair? Skin color? Gender? Are you affected or unfazed?

Fat Week, Day 4: I Hate Myself Because I’m Fat & Ugly

Some things you just can’t change.

While surfing the web I came across a blog post titled, “Maude Save Us From the Headless Fatties” in which Melissa McEwan writes about the following two ads.

These were temporary placeholder billboards designed to lure new clients to Interbest Outdoor advertising. They also published these:

It’s obvious that the advertising company is saying, “You don’t want to see fat, hairy people who are the equivalent of a booger from a nose pick. Pay us and we’ll put a photo of someone sexy up here.”

While I consider myself to be good humored, I can’t help but feel rejected when I see these ads because they make me feel like a booger. They remind me of the time I was in a book store here in Portland. In the kids section, I spotted a book about gross stuff. The pages displayed line drawings and featured the science behind things such as boogers, eye gunk, ear wax, poop, pee, and vomit. At the very end of the book—as if for the grand finale—was a drawing of a hairy man. The message was clear: I am gross.

BUT…

I’m not gross. There are some things I can’t change and the hair on my body is one of them. I am not going to spend hours a week shaving so that I can attempt to be fit in like the hairless people in razor blade ads. (See Shave the World.)

Why are we so gullible? The above ads seem to be more the result of people drinking too much soda. Meanwhile, large corporations like Cocoa Cola are using mind numbing ads like the one below.

Don’t fall for it! Don’t believe the hype! Buying their crap isn’t going to make us special. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. The billboards sell us food and drink products that cause the obesity they’re trying to scare us with. It’s a form of brainwashing.

Want to be unique? Want to stand out? Want to be attractive? Stop being sweet! Don’t spend your money on fake fixes and fake health.

Forget the things you can’t change and focus on the things you can.

You can’t alter how the public portrays or perceives you but you can change how you represent and recognize yourself. When you change the story you tell yourself you begin to present that story to the world and those around you will begin to echo it back to you. Try it!

Fat Week, Day 3: Improved Goal Setting for Weight Loss

Mandy (not her real name) was overweight and divorced. After determining that she needed to be reinvented, she began daily workouts with a friend and started eating a special diet to lose weight. Her lifestyle became all about maintaining a grueling regiment of early morning and after work gym visits. She was tired all the time but she kept exercising. Weight loss was her goal.

She’d say, “I’m going to be able to fit into a little sun dress.”

After three months she managed to drop a size or two. Those who knew her watched and sometimes talked about her progress. People doubted she’d ever fit into the dress she had in mind, mostly because that little sun dress belonged to a very petite woman.

Mandy just wasn’t petite.

After six months, Mandy was obviously tired. Her restrictive lifestyle had become a prison and she was starting to see that she wasn’t capable of being waif-like. She began to speak hopelessly, then gave up and went back to just being herself. She expressed relief, said that she didn’t have to pay for gyms or special foods anymore, and felt ironically as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

There wasn’t anything wrong with who Mandy was before exercising or who she was after. What was most fascinating to me was seeing who she was in between. She had a goal in mind and she went after it with vigor, that is until she realized her goal was unattainable.

What would have happened if her goal was different? What if she simply aimed at becoming the most healthy version of Mandy that she could have possibly been? Maybe she’d still be exercising today.

Sugar Addicts Tend to Set Unrealistic Goals

Sugar addicts often set themselves up for failure. Here’s why:

1. We don’t know any better.
2. We want it all and we want it now!
3. We want to fail.

1. We Don’t Know Any Better

When it comes to getting healthy or losing weight, we think like consumers. That’s why alternative sweeteners sell so well. We want to buy our way to health so we look for a pill or a magic brownie that will help us shed pounds while we watch television.

2. We Want It All Right Now

We expect instant results. We’re used to wanting something, seeking it out, and purchasing it. When it doesn’t happen instantly, we give up and try some other method that promises a quick return.

3. We Want to Fail

We like eating sweets! They come wrapped in pretty packaging and have zany names. Sweets make us feel like a happy, naive child. Who wants to give that up in favor of a grueling workout program topped with extreme self deprivation, all in the name of vanity?

Set Smart Goals

Weight loss as a goal can be a dangerous game—especially when there’s a short time frame involved. What happens after you drop 20 pounds from starving yourself for a month? You go back up then work back down and get really good at playing the yo-yo game.

Rather than setting a number on the scale, try setting your goal at being the healthiest you can be. That’s a sustainable and much more rewarding practice. It’s slow, gradual, and, in a sense, endless.

Ongoing is what makes up a practice.

When you set your goal at being healthy, every little step you take in the right direction is a win. Avoided the cookies = your practice in action. Took a walk = your practice in action. Both are successes that add up to a healthy lifestyle.

If you must set numbers for your goal, target the numbers of reps, the distance you walk, or the amount of time you work out. Keep track of the amount of calories and grams of sugar that you turned down and didn’t eat. Increase those numbers and you may find that weight loss becomes less and less of an issue. When you feel good inside, you’ll develop a healthy glow on the outside.

Fat Week, Day 2: Weight Loss and the Crime of Being Heavy

Quitting Sugar for Weight Loss

I cringe whenever someone tells me that they’re quitting sugar to lose weight. Yes, it’s possible and probable that you’ll drop a few pounds if you lay off the sweets but that shouldn’t be the only reason you do it. Get off sugar because you want to be a healthier you.

If you want to lose weight, the best way to do so is to change your lifestyle a little at a time and create a sustainable activity plan. That means you must find things to do that you enjoy and can do—from walking to biking to gardening or whatever.

If you enjoy what you’re doing you are ten times more likely to keep at it. What’s more, you’re that much more likely to alter other behaviors (emotional food related activites for example) to attain or maintain your ability to continue your preferred activity.

Having a profession or hobby takes development. Developing skill takes time and practice. Being skilled is empowering. Being empowered means taking control of yourself and your life.

What If You Can’t Shrink?

It’s hard to change your size. You can’t grow any taller. You can’t change your genetics. Television, media—basically OTHER PEOPLE—make us feel inadequate. Heavy people receive a kind of invisible discrimination. For instance, check out this article on Forbes.com where Tim Worstall (the author) freely uses the term “lardbucket” to refer to someone who is overweight. He also compares “late night drunks,” and “passive smoking” with “the visual pollution of someone 300 lbs overweight.”

Tim and folks like him get away with such nastiness because many overweight people carry as much self-imposed guilt as they have excess weight. Being obese is considered a “personal responsibility” issue and, for some reason, it’s okay in our society to be mean to people who are perceived as being lazy, stupid, or unhealthy.

Society points the finger at obese people for being fat. Then those same people are targeted again by food companies. It’s sort of like how the credit card companies target people who can’t manage their money, how religious cults target people who are going through life altering transformations, or how drug dealers target people who are down and out and looking for a pick me up. 

Fear and Manipulation

Many ad campaigns use obesity as a fear tactic. Fat is considered a punishment that we have brought upon ourselves by being gluttonous. Alternatively sweetened products get labeled as healthy and promise you’ll lose weight by consuming them instead of sugar sweetened products. Are there any food companies out there that talk about consuming less? Of course not! It’s not profitable.

So we target “fat kids” and teach them that they’re lesser than their thin counterparts. We praise thin kids and give them a false sense of health security—they can eat whatever junk food they want. I was a thin kid, yet I was on a blood-sugar-induced roller coaster ride all day, every day. I think I failed high school as a result. Because I was small, nobody looked twice at my diet. My lack of attention and my falling asleep in third period was chalked up to apathy.

The Goal of Being Average

We were required to run a mile in my high school gym class. There was a big kid who couldn’t run—or walk—a mile in the time it took the rest of us to complete the test. Our teacher made this student walk a full mile and it took the entire 40 minute period. I felt bad.

What if we weren’t tested in a one-size-fits-all manner? What if we were tested against ourselves? Then we’d have learned how to set realistic and achievable goals instead of competing with each other to be the best at being average.

Healthy and Heavy

It is possible to be healthy and heavy! Folks are shaped differently. Some people are big-boned. Some are small. People can exercise their asses off (literally) every single morning and still they won’t look like the muscle bound person in the ad for your local gym.

Eating like crap and not taking care of yourself is not a crime. It is, however, a shame in that it allows others to determine your self worth for you. When we can clearly derive our purpose and value from our own measure, we’ll stop counting with numbers.

Fat Week, Day 1: Getting Old, Getting Fat, and Getting Over It

Like lots of kids, my brother and I used to eat cereal and milk for breakfast almost every day. I have distinct memories from that time.

I’d sit on one side of the table and my brother would sit on the other. We’d pour cereal from the box into our bowls, add some milk, and then heap spoonfuls of table sugar on top.

We rarely spoke while we ate. Instead, we read the cereal box. I’d look at the back while he read the front. Then we’d rotate the box. By the time we made it around the entire package we’d be drinking sugary milk from the bottom of the bowl. Then we’d go to school. 

One day we spoke to each other. I don’t recall much of the conversation except I do remember my brother saying something like, “Yeah, you’re getting fat,” in that matter-of-fact way that older brothers do. I looked down at my stomach and discovered that he was right; I had a belly. Right then and there I vowed to not get fat.

Who knows what I did but it must’ve worked. For 30 years I’ve been thin and light. When I hit middle age my metabolism changed. In turn, so did my body. I’m still smaller than most people, but I’m also heavier than I’ve ever been. I’m by no means fat, but my middle aged belly makes me self conscious. In fact, I feel guilty and I beat myself up about it. What’s worse is that I have no excuse because I’m not consuming ten pounds of sugar a day. All of this got me thinking.

What if I had no control over my body? What if I put on weight, couldn’t lose it, and everyone judged me for it? What if I hated myself a bit for every extra pound I carried? Who would I be and who would I become?

For these reasons, this week I’m writing about…
FAT.

Sugar is under attack lately because it’s being blamed for the obesity crisis. The sugar industry claims that sugar is only part of a bigger picture. They can say this because there are plenty of thin and fit looking people who eat tons of sweets.

For some, sugar goes straight from the lips to the hips. For others, sugar simply saps their energy and suppresses their immune system. Either way, it’s not good. After a certain age it almost doesn’t matter if you’re not eating a ton of sugar. You body changes and you either have to accept it or work with it. That’s just how it is. The one thing not to do is give up and let your health go!

Do whatever you can to be your healthiest. You’re the youngest you’ll ever be right now. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Take a small action, make a little change. It all adds up. Our personal choices result in an overall feeling that can’t be measured in numbers.

So, how do you feel today?