In the book, Libby, the overweight girl, goes through many challenges related to her weight. She's bullied, sent hate mail, misjudged, and treated like she's not worth anything.
I don't have much experience with bullying or hate mail, but I do have experience with people misjudging (or just simply judging me) and treating me like I'm not worth anything. I know what that feels like.
I'm going to list some quotes from Libby's perspective that really resonated with me and we'll go from there.
"And this whole 'pretty for a fat girl' thing. I mean, what is that? Why can't I just be pretty period? I wouldn't say, 'Oh, Bailey Bishop, she's pretty for a skinny girl.' I mean, you're just Bailey. And you're pretty." (page 100).
"You know how far I've come and I know how far I've come, but everyone else just sees me for how large I am or where I was years ago, not who I am now." (page 65).
"He will never like you no matter what you do, no matter how thin you are, no matter how nice you try to be him." (page 58).
"Yes, I'm fat." (page 52).
"I've lost 302 pounds. The size of two entire people. I have around 190 left to go, and I'm fine with that. I like who I am." (page 8).
I've been working on for about 2 and a half years now the idea of self-acceptance. Loving myself beyond what I look like. Self-care is another thing that I have been working on, too, and it goes right along with loving myself.
While I was dating my now ex-boyfriend, he pressured me a lot into trying to lose weight. "For your own health," he used to say, although really he just wanted a trophy girlfriend. But that's another story. I started working out and practically starved myself for months. Coincidentally, I lost no weight. I was hungry all the time. I felt terrible, physically and mentally, because I wasn't making "progress" and my ex kept telling me that I was "a disappointment" and that I wasn't "trying hard enough" and that I "didn't care".
I did care. But I was self-aware enough to realize that as long as I was trying to lose weight for a person that wasn't me, I wasn't going to get anywhere.
After years of hating my body, I really wanted to love myself. I wanted to take care of myself. But that takes time, and my ex was only concerned with the math of "okay, if you cut down to 500 calories a day, that means you'll lose this many pounds in a week, so this many pounds in a month, and you can be healthy in about 6 months!"
Now, I'm far away from him, and I have been working on loving and taking care of myself. My new and improved boyfriend and I work out together a few times a week. Because we want to. Not because we have to. Not because some controlling asshole will leave us if we don't. Because we want to. I watch what I eat, and although, yes, I do count calories, I don't restrict myself too much. If I'm hungry, I allow myself to eat because my body is telling me that it needs something. I may do my best to choose healthier options, though. But if I want to have some icecream sometimes, then I am allowed to eat that icecream.
I am allowed to eat whatever and whenever I want now (I've actually been allowed to the whole time, I just didn't realize it) and knowing that is almost as freeing as knowing that I am allowed to be the size I am. I am allowed to be fat because that's just what my body looks like right now. My size does not define who I am as a person. It doesn't define my intelligence or my sense of humor.
I'm working on losing weight not because I want to be pretty (because I'm learning to believe that I am already pretty), not because I want to please or impress other people, and not because I want to stay with some immature boy whose mom doesn't like me because I'm fat. I'm losing weight simply because I want to take care of myself. I want to love myself. My body needs to lose weight to feel good and to work better, so I'm going to give that to my body because loving myself means loving all of me.
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