Empower positivity and it will increase.

Empower negativity and it will also increase.

Look at your usual behavior - do you feed the negative or the positive?

Do you say, “I can do better” or do you say, “I messed up again”?

Create empowering statements that express the positive in your life, and in other people.

Here are some examples:
- I am good enough.
- I am grateful to be alive.
- I love and accept him/her as he/she is.

It is your choice. Affirm, feed, empower the positive. It will grow. Use every challenge as an opportunity for empowerment!

Consider this...

Mindfulness is one of the most important Buddhist concepts there is. Take a look at the formal definition: “consciousness or awareness of something.” I would argue that the “of something” at the end is best dropped. Rather than be aware of something in particular, I would contend that mindfulness is actually a practice in order to achieve a like-named state of being.

What Our Minds Are Doing

Mindfulness is all about our minds’ awareness of their current situation. The modern American spends an overwhelming amount of his or her time doing three things mentally: planning, judging and dwelling. That is, we think about what we’re going to do later, we dwell on what we’ve already done and we judge those around us for what they’re doing. That’s a lot of wasted mental energy and time - not to mention the opportunity cost of not appreciating the present. That’s not to say that each of those actions doesn’t have a time or a place, but really, they’re preventing us from doing something very important: living in the present.

What Mindfulness is About

Mindfulness is all about living in the moment that you’re in. When you’re mindful, you’re not worrying about the future, dwelling on the past or judging others. You’re appreciating where you are the moment that you’re there. It’s driving and noticing the passing homes and people. It’s walking and seeing the nature around you and not mulling over the events of the day. It’s not shutting the mind off or some form of meditating. It’s letting the mind be where it is so that you are actually living.

When you ride a roller-coaster do you think about the next day’s meeting? When you are splashing around in the ocean with friends do you think about whether or not what you said last week at that dinner party was stupid? I bet you don’t. I bet you’re living in those moments, savoring the thoughts related to them and enjoying your existence in the presence, because those moments are relatively unique and fun. Mindfulness is about living every moment like that, even as you do what is seemingly the most mundane of acts. It’s about being in your life as you walk to the bathroom at work rather than thinking about what you have to do when you get back to your desk.

Now I know we live in the modern world and sometimes you need those 5 minutes on the way to the bathroom to get a quick grip and think about what comes next. That’s fine. Mindfulness doesn’t have to be a permanent state of being every moment. First of all, it’s hard to achieve. It’s a slow process that takes time. Second of all, the more often you can be mindful, the more you will live your life, and doing that every moment isn’t necessary. Just do what you can.

The First Step to Mindfulness

The first step to mindfulness is about learning to see how often you think about things other than your present state. The way you do this is to acknowledge those thoughts by becoming mindful of them. Don’t get mad the next time you find yourself planning or dwelling or judging. Just say in your head, “judging,” in a totally normal and non-judgmental way as a means of noting that you were doing it. Start doing this about all of your thoughts - recognize what kinds of thoughts they are. You’re not going to stop them right away, and you can’t be mad at yourself for thinking them, but by acknowledging these thoughts you will come to see how often you are having them and how much mental energy you are wasting on them. In this way, you will begin to have them less and start to be more mindful.

Start to practice being mindful of your thoughts and the more you do that, the more you will come to exist in your present and enjoy the life you’re living while you’re living it.

Want some great tips for this week to practice while you’re being mindful? Check out our experts’ tips here.

Stephanie, blogger,model and writer from Le Blog de Big Beauty.

The grown and curvy woman, from the blog with the same name.

Keka Demetrio, blogger and body acceptance activist.

Roseanne Barr - actress, comedienne, writer, television producer, director.

Juliana Ferreira, photographer and plus size model.

Namitha Kapoor, Indian actress.

GabiFresh, blogger and model.

Check here for the first edition!

If you want to submit photos, don’t be shy! Contact us on the comments or send an email!

In my recent blog post discussing what to say to girls about body image and self-esteem,  I mentioned intrinsic self-esteem. I’ve since received several questions about it, so I thought I would go into more detail about it today. If self-esteem is a word that’s triggering to you, then you have both my apologies and my suggestion to try substituting self-worth or something else that works for you. The main idea here is to think about how we think of ourselves.

The theory that I’ve learned that makes the most sense to me is that there are two types of self-esteem – intrinsic and extrinsic.

Extrinsic is what we get from external feedback:
• Roles: We play lots of roles in life – mother, father, sister, brother, partner, volunteer, employee, boss, parent, child etc., and how we perform in these roles can inform how we feel about ourselves
• Social Approval: This is about how we perform based on social conventions, stereotypes etc.
• Third Party information: This is about what we read/hear/learn about people who are like us.

Intrinsic Self Esteem

This is our sense of our innate value We are each the only person who can determine our intrinsic self esteem – how we feel about ourselves – and part of that is deciding what factors we include in our calculations.

Many people choose to determine their intrinsic self esteem based on their extrinsic self esteem values – people are, of course, allowed to do this, but it can be pretty problematic for a number of reasons. Our performance in role values varies from day to day – even minute by minute as anyone with a toddler can attest -  so one day we might feel like we are an excellent parent, employee and friend, and the next day we might feel like we are epic failures in all three. If we base our intrinsic self esteem on our role values, we can end up on a self-worth roller coaster that isn’t necessarily that much fun. If we base it on societal approval and third party information, then we are putting our sense of self worth entirely in the hands of other people, some of whom have the very specific goal of making us feel bad so that they feel better.

Another option is to realize that we are the only person in charge of how we feel about ourselves and that, as such, we can decide that we are intrinsically amazing and that there is nothing that will ever change that. If today we were a crappy employee, parent, and friend then we are an awesome person having a bad day, or maybe even a bad year. At any given time we may be damaged goods, but we are always goods, nonetheless. (Bonus points for the movie reference)

If we can keep our intrinsic sense of self esteem high, then we can handle the extrinsic blows with our head held high. We can see ourselves as always being worthy of respect, love, and good care – and we can see that when we aren’t treated that way the issue lies with the people treating us poorly and not with us. We shield ourselves from attacks made by those who are hoping to make themselves feel better by making us feel worse. We can see through the lie that our belief that we are intrinsically amazing is somehow hubris or arrogance (a lie most often repeated by those who profit emotionally or monetarily from its dissemination).

Here’s an example:  I’ve been getting a lot of troll mail lately on my post about my first official 5k. Most failed to comprehend the post, and think that I’m claiming to be an athlete soley based on my having walked this 5k. Of course that’s not the case and wasn’t the point of the article, but so what if I was? When did they get to be the “Athlete Decider?” Was there a ceremony? Was it nice? There are plenty of people, of all sizes for whom walking a 5k is an athletic achievement, and there is nothing in the world wrong with that. There are plenty of people, of all sizes, for whom walking to the mailbox is an athletic achievement. If they want to do a butt-shaking happy dance with their newly acquired junkmail, then I’m all for that. There is no reason that anyone would be against it that doesn’t begin and end with petty animus.

Anyway, back to the example. I’ve received tons of comments suggesting that: 1) not only shouldn’t I be happy that I did the 5k, but I should feel bad about myself for not running it. 2) I should have been kicked out for walking, because nobody should be allowed to walk these races or do anything other than what the commenter has chosen to do. These are easily identifiable as people in two camps – those who are desperate to hold onto their stereotypes about fat people (and thus have to find a way to negate fat people’s achievements/experience that don’t support their prejudice) and/or those who are trying to increase their self-esteem by putting other people (in this case me) down.

Alas, I’m not the jackass whisperer, and I can’t make these people behave like they’ve had some home training. I do get to choose whether or not I want to fall for their crap. I choose not. In the end, I’m truly sorry that these people are in such a bad place, but I’m not obligated, or willing, to fall on my self esteem sword to help them out of it. I would suggest that you don’t have to either.

I thought that if I could have that really hourglass figure that plus size models often seem to have, then, and only then could I accept my fat.

Of course, that got me nowhere since it’s pretty impossible to change your shape without a bunch of cosmetic surgery, and “elective surgery” is not really in my vocabulary.

Curvy Privilege?

I hadn’t thought about wanting a different kind of fat body in a long time, but this concept came up with a client recently. She said that from my pictures, she thought I had that “good kind of fat” body and worried that I might not understand what it’s like not to have that. This client is actually quite a bit thinner than me, but she thought that I was “very curvy” and therefore wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have a less curvy* fat body.

I found this very interesting on a number of levels, and I found myself reassuring her that I, indeed, did not have a very curvy body (there’s about a one inch difference between my hips and my waist) and that even if our body types are not alike, that I can still understand and empathize with her, since that’s what I do for a living!

But beyond that, I got to thinking about how “the good kind of _________” shows up in various minority groups, where the “good kind of” whatever is always whatever looks the most like what is prized in the dominant culture. If you have the “right” skin color or hair color or nose shape you might just pass for the dominant culture and get whatever privilege may be attached to that.

Click to tweet: Your fat IS the “good kind” of fat!
And so I think the same thing happens with fat. If you’ve got “curves in all the right places” and you’re fat, you may get snippets of thin privilege that would be denied to a fat person of relatively the same size but with a different shape. Of course, I’m talking about female identified people when I’m talking about curvaceousness. Perhaps it works the opposite way with male identified folks, but I’m not sure.

I recognize that I get little snippets of thin privilege myself — because my hips are relatively narrow, I don’t have to worry about things like sitting in airline seats, and I don’t have to deal with people looking at me with dread that I might (OMG!!!) sit next to them (the subway, however, is a different story). But I’m fat enough that I can’t ever “pass” for thin-ish the way I did when I was a size 14/16.

Going Forward

Going forward, I think it’s important to acknowledge the ways that these “good kind of fat” conversations happen, and do our best to be aware of it. I don’t think it does anyone any good to make body acceptance about imposing the same beauty norms from the dominant culture onto fatter bodies. We need to explode those beauty norms as best we can, by acknowledging the amazing diversity of bodies.

Your kind of fat IS the good kind of fat.

*This is one of the reasons why I hate the word curvy as a euphemism for fat.

The fallout continues over Mike Jefferies’ grandiose statement that Fat people are “not cool” enough to wear his Abercrombie & Fitch clothing so he refuses to make it in their sizes. What I find extremely heartening about it is that the majority of comments on the net and in the media have been very size positive, decrying Jefferies open and arrogant exclusion based on body size.

I am not so optimistic to think that the tide of size bias is beginning to turn, but I do believe that this is another dent in the dam of repressive damnation against larger body sizes and shapes.

Veteran Of A Thousand Psychic Wars

With apologies to Blue Oyster Cult, this song becomes a rampant ear-worm in my semester weary head during Finals Week and the gauntlet that is calculating and posting final grades. My reward after finishing everything? A pint of hopped up ale that bit back with each swallow, deep amber and delicious, and the first Star Trek re-boot on cable. A wild night indeed.

Way Cool At School

Meanwhile, right here in the little ol’ Midwest, my daughter experienced Size Acceptance in the classroom.  It started two days ago, when she informed me that each middle school student had to bring in a dollar to pay for a Zumba class in gym later in the week. Of course,
I cringed inside as I give her the dollar, with all the stereotypical fat-shaming comments in a commercial exercise class dancing a mad jig in my head. However, I know my daughter is mostly galvanized against such propaganda, so I didn’t worry too much.

The afternoon after the (dreaded) gym class, my daughter is bouncing and be-bopping around the house, a happy little jitterbug, and proceeds to describe her Zumba class. I listened as she told me about each dance-like move and then she surprised me with, “…and Mom, guess what? The Zumba Lady was YOUR size!”

Surprise!

As I showed my surprise with a smile, my daughter told me how the instructor kept each of the three gym classes moving and grooving, outlasting a bunch of 12, 13, and 14 year olds, her big, bold body bouncing the whole way. A gym class where the focus is on activity, not body shaming.  So cool!

Water Wear

Lastly, the hot issue of approaching summer anywhere: swim suits. What to wear, what not to wear, … what do you WANT to wear? For some, the challenge is finding any swim wear at all in their size; for others, it is finding an option you actually want to wear. Don’t be afraid to experiment and explore options, mix and match from different departments and stores until you find and/or create what works for you, whether it be swimming across a lake or lounging by the pool with a cocktail. And the most important accessory? Believing in yourself and your body.



Every day I hear messages from society about my fat body. I’m told that it’s a sign of moral failing, laziness, it’s a shortcoming, it’s unattractive, blah blah blah -  the negative messages are incessant and ubiquitous.

I spent so much of my life so intent on hating my body for not meeting the cultural stereotype of beauty, that I never once appreciated it for what it did. Instead of defending the amazing body that helps me do every single thing that I do every moment of every day, I joined in the chorus of disapproval. I sold my own body out to buy into an arbitrary social stereotype of beauty, and a modicum of begrudging approval that was contingent upon my keeping myself down so that my detractors didn’t have to bother doing it themselves.

If I’ve learned anything on my journey away from self-hatred, disordered eating, and compulsive exercise, it’s that my body deserves nothing less than my unconditional love and full-throated support. So to all of those who would suggest that my body is anything other than magnificent, I say this:

My fat body is far too valuable to be treated like a car whose worth is lowered because of some wear and tear. It’s far too astounding to be a metaphor or a political statement. It’s far too complicated to run on the same formula used to fuel a lawn mower. It is far too profound to be reduced to a ratio of weight and height. And it is far too amazing to be judged by anyone.

My fat body is not a representation of my failures, sins, or mistakes. My fat body is not an indication of my level of health or fitness. My fat body is not up for public discussion, debate or judgment. My fat body is not a signal that I need help or input to make decisions about my health or life. My fat body is the constant companion that helps me do every single thing that I do every second of every day, and it deserves respect and admiration.

If you are incapable of appreciating my body and treating it with respect and admiration, that is your deficiency not mine; work on it or not, but I do not care. Nor am I interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter, so if you want to be around me, you are 100% responsible for doing whatever it takes to keep those thoughts to yourself. If you are incapable of doing that, I will stop spending time with you – I spend my time with people who can treat me appropriately.

I will wield my beautiful fat body like a weapon. I will love it, I will care for it, I will move it, I will show it in public, I will viciously defend my body against anyone who seeks to classify it as anything but amazing. You’ve been warned – back the f*** off.

Suspension of disbelief is the idea that you ignore the implausibilities of a story so that you can enjoy the greater themes. I’m not against the concept on its face – it’s why I can love the A-Team Movie and the final choreography from Center Stage.

I do take offense at the idea that I should run my life with suspension of disbelief at the center, but that’s what the diet industry and plenty of doctors seem to think I should do. Over half a century of research has failed to produce a single study where more than a tiny fraction of people lose weight long term. There is not a single study showing that long term weight loss leads to better health. When I point this out to doctors they typically agree with the numbers, but insist that prescribing weight loss still meets the requirements of evidence based medicine.

Suspension of disbelief is the idea that you ignore the implausibilities of a story so that you can enjoy the greater themes.  I’m not against the concept on its face – it’s why I can love the A-Team Movie and the final choreography from Center Stage.

Weight Watchers own numbers show that the average client loses 5 pounds in two years (paying $254 PER POUND in meeting fees alone for the privilege), but Jennifer Hudson is on my television gushing that this time it’s going to work.

Ads for weight loss products are legally required to have a disclaimer because they sell a best case scenario that almost never happens, but I’m supposed keep trying.

The world largest study of lifestyle changes for weight loss was cancelled for “futility,” but people still insist that the key to long term weight loss is lifestyle changes.

Thin people are told that the healthiest thing they can do is eat a variety of foods in moderation, locally sourced etc. As a fat woman, I’m told that the healthiest thing I can do is

• Drink two thin chocolate beverages that contain laxatives and eat one meal a day that is low fat and low carb
• Eat reconstituted soy protein shakes five times a day and one meal of low fat protein and green vegetables
• Eat a bacon double cheeseburger, but hold the tomato and the bun
• Take pills whose label suggests that I “wear dark pants and bring an extra pair to work”
• Eat an extremely limited low calorie diet 6 days a week, then binge eat on the 7th day
• Eat breakfast cereal 4 times a day, and eat a meal of lean proteins and low carbs for dinner
• Eat a ton of cabbage soup, and on Tuesday eat as many bananas as I want but nothing else

I’m often met with incredulity by those who tout weight loss when I discuss my evidence-based choice to practice healthy habits to support my desire to prioritize my health. The reason is pretty simple – when it comes to the concepts of weight loss, especially as a path to health, I just can’t muster the kind of suspension of disbelief necessary to go down the weight loss path (and that’s saying something, because I love the Iron Man movies). I have a right to make choices that make sense and that I believe have some basis in reality, and, for me, dieting simply doesn’t qualify.