Member-only story
Love Yourself, but Push Yourself
Always move forward in life
We read and hear a lot about self-love and self-acceptance. I agree we should love ourselves, but…
Too often, the “love yourself” mantra can be a thinly disguised dodge from the need to push ourselves to move forward in life.
I’ll use myself as an example. I’m overweight. I need to lose some pounds. A lot of pounds. :-( I don’t like writing that. I don’t like calling attention to it, and I don’t want to be “fat” or absorb that into my identity. And yet…
According to my last physical, I’m technically obese. :-(
I need to do better with my health. There is no getting around it.
Yet, there are plenty of people out there — online and in person — who will tell me to embrace myself as I am. The body positivity movement pushes back against anything they feel comes anywhere in the vicinity of “fat shaming.” But there is a middle ground.
How about this?
How about we not embrace fat shaming or fat affirming?
I don’t want people to mock, deride, scorn, or shame me, but I don’t need people to affirm my being overweight either. There is a middle ground.
