I eat a little chocolate every day. If you aren’t in the habit, I highly recommend it. My chocolate of choice is Dove Promises milk chocolate with peanut butter. Oh the horror! I’m not eating dark chocolate, the kind that’s good for me?! No, I’m not. I think dark chocolate is gross, because it tastes super bitter. For me, eating dark chocolate is less like pleasure and more like punishment. Let’s move on.
Most days when I eat my chocolates, I don’t even bother to read the messages printed on the inside of the foil, but yesterday I did. The first one said:
And the second one said:
An interesting pair of messages, I thought. How often do we feel that our dreams aren’t right? Or, how often do we have dreams that we never achieve, because we are too busy doing things that take us off the path? Wouldn’t it be great if we could not only make a list of our dreams and then pursue them, but if we also felt that we were right in doing so?
Let’s say you’re raising and family and working a full-time job outside of the house. And let’s also say you have a dream of running a marathon one day. Some of your loved ones think you’re totally bonkers to want to run for 26.2 miles. And the training! It’s going to take a lot of your precious free time to train your body to get ready for that kind of event. You have a million obligations every day – isn’t it selfish of you to want to carve out time to pursue this dream? Well, what’s wrong with being a little selfish? Your dreams are just as important as those of your family. If it’s in your heart, it’s worth figuring out how to make that dream come true.
One of my dreams is to spread the message of Big Fit Deal far and wide. I want people everywhere to think about body issues, to learn to accept and love their own bodies and to accept and be respectful of all body shapes and sizes around them. I want people to stop hating themselves, to stop thinking about food in terms of morality, to stop using exercise as a form of punishment. I want the word “fat” to become a neutral adjective, no longer a word used to punish, belittle, and shame.
Society and the media are constantly telling me that I’m wrong. The diet industry and even medical professionals (some of them funded by that same diet industry) remind me that I am the reason I’m fat – if I was just more disciplined, if I tried harder, if I stopped lying about my eating and exercise habits, I would be permanently and acceptably thin.
I know that’s all untrue, but when I am inundated by those messages every single day, I sometimes lose faith that BFD is the right thing to do, the right message to be sending out to the world. What if they’re right, and if I just tried harder, if I put aside everything else I enjoy in life and restricted my food to starvation levels and spent hours every day in the gym, I could be thin? Shouldn’t that be my dream instead? Because won’t being thin make me happy? Won’t it bring me joy and success and a husband?
Sometimes I get down, too, because the message of BFD hasn’t spread very far. I’m only reaching a handful of people with every post, and most of them are just my friends and family. (Hi, friends and family!) What’s the point in putting forth all this effort, caring so much, working so hard, if I’m just preaching to my own personal choir?
Because it’s my dream. And because it’s right. That’s why I write BFD, that’s why I share these messages with you. Because body acceptance and body positivity are my dreams, and because I know in my heart they are right.
Thanks, chocolates, for reminding me why I do what I do. And thanks, too, for being so delicious!
