Speaking With a Former Fat Acceptance Activist

okay so megan thank you so much for for being willing to come on and talk to me i really appreciate it um so obviously the the way that this all kind of came about was you made that video kind of talking about how i think the title of it was like fat acceptance is kind of dumb or something like that it's kind of stupid or why fat acceptance kind of sucks kind of sucks there we go and and so obviously people wanted to hear my thoughts on it and so i watched it and i was like blown away by just i just thought it was a really really interesting video and a really really interesting just way of thinking that obviously i couldn't relate to um so i'm kind of just curious if we can talk if we can kind of take a step back first like can i'm curious about how did you get to because you said in the the first part of the title was my 315 pound life right and so i'm kind of curious like how did you get to be being 315 pounds well laziness that was a big one just being blunt like that's what it was i was never like an athletic person i was a theater kid a band kid art kid all of those kids um and just not really caring about what i put in my mouth at the time when it mattered um and yeah so it was it was really like it i ballooned in college um i gained about i think 40 to 50 pounds in college and that was also about the time when i got into the fat acceptance thing and um and it's when i really started kind of rolling with it because i think that's when i started to have low self-esteem as well and these people kind of helped me pick myself back up um and yeah so i would it was mainly it was just like not moving enough and eating whatever i wanted regardless of the nutritional value of it like that's just yeah i mean yeah for for most people it kind of is that simple right but it's yeah you know there always are outliers and i always try and say like of course they're outliers but for the vast majority of at least americans that have access to food uh usually it's just we're not making the best decisions right and so okay i'm kind of curious so i thought in your video you did a great job of kind of expressing how you still think body positivity is a good thing and you think that you agree with that and obviously we share similar beliefs with that but i'm kind of curious as i know i'm kind of putting you on the spot here but like what would you say is the difference for you at least but between like body positivity and like fat acceptance or health at every size so that's a good question so i think body positivity for me is being okay like i've talked about in my video like being okay with the way your body is in that moment but if it's necessary to make a change so that your quality of life is better you're not like you're not a pain in the butt about making that change if that makes sense because i i i tell people if you need to lose weight and you first of all you want to lose weight because you have to you have to be in the mindset of wanting to lose weight um i think and i think there's a difference between i want to lose weight and i feel like i should lose weight right like there's a huge difference between those two things yeah i remember honestly like i okay side note i have followed you for a very long time so this is really odd for me but okay but when you started getting a lot of flack for posting before and after pictures for not being body positive um i kind of formed my opinion that losing weight is one of and getting healthy is one of the most positive things you can do for your body um i had a friend of mine who's also lost a lot of weight when i shared that video that i did he put it really well and he said that fat acceptance is complacency and it's like just being ignorant to your health and um not doing what's the most positive for your body i guess it's a really hard distinction to make and to explain um but i think me being body positive is what in turn helped me lose the weight fat acceptance helped me gain the weight wow that's that no that totally makes sense so so when you say that now let's go into that so when you say fat acceptance like let me gain the weight what like what exactly do you mean by that like how would you say that manifested for you yeah so like i mentioned in my video i discovered test holiday that was a whole thing i thought my life was changed forever and um through her i discovered a whole bunch of other people as well and um seeing their rhetoric that they kind of spewed about how like your weight doesn't matter which in in a certain aspect it it doesn't but like when you're morbidly obese it does um and so when they're talking about your weight doesn't matter eat whatever you want because it's what makes you happy like it's the most positive thing for your body um talking about how doctors are ignorant all that kind of stuff um really kind of pushed me along into thinking that what i was doing in terms of lack of movement and eating too much crap was okay um and it made it it it validated it for me and especially even when i was like 16 when i was pre-diabetic um like i thought oh i remember having this thought actually that oh i mean surely like these girls look like me so surely they're pre-diabetic too and like they're okay like they're outwardly okay and so i yeah so that's kind of like how i guess it helped me put on the weight was because it made me think what i was doing was okay and it validated it yeah and i think that like what you just said right there is super powerful is because like for lack of a better term basically what you were doing was comparing yourself to other people right absolutely so you were comparing yourself and the thing that's so dangerous about it is that if there's someone that is a hundred pounds heavier than you and for some somehow they don't they're not pre-diabetic they carry their weight really well they don't have any issues right now like they're fine and so in your head you think to yourself like i should be fine like i remember this is super tangent but i remember when i had a really crappy car i would see other cars that were like much crappier than mine still driving and but even though my car was absolutely like making noises it shouldn't be it was like smoking i'm thinking well that car's way worse than mine is it's the same thing so i should be fine yeah like oh they're they're worse off than me so like it's it's fine because arguably a lot of and i'm not saying this to be rude but a lot of the women in the fat acceptance movement are and were heavier than i was at that time and so i was thinking like oh they're bigger than me so i'm i'm still doing okay like even though i would definitely was not um yeah so yeah it just validated me i guess that's so big so for me i'm kind of curious as like when did you start to feel like i don't know how much i jive with this because obviously there's always some sort of little thing that kind of you're like i don't know right did that ever yeah at all um not until i made the decision to lose weight um yeah can we just can we talk about that like how you got to that point yeah yeah so i was actually because i was watching your stream while i was working and when you were talking about like your click moment i was getting really emotional um because i also have kind of a click moment um i distinctly remember laying in bed feeling really sad about my life and i was like megan what is the one thing in your life that makes you the least happy and can you change it and the answer was my weight and the answer was yes you can change it and so i think i stayed up all night that night like research it because i'm i research everything before i do it like before i buy anything like it's a whole thing i yeah um i researched it i came upon a jordan shrinks video uh and i was like okay megan if she can do it you can do it and then i kind of started researching more and that was my click moment was and ever since then i've been serious about losing weight um but when i realized that the um the fat acceptance movement kind of like wasn't the greatest was when i was afraid to tell people that i was gonna go down this path of weight loss and getting healthy yeah and the thing is i was talking to my boyfriend about this last night and i was like i wasn't like i didn't actively spew the rhetoric to other people it was just a personal set of beliefs that i had and so it was kind of stupid that i felt not stupid i wasn't stupid it was kind of weird that i felt odd or like bad about coming out about losing weight when nobody really knew that i had this set of beliefs but for some reason i still felt like i was gonna be like letting people down in a way because i've always been outwardly a confident person regardless of my weight and i and and i carried my weight very well too so like even my parents now say like megan we didn't realize you were that that big like and now that they look back people get used to it you know quick interrupt the video i just want to let you guys know that the hats and the work for change shirts we have two different shirts we have a ladies tank and two different hats they're only available until sunday for a pre-order so if you want to check those out it really really helps me out a lot work for change is my podcast it's also like my kind of like clothing brand that i'm trying to start getting built up so if you want to check that out again work for change podcast i'll have it linked down in the description yeah yeah but i mean what you're saying right now is just it's so it's so important because that's something i bring up all the time is you know if say if someone does decide that they want to lose weight and you know maybe like you talked about your situation but say their situation is like times 10 right like they are like someone that is spewing the rhetoric they are like someone who has literally their whole platform is based on health at every size or it's based on you know like i truly like i'm not saying they have to lose weight like i'm not sitting here being like you have to do what i say but what i am saying is like i get scared if they decide that they want to lose weight what is that going to be like and like it i i go straight back to um this this woman that makes videos on youtube her name's uh glitter and lasers and she kind of went through that and like luckily she didn't get a super a ton of backlash but she talked a lot about how she was incredibly terrified to even say that she was because you know a lot of her content was based on you know i'm confident in my body whatever right like i don't need to lose weight kind of thing and she would was literally diagnosed with uh lipoedema with like her legs and having like these serious issues and so i just get worried for someone who's maybe even further right like say if we're talking you know i test holiday is always the person that people bring up but like say if she literally had a medical condition like what would it like how would how would you feel finding out let's say i'm not saying she is but like say she found out she was diabetic or something like she is either going to have to hide that from people because she's terrified of what people are gonna say or she's gonna say that and now she's gonna deal with you know people that are you know meaner than me that are gonna say told you so which isn't helpful but like that's the reality and i so i just get so like worried for the people that go down that path and then it's even worse for the person that doesn't have a huge following but they still have those beliefs and now they're not taking care of them sorry i'm i'm going on a whole rant but no no that's exactly how i was though it was like i was super open about body positivity but i wasn't super open about how i felt the world was against me because i was fat like i was i didn't really talk about that because it felt to me it felt like talking about it kind of sounded like a pity party so i just didn't do it um but it's just it's just how i felt and um it kind of it was a hard realization for me to come to that like in some ways the world actually was kind of against me because i was really fat and but there's a way to change it and so i just have to suck it up and realize that i was wrong which is a really hard thing for me to do and do something about it and um i did like i don't have a huge following on social media like on instagram i've had like a little over a thousand followers for a while um but i think at that point i did have some like fat acceptance people following me and um so that's why i was also kind of scared to post about it um and i did lose like some followers in that aspect but i didn't lose any like friends which was really nice like personal friends yeah um but and i was also scared because i was getting weight loss surgery that was like the big thing that i was also very terrified to tell people because there's such a weird stigma around it well and that's see and i i feel that that that stigma is uh strong on all sides right so say if you're someone like me or when like someone's like i lost it naturally natural natural like there are people that are like super like i did it the way i did it is the only way that is acceptable right so you're getting it from those people but then also like you're going to be getting it obviously from the health at every size fat acceptance because they literally like they think that weight loss surgery is like the worst thing that's on the face of the planet be worse and so yeah i'm like how did you get to that point of deciding to because you got the vsg right am i correct yeah yeah and so yeah so i okay so i knew when i got the news in the mail about my liver that i had tried losing weight so many times in my life which i know like everybody can relate to who has lost weight i felt that for me personally it was best to get some sort of medical intervention and um because i knew then for some reason i would take it more seriously i don't know why but i just knew that was going to be a thing that would help me um and i i was originally gonna get the um the lap band but then i found out my local clinic didn't do that because of the complications that came along with it yeah um and then i was also kind of thinking like okay if i'm going to go under once i just want to get it over with and be done um i don't want to have to keep getting things like readjusted and all that um so i um i went to my bariatric clinic i think like literally the next day after i decided i was having surgery i called my bariatric clinic and made an appointment um and they told me that they wouldn't do gastric bypass on someone like me because i wasn't super morbidly obese um and because i was so young and so i was easily like the youngest person in the program like whenever i'd go to like the support groups and stuff it would be like 50 60 year olds and then me um and which they a lot of them told me like they've they wished they would have done it when they were my age so that made me feel a little bit better no of course like yeah yeah when you get to that when you're that size and you're like you've especially if assuming they said if they wanted it when they were as young as you they've been that size for their whole lives like imagine on the things you miss out on and just probably the health issues that you they've probably had their whole lives like no one really wants that right that's the whole argument that's but sorry sorry yeah no it's okay and and i think too i got it excuse me my senior year of college yeah and so i wanted to be in a good spot to move after i was done with college and i knew that getting involved with the clinic and getting involved with surgery was just the right path for me to take um and it was certainly i don't regret it for a second but i also do not agree with that it's the easy way out at all because so so can i can i hear a little bit more about that like why why do you why is that yeah so i think everybody thinks when you go in for bariatric surgery like you just get the appointment scheduled and then that's it um but that is most definitely not the case um i had to go through a six-month weight management program before i got approved for surgery um and so i went in in february expecting like to maybe get surgery in like three months or so and they're like nope six like great i'm very impatient um and they also ideally want you to lose 10 of your body weight beforehand um because that shows the surgeons that you're ready to have this huge change and i was really kind of sad that i had to wait so long but i tell everybody like just go with it go with that program because it's going to help you so much in the long run like for me it completely flipped my relationship with food it realized that i it made me realize that i could lose weight uh and a significant amount of it because at the time i had only ever lost like 10 15 pounds here and there which for someone my size was not not a whole lot um and uh yeah so i and then you have to think about the fact that you're literally getting seven eighths of your stomach cut off your stomach is that of like an infant child when you wake up well i mean i like chicken nuggets so i mean i'm kind of same but you know you can't eat chicken nuggets until like three months out though like that's the sad part because i didn't eat real food like real food for three months i think yeah and so because i was on a two-week liquid diet after like right after i'll never drink gatorade again never um and then you move on to uh pureed stage so i like dabbled in baby food and uh just kind of ate a lot of mush and then you move on to soft foods and then solids so um but when you start moving to solids you take like three bites and you're like i'm done i can't really yeah it's the weirdest sensation um i don't know how to describe it to people who haven't gone through it um but yeah i actually got it because i did a video about my vsg thing and because i lost 40 pounds before surgery and they asked me like why i continued on with surgery after i had lost the 40 pounds which is a good question because i was kind of thinking that myself before i had surgery but a big part of it kind of came down to like not me not trusting myself um and that i needed that tool for the first like year or so of my weight loss um my weight loss journey i guess i hate that word yeah yeah um yeah i just had to be really honest with myself and realize that yes i've lost 40 pounds but i lost the 40 pounds to get surgery and yeah that that goal is like really important if you don't like yeah yeah so yeah it's it's really not the easy way out because after i'm about i'm almost two years out i can eat a pretty normal amount of food now and um i have like 20-ish more pounds than i'd like to lose and now it's a lot harder because my body's used to the way that my stomach is yeah with with the the surgery especially like vsg because that seems to be from what i've seen like one of the more popular ones especially recently yeah um it seems like a lot of people so people think that you get the surgery and then it's like rainbows and butterflies everything's super easy but i've seen a lot of people that end up gaining the weight back because like you said you can eat a normal amount of food now and so it seems like with vsg it's almost like it'll help you lose the weight but it's not really going to help you keep it off which arguably i mean i wouldn't even say arguably i personally think it is absolutely the hardest part of weight loss is keeping the weight off right yeah and so if you if you think this surgery and i think it's important i'm sure they had lots of talks with you about this like if you think this surgery is gonna be a magic bullet you get the surgery and then you can still eat ice cream and you know bon bons and you'll be good like obviously that's not the case especially two years later you can eat pretty much what you ate before so you i can't eat anything like i the only thing i can't consume too much is like sugary drinks so like i don't drink pop i don't drink um like fully sweetened i'm from the midwest so i call it pop um i don't i don't eat like sugar or i don't drink like fully sweetened drinks from starbucks anymore like because that makes me really nauseous but anything else i'm good and nothing ever really bothered my stomach either which was interesting but yeah so it's definitely not the easy way out i still consider myself having lost my weight naturally it really bothers me say that i didn't do it naturally um like i didn't get the fat sucked out of my body i just it still came off yeah but yeah and there's also a weird stigma about it when you're young because everybody thinks you're still like capable of doing it naturally yeah so yeah for me i mean i think that i think that i've always said and maybe you'll disagree with me and i'm not trying to call you out or anything but like for me i've always said like surgery should be like the last option like you you should really because i do think most people can do it without like i do think that and a lot of people like they might think because they've tried so many times that they just can't but in reality a lot of times the times that they've tried were no like it just wasn't gonna work even if they were able to stick to it right it wasn't sustainable and so but i mean i and i personally have have changed my viewpoints on it quite significantly since i first started losing weight i remember back in the day when i had uh when i first started my instagram i literally put like lost 150 i think it was like 150 pounds at that time in like a year and a half naturally right and like without surgery and again like i i do understand the people that are super against it that did lose it without the surgery and they feel like um if someone uh loses the weight that and they got surgery then it's not the same as them i understand that but at the end of the day like does it really matter you know um and then the the other thing and i think that what you're doing is really important is i do think if you did get the surgery it's important to disclose that and i know that in our dm's you let me know it was one of the first things you said to me was yeah i got surgery i just want to let you know yeah and i i think that's important to let people know what you've done to get to where you are because you know it's just i think just being honest is always is always super important um i'm kind of did you ever deal with any like i know you said you didn't talk about being like fat acceptance very much but did you ever deal with like any backlash or anyone say anything to you about you know getting surgery losing weight or anything like that on social media or in real life in anywhere okay uh social media no i didn't get anything which i'm very thankful for um i in real life i didn't get anything in terms of like the fat acceptance stuff because i was not really that public about it in real life um i just kind of did what i wanted to and didn't really tell anybody why i was a closet fat acceptance activist yeah yeah which i mean my i don't want to like i hope my video is not like misleading now but like it's just kind of how it was because i think there's a lot of them out there that like just don't aren't very public about it but they still think those beliefs anyway i got a lot of slack for getting surgery um and it wasn't directly towards me like members of my family expressed their concern to like my parents um because they thought that i could still do it naturally because i was so young and i i don't like well they're gonna watch this anyway i have a very supportive family so they're very excited about this whole situation um i just like i i know that the the the disapproval was there and the judgment was there and i think now that they've seen my success with it it's gone but in the beginning it was very very much there and it was kind of uncomfortable the only thing my like that kept me going in terms of family was that my parents were 100 on board um it was mainly extended family um yeah so in terms of the fat acceptance thing i did not get a lot of flack which i'm very grateful for because i knew it it could have happened and but in terms of surgery that was definitely yeah that was the thing that i dealt with especially and from people my age in college too i got some yeah yep a lot of times they were like physically fit like athletic types like in my classes and stuff and they thought it was easy and that i was just being lazy and i didn't want to actually put in the work so yeah i mean with people that have never that have zero experience with you know ever being super you know super overweight or ever trying to lose a significant amount of weight and and like feeling like you've you like failed so many times and and like you said like you had like literal issues that were going on like it's i'm not i'm not trying to give them a pass but it's like of course they don't understand you know like yeah no i yeah and i went into announcing to people that i was having surgery with the full mindset that i was going to get that and so i was prepared but i was strong enough in my decision that it didn't change anything because i i had done my research and i knew that it was the best route for me to take basically so yeah yeah so i guess like to end this video so like what i always like to kind of like ask people at the end is like if there was one piece of advice that you would you know give to someone that was in maybe in your position uh when you were at the start of your journey like you know what would you say to that person do what's best for you [ __ ] what other people think i kept my cursing to a minimum so just allow me that one um and only do what's best for you because in the end that's all you have all the time is you and your body and no matter what age you are it's okay to admit that you need to lose weight and no matter how you do it it's valid well thank you so much for coming on um i'll make sure that we have the uh your your channel listed in the description uh yeah but yeah thank you so much for for coming on thank you for having me this is cool i hope i wasn't disappointing because i'm just like a graphic designer that lost weight [Music] [Applause] [Music] obey the warning signs and when there are flashing lights or wig wags don't attempt to cross until they come to a complete stop

Channel: ObesetoBeast

Views: 97,654

Rating: 4.9635291 out of 5

Keywords: john glaude, fat loss, weight loss, obesetobeast, health at every size

Id: VhGoryDsOOM

Length: 30min 18sec (1818 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020