Review of Health at Every Size and Size Acceptance

What is Health At Every Size and what does it have to do with you? And once you know about Health at Every Size, where do you go next?

Health At Every Size (for the rest of this article we'll refer to it as HAES) is an ideology based around three central components.

1.) Accepting yourself. This is an important and major factor. Instead of concentrating on what's flawed about your body, what's wrong refocus on accepting what you have.

2.) Physical activity. Engage in activities that make you happy and that you enjoy. Don't torture yourself with exercise that you hate. Do you love to dance? Do you love to take a long walk outside? Don't let other people tell you what you have to do, listen to your body and your heart.

3.) Eating. Make peace with food. How many of us are battling daily with food? Chastising ourselves when we have that dessert? Or skip the salad and have the bread?

HAES supports the idea that it is natural and okay not to be in the small spectrum of what mainstream medicine considers healthy. HAES leaves room for everyone.

Why is this important?

Regardless of whether you're fat, thin or in between there are a whole lot of people who will tell you that your body is not what it is supposed to be. Rather than creating a culture of fear and self loathing, HAES teaches a way to self love and better self esteem.

Naturally, what comes next is an introduction to the size acceptance movement. Many people mistake the Size Acceptance movement as people advocating being unhealthy and that is absolutely not the case. What the size acceptance movement proposes is that we strip the moral imperative away from what we do or don't do with our bodies and accept each other.

No one wants to be discriminated against for any reason, organizations like the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination work to try and change the perceptions of and attitudes towards weight. That goes for everyone, not just fat people. As they (and many others are quick to point out) there is an enormous amount of diversity when it comes to the human body. Out there in the real world we come in all shapes sizes and colors and should not be discriminated against because we don't fit the mainstream mold of what a human body is supposed to look like.

Especially as a woman in this world, it behooves you to learn about these organizations and ideals because, we are all under the thumb of an often unattainable standard of beauty. We need to learn better ways of caring for ourselves and keeping ourselves healthy.

What can you do?

Not everyone is an activist and that's perfectly all right there are many things you as an individual can do to further the Size Acceptance movement.

Learn more about Health at Every Size and talk about it with your doctor. Make your doctor aware of this and see if he or she can't help you on your way to being happy and healthy at the size you are. If your doctor is one of the many who don't take the idea seriously, demand that they do. Demand that regardless of your weight you get proper care.

Learn to change how you view your own body and the bodies of other people. Instead of focusing on the "bad" teach yourself to see the beauty in a diverse population. Look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you will most likely never be Hollywood thin, and accept that. Love that.

Start reading. There are a lot of excellent body image related blogs and other online resources you can read. From personal blogs to feminism blogs. Please feel free to check the links at the end of this article for more reading.

Get involved. Interrupt sizeism when you hear it. Don't laugh at the "fat lady jokes", don't let people make back handed comments to you. When someone says, "you'd be so pretty if you lost weight" or the like tell them you are just fine exactly how you are. If someone says something rude call them on it.

The bottom line is that in this world where we are all subject to standards perhaps 1% of the population can live up to, it's time we spoke up for ourselves and our rights. Everyone deserves to be happy and healthy no matter what. That means you.