This is the fourth in a series of guest posts about being fat and female in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Please consider contributing your own post by emailing [email protected].
By: Tamie Heaton
I spent years of willpower and energy on weight loss. I learned a lot about health, exercise and nutrition but didn’t experience sustained weight loss (keeping a significant amount of weight off for more than 5 years). I began to mistrust my body with its lack of responsiveness. God seemed as unresponsive as my body and I felt a growing resentment towards those who seemed to be experiencing the responsiveness that eluded me.
I wrestled with this for years and my understanding of God’s role in my life matured. I began to have more compassion and gratitude for my body and more understanding of the complexities of weight loss. My heart opened to the huge variation of experiences that people are having with their own bodies and spirits.
This wisdom helped but even with the self compassion I had learned I still worried about how the extra weight could affect my long term health. My body continued to resist weight loss efforts and hopelessness began to grip me. I kept seeking answers and when a doctor recommended an insurance approved bariatric surgery it felt like a good path for me.
As I lost weight after surgery people treated me differently. This validated my suspicion that, in our world, a lot of women’s power is in their smallness. While feeling elated about being smaller and more comfortable in my body an awareness was also growing in me at the unfairness, judgment and even exploitation my bigger self had endured.
A few things I noticed:
- I had to say “excuse me” much less. Strangers would notice me, let me pass or apologize for accidentally blocking my path. I had felt almost invisible before.
- People listened to me with more interest and respect.
- Some women distanced themselves from me. It was painful to realize they had taken some comfort in my extra weight. It’s not easy to disengage from the unspoken beauty contest the world enrolls us in.
- Some considered my path cheating or even immoral. Some assumed my motivation was vanity. How did our opinions about health become so morally supercharged? I continue to be grateful to those who offered understanding and support.
- I appreciated people’s kind comments but it was alarming how many compliments felt overly fervent. It gave me empathy for those experiencing massive communal validation for anorexia and other eating disorders. Thinness has been held up like a false God sending the message that even self harm can be justified for a thin outcome.
I will always be grateful for those years after surgery where I felt free of the insanity of trying and failing to lose weight. I made some incredible memories with my family, enjoyed a more comfortable body and more respect.
That familiar dread is simmering in me now as my body has adjusted and I’ve begun regaining weight. It might not feel as discouraging if I hadn’t come to realize for myself how much more kind the world is to thin women. Even if we don’t outright say it, we might think that someone who is fat (especially a woman) is unattractive, selfish, lacks self restraint, is kind of dumb, possibly mean and may even just be a bad person.
We reinforce the ideal of thin women being righteous in our culture in many ways, one of which is through art. I sat in the temple chapel for years waiting to start the endowment (a place to be reminded of my eternal worth) while observing a mural portraying all women in the scene with what seemed like the same young and thin model. The men in the mural had much more diversity in size, age and features.
Fat shaming goes beyond church culture. You might start to notice, if you haven’t already, that most mean and stupid villains (not smart villains) are often portrayed as fat in our media.
I’ve found these stereotypes are almost always wrong. Some of the best humans I know struggle with weight and have shown more discipline, unselfishness and kindness than anyone I’ve known. Their struggle has given them generous grace and empathy. They have a unique ability to find humor in life and often live with a deeper passion.
How can we shed our stereotypes?
- We can be self aware enough to admit when our own beliefs and judgements are part of the problem.
- We can reframe our idea of beauty. Many body sizes can be beautiful, healthy and sexy. I’m grateful for any efforts in our media and aesthetics to portray more variation in sizes to help us see beyond current stereotypical beauty.
- We can empower all women with more confidence when we listen to, value, and include them. I’ve observed that confidence can transform a woman of any size into a beautiful creature.
- We can resist the temptation to blame people for their weight. I want to say more about this one.
It’s not us, it’s you.
Our society has experienced decades of diets and exercise programs that have largely failed us. We’ve been bombarded with the reply that “it’s not our problem if our program doesn’t work. It’s your problem.”
Just as the same diet plan doesn’t work for everyone, I’ve learned that the same spiritual formulas don’t work for everyone. One example is the promise of getting a spiritual witness when we pray about the Book of Mormon. When this formula fails someone, we too often say they must not have enough faith or they must not have wanted it enough or sacrificed enough. We are essentially giving the diet plan answer; “It’s not us, it’s you.”
There may be some truth in that response but not nearly as often as we may think. Our health is our responsibility. Our faith is our responsibility. But our institutions also have a responsibility to get us accurate information that accounts for a wide variety of human experience. We need them to avoid empty promises and over simplistic formulas that end up placing blame on the participants. There are often factors beyond our comprehension or control that can influence how we personally lose weight or how we personally experience God.
I don’t weigh myself as often as I used to and I continue to mistrust any one-size-fits-all formula. I strive for health but I’m at the mercy of genetics, hormones, inflammation, food supply and who knows what other factors beyond my ability to control. I also don’t measure my spirituality with lists of practices as if there’s a perfect spiritual BMI to achieve. I strive for a stronger relationship with God but I’m at the mercy of my biases, neuropathways, triggers, mental health and who knows what other factors beyond my ability to control.
The scriptures teach us to submit as a child (Mosiah 3:19). They remind us God’s ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). We can’t possibly comprehend the complexities of weight loss, let alone the complexities of eternity. To me the term “submit” has come to mean that I should keep trying but with enough humility to recognize how much is out of my comprehension and control. We are all eternal beings with temporal minds and bodies who need God’s amazing grace.
I hope others are having this same realization. I hope we can all give and receive more grace, shed damaging stereotypes and flood this world with more empathy and empowerment. I see evidence of this in my husband who has witnessed my journey with compassion, trust and support, always treating me as beautiful. I see it in my children and their generation who have a more radical grace and acceptance than we ever did at their age.
I believe in a brighter future. I believe science will bring more enlightenment to healthy weight loss. I believe continuing revelation will bring more enlightenment to healthy spirituality.
I won’t be hopping on a scale anytime soon but this is me weighing in on the topic.
Guest author Tamie Heaton lives in Utah with her husband and High School sweetheart Ryan. They have four young adult sons. She enjoys teaching ballroom dance to children, walking with friends, playing pickleball, taking naps and savoring the kind of carbs that are worth it. She really wants to like gardening but doesn’t yet.
(Main image from unsplash.com and i yunmai)
9 Responses
As a larger bodied woman and a woman of color, I have seen my body used as a political tool too. If I am not thin, I am stealing from the government. Try sitting in a Family Home Evening gathering and having a priesthood holder that is loved and respected by the community, open with the statement, “Do you know why so many Indians are fat? They are getting too much money for food from the government!” I tried to remain calm as did the Māori woman sitting next to me. We kindly corrected him on his FoxNews political agenda, because it was a church setting. Someday in the future, I am certain God will thank us for not screaming in a church setting at this “fine example of the Priesthood.”
After having survived open heart surgery for a genetic heart defect, Ward members congratulated me on my weight loss. However, people of color would come up to me with shock and horror on their faces and say, “You must have been so sick!” Much of what we think about weight is solely based on our culture and political point of view. Neither one is inspired by our worth as daughters of God
There are so many times I have wanted to scream in a church setting, but refrained! You deserve a special place in heaven for being calm after hearing that.
I have also noticed people congratulating women on losing weight when the reason they’ve done so isn’t good. (They are so stressed they haven’t been eating, they’re deathly ill, they’re succumbing to an eating disorder.) I have lost weight purposefully and had people comment on how great I look, and thought to myself, “Did I not look good 6 months ago?” (Because no one ever comes up and tell you how great you look when you’ve gained weight.) I have committed to never, ever comment on someone’s weight ever again unless they specifically bring it up and tell me it is a good thing that brought on the weight loss. (And even then, my response is: “Well, you look great now – and you looked amazing before. You always look amazing! You’re one of the coolest person I know at any weight.”)
We just need to give women opportunities and options beyond just looking pretty. I think that would go a long way to solve the issue of unwanted comments on body and weight. Give us something else to discuss about the women in our lives besides what they weigh!
At the beginning of my first pregnancy, I lost about 15 pounds because I was barfind so much. It was incredibly unhealthy, considering I should have been nourishing the fetus and me and instead we felt like we were starving and unable to keep anything down! But…the number of compliments on my body I got (mostly from people who had no idea I was pregnant and barfing regularly). It really made me think about exactly what you’re saying. It’s my body and why do people feel the need to judge it based on their own ideas of what they think “health” looks like? They’re wrong!
I never comment on people’s bodies either. I have no idea what’s going on for them.
Also, late in my 3rd pregnancy, the baby was measuring small in lots of ways and my belly wasn’t growing as much as normal and the doctor was really nervous about it all and I was having to have 3 doctor’s appointments a week to check on the baby. People regularly would say things like (in a very positive voice), “I can’t believe you’re 8 months pregnant, you don’t look it at all” … Yeah, exactly. I’m incredibly worried about this unborn baby and spending tons of time stressing about why she isn’t growing. So…maybe you should hold that positive voice to yourself as it just doesn’t apply here. Thanks anyway.
Wow, apparently I’m really passionate about this because I feel like I could keep typing about it for another thirty minutes. But it’s my body! It’s not your job to judge it!
I started at the bottom of the comments and read Abby’s first, then I wrote my big response, then read Cynthia’s comment. Super fascinating about the cultural differences! Thanks so much for sharing
I understand your experience. I’ve always been a bit “heavy”. I’ve excercised, learned about nutrition, portion size, I have not eaten fast food in years. My parents started lecturing me about my weight around age 11. All I can say is if I had put the mental energy I’ve spent contemplating my body weight towards cancer research, I would probably have figured out a cure. In my early 40’s I took up ultra running and finally weight came off. I was stunned at how differently I was treated. Suddenly people were much kinder, far more respectful. And a lot more friendly! Most shocking of all, my performance reviews at work went way up. I enjoyed it all but did think, “I’m exactly who I was before. All this has come from a change in my appearance”. It also required running around 50 miles a week, mostly over mountains, plus pilates classes and weight training. I really enjoyed running but it did not leave time for much else in my life. I had friends suddenly drop me, usually with a snarky remark about how snobby I’ve become … Talking with other runners I was told that sadly, that’s normal. A lot of people needed me to be overweight for them. Then I hit menopause and hormone changes hurt my ability to run. And then there were three bouts of COVID, all of which sidelined working out with several months recovery time. Despite healthy eating my weight is creeping back. I recently returned to ultra running but my postmenopausal body is stubborn about hanging on to weight. However looking backwards I can see that the moment running came to be about weight loss instead of challenge/enjoyment was the moment my runnning started to fall apart. I want to be beautiful but I so not want to exist only to please others via my appearance. I want to work out for health, to be strong and active and have adventure, not to fit notions pushed by a problematic fashion industry or patriarchal culture. My body will do what it’s biology dictates but how I feel is controlled by me.
All these articles about weight loss and health recently is reminding me of this study that measured the effect of a mission on women’s health. We are told that missionary service for women is optional but I’ve never seen why–there’s also been an incredibly vague response as to why women can’t just knock the mission out of their life as soon as possible. I can see from the footnotes that a review board from BYU was involved in this study, and I’m pretty sure the church would give informed consent about health for women, including prospects for their reproductive future (the age change made fertility plummet at astonishing rates and it has never recovered–I know a woman who developed ovarian cancer and died because she never developed the protective horomones for it that come with pregnancy–infertility can be a big deal), but hold back either for the men’s sake or perhaps the program as a whole so people aren’t discouraged, or to avoid excessively scrutiny.
I don’t want my comment to be auto deleted if I put in a website so I’ll break it up: the typical https, double backslash, worldwideweb acronymn, ncbi.nlm.nih dot gov, slash pmc, slash articles, slash PMC (with the following number) 9026757–In spite of the title, all of the people surveyed were from our church’s sister missionary program as you’ll see in the notes
The US government did a study on how hard sister missionary work is on women’s health, more young women need to be informed of what health risks they are taking. Here are the results: 61.5% didn’t have enough to eat in high income developed countries, whereas those who went to lower income underdeveloped countries had more food 43% (yes, you read that right–I didn’t serve a mission, perhaps cost of living is higher so there’s less for food, maybe there’s more pressure to diet?). Consequently this affected their weight gain and loss (I remember my brother saw my sister in her mission area and called my mom to report that she was now scary skinny and he was worried about her–this sister had worked with people with eating disorders and fought against them professionally, so it wasn’t an eating disorder, just the realities of the mission–that’s not to say sisters don’t develop eating disorders, there’s a documentary out there about that and the pressure to be skinny, and I’ve seen sister missionaries competitively dieting firsthand when my husband was ward mission leader). The amount that exercised more than they did pre-mission was around 41% (area didn’t make a statistical difference)–this is huge because when I was 18 I was running around campus and biking to work, on top of exercise classes and dances and other social events happening all the time, so to increase it is crazy. Missionaries are told to exercise as if walking and biking everywhere were not enough–perhaps to release more endorphins for mental health–honestly I’ve just seen more sisters tired than before once they upped the exercise level, like lost their glow and depressed (not trying to critique the church, maybe it works just fine for the men or people who need those endorphins?). As you can imagine those that gained weight were disatisfied more than those who lost weight–they have this chart where the disastifaction is: 55% for gaining, 5% for losing weight, and 4% for maintaining weight. Despite getting more calories in third world countries, many lost the ability to menstrate (attributed to excessive exercise in these countries), which can negatively affect bone health. A lot of these countries had an imbalanced food system. They had more than double the odds of experiencing secondary amenorrhea (and it appears that around 1/4 of them served in those places). I could not find a percentage, but it appears to be at least 1/3 of all serving sisters.
Sorry, “excessive scrutiny”. If the church isn’t going to explain why women need to wait a year to seriously consider why a mission might not be good for all women’s health, I thought I might as well provide a possible reason. I hope it doesn’t make people mad.
To be fair, I do give them credit for recently releasing a study on thechurchnews done up at U of U that showed that sister missionaries, although they were more disciplined at school, were less likely to complete a college degree. At BYU back in 2005, we were shown in a class of mine the spirituality level of REs and RSMs as part of a study and the spirituality level for RSMs was much lower. This wasn’t their intention, the powerpoint show was supposed to highlight how much more righteous RMs were in general–but I was astounded at the gap between the elders and sisters, so I made a comment how I wasn’t convinced because hello, look at the women, and the professor said the conductors of the study only cared about the overall numbers. Something wasn’t going right in their experience, maybe they were experiencing more doubts and pressure–I was like we need to talk about this, but Mr. Professor only cared about the narrative. I haven’t looked at those studies since, but I’m mentioning them because women need informed consent about what missions will and won’t do for them.
I’m an old timer, so things might have changed a lot, but when I served a mission, the Elders had dinner invites every night, but the sisters could go weeks without an invite. I am going to assume that people felt the Elders were incapable of feeding themselves properly, but that Sisters were expected to know how to feed themselves. The more wealthy an area, and I do mean big bucks here, the fewer the invites for the Sisters. We would beg to be sent to poorer areas because people realized that we didn’t have money, even if we could cook. I had means of boiled macaroni and Kool-aide among the poor, but zero, zilch, nothing among the wealthy.
“Some women distanced themselves from me. It was painful to realize they had taken some comfort in my extra weight. It’s not easy to disengage from the unspoken beauty contest the world enrolls us in.”
“One example is the promise of getting a spiritual witness when we pray about the Book of Mormon. When this formula fails someone, we too often say they must not have enough faith or they must not have wanted it enough or sacrificed enough. We are essentially giving the diet plan answer; ‘It’s not us, it’s you.’”
Such power and clarity in these insights, Tamie. Thank you so much for sharing your story.