DemonKia
Posts: 5521
Joined: 10/13/2007
From: Chico, Nor-Cali
Status: offline
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FR -- after reading thru the thread to this point . . . .
LOL -- what a great thread for displaying all kinds of stuff about people . .. . . . Thanks everyone for your contributions . . . . . . For the impatient & etc, my actual answer to the specific question is at the bottom of this rather lengthy posting; in between are thoughts brought up by the rest of the thread's postings, & I color-coded it all, sorta, hehehe . . . . .
& to be really really really clear about what follows: I mostly don't complain. I mostly don't care what others find attractive or not. & I pretty much only talk about myself, so if you somehow think I'm talking about you in the following, well, that's just something you're doing with & to yourself . . .. . . lol
& you poor poor things that do wade thru the following, this thread unleashed a lot of stuff -- you've been warned . . . . lol
When I was 18 my mother gave me a wonderful book that really helped me figure out a lot of stuff about my relationship with my body, food, & etc: 'Diets Don't Work' . . . . It's a workbook that asks questions & expects the user of it to journal their stuff . . . . . . Thumbs way up . . . . Won't necessarily cause one to 'lose weight' but will help to figure a lot of the mental & social stuff around food & weight & etc out for oneself . . . . . .
Cuz there's way more to it than the simplicity of 'eat less, exercise more' that's frequently presented . . . . . My favorite example is a headline I stole from a tabloid many years ago: 3 Simple Steps To Weight Loss -- (1) Deal With Your Emotional Stuff, (2) Eat Less, & (3) Exercise More. It's that first step that's a doozy . . . . . . lol . . .
In my case the biggest impediment to my maintaining something approaching a 'normal body size' is that I don't 'feel safe' when I'm less than obese . . . . . My fat body says 'no' for me far more effectively than I've been able to in the past; funnily enough, this is something that BDSM & identifying as dominant has been really helping me with . . .. . I'm feeling 'able' to be a smaller (& dangerously more desirable) size than I ever before have been . . . . . . . .
I'm an over-eater, with a serious sucrose addiction that I've been working on quitting for some time now . . . . . . Just like the tobacco I gave up in '94, I'm sure I'll beat the sugar thing too: I've quit it over & over & one of these days it'll stick . . . . . .
But I long ago gave up on having the lean-mean-beauty-machine body so desired by the mass culture -- partly cuz I know that even some of those pretty-young-things will be fighting the fat as they age . . . . . lol . . . . (Yep, I'm a big schaudenfreudesque meanie in that regard . . . . . ) & partly cuz I haven't been into devoting the 3 to 6+ hours a day it would take for me to achieve that goal . .. . . Nor do I want to eat quite the restricted diet that's necessary to cut body fat way down . . . . . .
Instead, I focus on being 'fit' which is only loosely correlated with body size . . . . The self-competive judgementals I indulge in are things like being able to: comfortably bend over & tie my shoes; walk 'fast'; walk a fast mile & be reasonably comfortable at its end; carry 20 or 40 pounds of groceries, et alia, home, on foot over about a 3/4 mile; & on & on .. . . . One of my favorite 'mean' things to do is to invite some ostensible 'size bigot' who thinks they know something about my level of fitness based on my exterior to go for a hike with me in our lovely Bidwell Park, hehehehe . . . . . . Most of those I've managed to wrangle into that have been hiked into the ground . . . . . I'm not so fabulously fast but I've got beaucoup stamina . . . . . lol
I've been working out with intent since 1991 . . . . . . & I'm pretty much the same size I was then . . . . . Maybe I average 20 or 30 pounds lighter than I started . . . . . . BUT. I set out to get in better shape, not to lose weight. That's an ancillary goal. My true goal, that I have only briefly touched in the years since, is to be able to comfortably run a mile, do a dozen pull-ups, & similar, but I'm undissuaded from my pursuit of that goal . . . . . So. One point I've learned is that physical fitness is an ongoing dynamic, & those who are marvelously fit now may not stay that way, & vice versa . . . . .
&, for me, it's absolutely necessary that I have lots of ways to be physical -- I get bored easily, so I need to change stuff up on a regular basis. I walk, bicycle, rollerblade, skateboard, hike, dance & swim. I also do calisthenic & isotonic things, but not in that kinda P.E. class kinda way (I hate the counting repetitive movements thing -- spit, spit, spit) . . . . So I incorporate them into doing stuff around the house, dancing around the house to music, sitting at my desk (sitting doesn't have to be static), & so on . . . . . . For instance, I mostly walk to the store for groceries, & if I'm carrying bags home (rather than pulling the old-lady shopping cart), I lift the bags all the way home, front, back, sides . . . . . . . THANK GAWD FOR MY iPOD!!!!!!!! I love my iPod for just this reason, it makes walking a joy . . .. . . ..
Personally, it's always seemed pretty obvious to me that a big chunk of the 'obesity epidemic' was the long slow result of going from 95% of the population walking an average of some 20 miles a day before cars, to our current lifestyles where walking (or other 'exercise') is something special we have to make room for in our 'over-crowded' lives . . .. . . & particularly acutely I wanna point out that this is the peculiarly American 'disease', this allergy to the movement of the body . . . . . . For example, my family & I live in a mobile-home park, about fifty feet from the central compound where the mailboxes, laundry room, & recycle-bins & over-flow garbage containers are located: we regularly marvel at the many residents we watch get into their cars & drive literally 50 or a hundred feet rather than walk that distance, to check mail, or do laundry / garbage chores . . . ..
But I'm biased, cuz I quit driving in '96 -- in large part because I couldn't afford to go to the gym, or more exactly I couldn't afford to pay for a babysitter while I went to the gym . . . . . & you wouldn't believe what a tightwad I can be, hehehehe . . . . . Trading the expense of the car lifestyle for the costs of public transit, bicycles, et alia, oh *rubs hands, salivates*, we still have only spent about 3 years worth of 'car costs' in the succeeding nearly 13 years on everything -- buses, bicycles, skates, walking shoes . . . . . . I'd never go back just on the cost thing alone: I'd only ever do the car thing if it paid me to own it . . . . . LOL
&, also, getting the school-age offspring out of the car lifestyle did them a huge favor . . . . . . I was very unhappy with how they were getting fat, too, but voila, all the exercise -- much of it joint family exercise of walking to the grocery store & etc -- really helped turn that stuff around . . . . All three still have a little bit of chubbiness, but they're all much fitter & none drives -- they all bicycle, walk, etc, now that they're adults . . . . . Habits is habits.
Oh. & for the record, I'm 5' 9" & about 190-200 these days -- tho' I can piss out 10 pounds just from water weight, I drink a lot of water . . . . . . I've been losing, & gaining, & losing weight these last coupla years -- in Dec. I was around 240, but some terrible stuff happened in my life & I basically didn't eat for a month or two, & that dropped an easy 20 or so pounds, & I've been working on 'rolling out' of that space & using that momentum . . .. . . & always, going thru my emotional muck . . . . . lol . . . . Currently I'm moving into a 'good space' about my diet & exercise, coming out of a coupla year bad spell of depression & declining desire to move my bod' . . . . . . .
& also for the record, in '99 I got evaluated by the lab that the local college has for the exercise physiology students: I was stress-tested on a treadmill, with a breathing bag to evaluate VO2 uptake, & I was water-weighed for my fat percentile -- which was, I think, about 32%. Yes, I'd like it lower. I'd be perfectly happy to get it to around 28%. But the teacher of the class, an MD -- cardiologist, actually, I think -- discussed my case with the students as an example of what they would see in someone like a discus thrower. Made me feel good, lol . . . . . . & I spend a certain amount of time on maintaining my upper body muscle mass, & I'm one of those stealth muscley types -- under the visible fat there's a lot of muscle & I put the muscle on pretty easy . . . . . But that also feeds into the following . . . . ..
I wanna go on record that losing weight tends to make me feel like shit -- I can definitely 'feel' my body resisting the weight loss (which -- duh! -- is what it's evolutionarily set for; 'easy' weight loss would have been a clear loser over our evolutionary history where scarce, hard to acquire calories were the norm rather than the current US environment of cheap & relatively easy to acquire calories being the usual state of affairs) & I can feel the toll that the released 'toxins' are wreaking on my system . . . . . .
To cope with this reality, I focus on very slow, very gradual changes in exercise increase & weight loss; drinking a lot of water, typically about 4 liters in the winter & at least 8 or so in the summer, & I rarely drink sodas or that kinda thing -- daily I drink a little black or green tea, & more herbal tea (peppermint & ginger, mostly), all teas drunk plain & unsweetened by preference, & a serving or two a day of OJ (fucking love orange juice, & I could practically marry tangerine juice, mmmmmmmmmmmm); increasing my fruit & veggie intake; getting plenty of rest; & otherwise treating myself very well around this issue . . . . .
& increasing my exercise load also comes with certain trade-offs. First of all, for me, it hurts to work out. It also helps with my pain issues (arthritis kindsa stuff), but it also has its pains. Amongst other things, I have life-long issues with leg-cramping, & when I up the work-out load the leg cramps visit me fiercely . . . . . It helps to up my potassium bearing food uptake -- OJ & bananas & more fruit in general . . . . . But I also frequently get all kinds of little pains & strains, most of which disappear after a while. Usually just mentally focusing on increasing blood-flow to the area, working on my breathing to increase VO2 uptake, & adhering to tight physical form & very conscious use of my body will get me thru the initial aches & pains that pop up pretty much most times that I go out & walk or skate or whatever . . .. . .
The flip side is that I also feel icky when I'm in a more slothful, weight-gaining phase . . . . . . I hate the feeling of being incapacitated by my own body, plus I do feel 'intoxicated', even 'poisoned' by the creeping weight & all the 'groceries' I'm bringing in that aren't being matched by an equivalent amount of 'garbage' going out . . . . .
Ummm, also I think there's a huge distinction between accepting fat people & applauding being obese . . . . . For me, it was very important to get into a space of loving myself in order to get out of my self-destructive, even quasi-suicidal, behaviors around my eating & exercise & such . . . . . . I pretty much only thrive & really bloom under loving care; the hating thing works for others, I guess, but all it does for me is drive me in the opposite direction . . . . . . Gentleness is one of my watchwords in most matters . . . . . .
Ah. As to the actual question:
I actually do think that there are ways & places in which BDSM can be a more accepting space about people's bodies -- all the play parties & 'public' dungeons I've gone to have been places where I can run around scantily clad & or naked & be appreciated. Outside of nudist colonies & Burning Man, I'm hard-pressed to think of other places where I can strut around & feel desired (inclusive of admiring looks from others) when wearing darn little to no clothing . . . .
It's true that here on CM it's easy for people to display a level of pickiness they may not even actually follow thru in real life, but in real life BDSM interactions I've found that not only is there quite a bit of 'fat acceptance', some places & people actually demand fat acceptance as part of polite conduct . . . . . (SinfulCat in Sac, when running her Sindulgences space specifically had fat tolerance as a requirement to attend play parties, for example . . . . . . )
Oh, & rather random side-note: as a rope top, I like tying up the chubby as much as the thin . . . . . I like the way the chub oozes around the rope, I find it very aesthetically appealing all on its own . . .. . & tittie bondage is the bomb on big pendulous titties -- the tiny ones can't even begin to compete . . . . . lol . . . . Obviously purely le opinion de moi, as is most of the above . . . . . . .
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Snarko ergo sum.
The Verbossinator
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RE: Are BDSMers better at size acceptance? - 
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