I've got a perfect body, but sometimes I forget. I've got a perfect body, 'cause my eyelashes catch my sweat- regina spektor

What is fat talk week?

1st watch this video

Clara said, “One day at a dance, people were calling me fat. I ran to the bathroom, crying so much that I ran into the door. Hearing girls laughing behind, I race into a stall and stay there for about ten minutes, to afraid to come out. Finally, when I thought I had cried myself out, I walked out of the bathroom and splashed my face with water. On the mirror was a note: “Honey, stand up for yourself. You are BEAUTIFUL! www.operationbeautiful.com" I took this note down, and it has changed my whole life. THANK YOU!”


real twitters from one college sorority:
"Yay, room is booked...now to lose half my body weight stat."

"I need to lose some weight before the NYC trip. I'm going for the skeletor look."

"Lesson of the day: thin to win."

"But I had to eat it because I only had one meal today. Ok I'm shutting up now. I'm sure I will continue to lose weight. One meal won't stop that."

"Fasted yesterday. How much weight did I lose? Fricking NONE!!! ARRGH!!!

"I was happy when I was thin."

"Ate too much. Feeling fat. Thinking thin. Starvation diet in place."

"Surviving on bread. Feel so thin already. HuHu!"

The struggle with the “Thin Ideal”

taken from www.endfattalk.com

She’s your mother, your daughter. She’s your neighbor or your best friend. No matter what you call her or the role she plays in your life… she’s a woman. And if she’s like most women, she’s struggled with body image dissatisfaction at one time in her life.

The term “body image” is used to describe how someone feels about his or her body. It’s about more than just physical appearance; it’s about one’s psychological thoughts and feelings, too. “Do I look okay? Am I pretty enough? Do I even fit in here? If I could just lose 5 more pounds or tone my thighs, I know they’d like me…”

Unfortunately, women everywhere are burdened with thoughts of negative body image—the thought that they might not measure up to the “thin ideal.” And these thoughts are only confirmed by retailers, magazine articles, runway models, TV commercials and movie trailers, who perpetuate an unattainable—and certainly unhealthy—ideal body type.

• Did you know that Barbie, the best selling fashion doll in the world, has unattainable and unhealthy body proportions? If she were alive, her waist would be smaller than patients with anorexia nervosa, and she would be unable to menstruate (Dittmar, Halliwell, & Ive, 2006). Research has shown that very young girls (ages 5-7) who are exposed to Barbie have lower body esteem and want a thinner body than they have.

• Did you know that fashion models are thinner than 98% of women in the United States (Smolak, 1996)? According to the National Eating Disorders Association, the average woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds. Yet not surprisingly, the average model is 5’11” tall and weighs only 117 pounds.
• Did you know that more than half of American girls ages 18-25 would rather be hit by a truck than be fat? More than two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid. In her 2007 book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Courtney Martin notes that 90% of high-school-aged girls think they are overweight.

It’s been suggested that body image dissatisfaction in females is a key factor in predicting unhealthy weight control behaviors as well as the development of some eating disorder symptoms. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychological disorder and are one of the most prevalent disorders found in young women (Fairburn, Cooper, Doll, Norman, & O’Connor, 2000).

So whether she’s your sister or your coworker, a girl in your class or just a woman you know… it’s likely that she’s struggled with body image – just like you. Why should you care? Because we believe that body image is neither a sorority issue nor a collegiate issue. Body image dissatisfaction is a women’s issue. ‘And we believe it’s time to take a stand.

Would you believe?

81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat. 51% of 9 and 10 year old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet.
(Mellin LM, Irwin CE & Scully S, 1992)

Per Time Magazine, there is an 80% chance she has been on at least one diet by the time she is in fourth grade.

In the United States...

More than 2/3 of women ages 18-25 would rather be mean or stupid than be fat and over 50% would rather be hit by a truck.
(Martin, 2007)

1 in 4 women have avoided engaging in a physical activity or sport because they feel badly about the way they look.
(Dove, Beyond Stereotypes: Rebuilding the Foundation of Beauty Beliefs)

According to a national survey, 60% of adolescent girls are currently trying to lose weight(1) and more than 50% have engaged in unhealthy weight control behaviors such as fasting, skipping meals, vomiting or smoking in the past year(2). Girls who use dangerous weight control behaviors like vomiting are more likely to attempt suicide(3).
(1)http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/yrbs/pdf/yrbss07_mmwr.pdf; (2)Neumark-Sztainer, Story, Hannan, Perry, & Irving, 2002; (3)Crow, Eisenberg, Story, & Neumark-Sztainer, 2008)

Adolescent girls who are less satisfied with their bodies engage in less physical activity.
(Neumark-Sztainer, Paxton, Hannan, Haines, & Story, 2006)

Fashion models are thinner than 98% of women.
(Smolak, 1996)

As many as 10 million females are suffering from anorexia or bulimia. That's more than are suffering from breast cancer.
(National Eating Disorder Association)

Today I promise to eliminate Fat Talk from conversations with my friends, my family and myself.

Starting now, I will strive for a healthy ideal, which I know looks different for every woman, and focuses on health, not weight or size.

I will celebrate the things about myself and the women in my life that have nothing to do with how we look.

I decide to end Fat Talk NOW!

click to sign pledge

We need more of this:

On its own, the picture may not seem that incredible, but after flipping through 193 pages of uniform sample-size models, the image is striking. Rather than thinning her via Photoshop or having her sit in an unnatural pose, the model is shown with a bit of belly hanging over her underwear and slightly-bulging thighs, looking happy and genuinely confident. As Leive says, we've gotten to the point where showing a woman with folds in her skin or a belly that sticks out (who isn't in a "before and after" feature) is a radical move for a women's magazine, even though that's what every woman actually sees in the mirror every day.

Leive identifies the model as 20-year-old Lizzi Miller, who is "size 12-14 and avid softball player/belly dancer." Miller says of the fan mail she's receiving:

"When I read them I got teary-eyed!" she says. "I've been that girl, flipping through magazines trying to find just one person who looked a little bit like me. And when I didn't find it I would start to think there's something wrong with the way that I looked. When J. Lo and Beyoncé came out and were making curves sexy, I started to accept myself more. It's funny, but just seeing them look and feel sexy enabled me to do the same"

The November issue of Glamour is highlighting "real sized" women.


My Story

Growing up, I was naturally thin... minus my early childhood ( 30lbs at 6 months!!) haha yikes. I never had to worry about weight. However, I moved to fresno and it seemed like everyone was asking, "how are you so thin? what do you eat? etc". I had never really thought about those things before.. I never had to. However, I began to feel this pressure that I NEEDED to be concerned with what I ate. I started to notice that natural curves (ie puberty, i was a "late bloomer") were coming, and I perceived this as me being fat! I restricted what I ate significantly and exercised whenever I ate something "bad". I was fighting my own body! I remember there was even a time when I stopped having my periods. This was not healthy. I remember just fixating on food. All I could think about was, "what is going to be my next meal... what can I eat for the lowest calories... or how could I have eaten all of that"
This fixation opened my eyes up to that this was not healthy!
I didn't want my life to revolve around food!
If all I could think about was being thin, what GOOD could I accomplish?
I would avoid activities that involved food, or eating out, etc...
I couldn't trust myself around food.. the enemy.
Needless to say, I was very thin.
However, in my mind... I felt like I still had alot of work to do.

senior year

I remember looking at myself in the mirror that morning and thinking that my stomach wasn't flat enough & feeling "fat"
Then, one day, I remember going to someone's house for lunch with a bunch of other people.
I was starrvvviingg, but they were having frito chili boats.
Those were definitely "bad food" in my book.
If I were to eat those, I would definitely get "fat"
However, I found out after eating them, that my shape didn't change!
That's when the lightbulb went off.
I gradually started trying to change.
Slowly.
I know that is sounds so ridiculous, but disordered eating isn't logical.
It doesn't make sense.
From that point on, things didn't miraculously change,
to be honest I still struggle.
I still drop the 'f" bomb quite frequently (fat)
However, I'm trying to shift the focus to healthy.
I think that now I am definitely at my healthy weight.
Just by allowing my body to meet it's needs,
my shape has drastically changed.
I was seriously restricting my body of all curves!!!
Now... I've got curves
I've even had people look at old pictures and me now and ask if I have had a boob job.
I compare the two pictures and can't believe how different I look.
You know what, my body knew...
I am my own kind of beautiful, I just had to let it shine through.

I've got a perfect body, but sometimes I forget. I've got a perfect body, 'cause my eyelashes catch my sweat- regina spektor

please check out this blog.
she discusses her battles with "ned", her eating disorder