Being plus-size tells you a lot about other peoples assumptions.

Often we become screens to project onto, an empty canvas to paint upon.

You know, youre eating yourself to an early grave.

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agsandrew

Arent you worried about your health?

Think about what a knockout youd be if you just lost some weight!

Have you tried Paleo?Keto?

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While those constant questions dont always come from an ill-intended place, they send a powerful message nevertheless.

And years of being on the receiving end of such sunny interrogations add up.

We all hear constantly about the health risks of fatness.

Nevertheless, those stories often form the basis for what thinner people expect fat lives to be.

Indeed, many of these shows depict fat lives as a parade of humiliation and failure.

What no one talks about are the gifts of being fat.

For many, imagining a fatter self is as impossible and disheartening as imagining their own deaths.

My body is their nightmare.

For me, its my liberation.

Yes, there are challenges to living in a fat body.

What an extraordinary gift, to feel this resilient, this strong, and this at ease.

Thats a story that doesnt often get told.

And its precisely those pervasive, harsh, intransigent attitudes that make embracing my fat body so extraordinarily liberating.

They persist to this day: Strangers shout at me from passing cars.

Grocery shoppers remove food items from my cart.

Acquaintances are eager to tell me the many ways Ill die of being fat.

Its a story many fat activists have told before.

Coming from that ubiquitous and unforgiving mindset, it can be hard to imagine that theresanythinggood about being fat.

No one talks about the triumph of proving others wrong.

No one talks about the incredible empathy fat folks can develop.

Not all of us develop that sense of empathy, but many of us can.

At least, not like they used to.

Yes, there is hardship in life in a fat body.

But there are such stunning gifts too.

In this still-new year, what has your fatness illuminated about the world around you?

And what are you most grateful for?