Fat acceptance and my turning point

Today, I casually referred to myself as a fat woman. Y'know, because I am one. But you'd have thought I'd advocated the wholesale slaughter of unicorn babies from the response I received from one woman.

I suppose this language is normal for me, not because I'm masochistic, but because I'm honest with myself. Accepting my weight was the first part of my journey.

Some people choose to stop here. I did, for a long time, and that's okay. It's okay to be happy with yourself, as you are. Overweight people are beautiful, intelligent, vibrant people who deserve to be acknowledged. They deserve to have pride in themselves. I am an advocate of fat acceptance and defend the rights of my shapely compatriots to follow their own path.

But I realized, at multiple points over the past many years, that my weight and fitness level were limiting me. As I've said before, in order to push yourself to be something better, you need to first admit that you need to be better. Understanding this was the second part of my journey. It was the hardest part.

Even so, I struggled. I dieted, gaining and losing the same ten pounds countless times. I started at a gym two years ago, then stopped going. And again, a year and a half ago. Over and over.

It wasn't until last October that this finally changed. Ready for a little story time? 'Cause I'm about to tell one.

I fell from a horse the first weekend of April, re-injuring my left knee, which already had a torn ACL. I've fallen plenty of times in the past, sometimes my fault and sometimes my horse's, but this one was different. This should have been a simple fall, a drop-and-roll that ended with a self-deprecating laugh, a remount, and a lesson learned. But since there was no ACL to stop the lateral sliding of my knee, when my horse went right and I went left, it was like my knee came apart. It bent sideways, straining the MCL and severely spraining my calf.

I sat in the dirt, then slowly struggled to my feet and remounted, legs shaking. It's simply what you do as a horse person. You get back on. When it came time to dismount a few minutes later, the concussion from dropping onto my left leg buckled my knee, jamming the joint and striking parts of my knee together that shouldn't have touched. It took me more than five minutes to stand this time. I put on a brave face in the viewing room as I iced myself, but by the time I drove home, I was in tears, clenching my jaw and sucking breath through my teeth all the way.

Those of you who know me understand how severe the pain must have been. The painkillers I had left over from surgery because I didn't need them after having been cut open were the only things that got me through that weekend.

Anyway. I recovered, slowly, and while the summer dragged on - the summer I was supposed to spend on horseback - I packed on the pounds. I was down to a single pair of pants that fit me, and when they stopped fitting me, I simply stopped buttoning them and wore long tops to hide my embarrassment. I gained nearly twenty pounds in only a few months.

And then, literally overnight, enough was enough. I watched a documentary that changed me, only it had nothing to do with weight or fitness. It's a movie called Buck, and it's about an extremely influential horse trainer who has done some incredible things with some horses (and people) who needed him very much. This movie reached into my heart and pulled out what matters. It reminded me of what I'd lost in that fall from the horse. It made me realize that the only way I could follow horses again was if I got fit, if I worked to fix what I'd broken, in my knee and in my spirit.

The next day, I called the gym. I met my trainer a week later. I haven't looked back.

We all have these turning points in our lives, those moments when we say "That's it! It's time to change!" and mean it. I realized that my weight was stopping me from doing something that truly mattered to me and it finally made me angry enough to do something to fix it.

Nobody has the right to make that decision for anyone else. It is not my place to judge anyone other than myself, and never in a millionty-jillion years would I look at another person, regardless of their size, and decide they should be following my path. Ever. They are beautiful people who lead their own lives. I just chose differently.

So, there you have it. I'm fat. Less fat than I was in September, but still fat. If you tell me I am, I may punch you, because seriously, who does that? But if you tell me I'm not, I may wonder if you're looking at someone else. I'm not doing this because I hate myself. I'm doing this because I love myself. Fret not, friends. This is the best change I have ever made.

I accept who I am. I'm just working on building a better vessel to get to my destination.