Jacob Riis Beach hosts the day of body positivity and fun, in the city at the heart of the fat acceptance movement
Fat Beach Day events are springing up across the US in an effort to fight back against fat-phobia, reclaim safe spaces for the community and honor plus-size culture. Today, one of these celebrations is being held to coincide with Pride month at Jacob Riis Beach in New York, a location deeply ensconced in the city’s activism space.
One of my close friends from college went deep down the fat acceptance rabbit hole shortly after college. I had to unfollow her on social media. She went from being a slightly overweight girl to a morbidly obese woman. She had a podcast she’d promote saying things like it’s ok to eat cake for breakfast if you want it; weight is just a number and all kinds of asinine things.
My weight has fluctuated over the years, but any time I’m putting on weight, I know it’s unhealthy and I need to start going to the gym and eating better. Seeing her posts would drive me up the wall. She had one where she said something about how the gym is toxic, and you’re just fine the way you are, and you can be healthy without exercising. She also was selling some plus size clothing pyramid scheme and claimed to be a model for the company. I don’t think it was a defense mechanism, just another ridiculously bad side effect of echo chambers on social media.
I mean, it is. I don’t think eating cake for breakfast is so much worse than eating it after dinner.
I lost a lot of weight with basically calorie counting. I ate whatever I wanted until I hit my limit. If I wanted more, I’d do some exercise to burn off the extra calories.
It taught me a lot about portion sizes and nutrition though (entered everything into a nutrition app, not just calories).
But I’m pretty sure there were some occasions where I had some cake for breakfast, lol
(Also…a muffin, waffles, or pancakes and syrup for breakfast are probably no better than cake)