I don’t support it anymore. It went from telling people to be nice to fat people, to lying and saying you can be 400 pounds and be healthy.

In the beginning, I thought it was silly but nice. I grew up with a mother who was very mean about and to fat people, so a movement encouraging people not to discriminate against fat people and to be kind to them seemed great. Especially since I had lost the ability to walk much (even traversing Walmart hurts, and the walks I used to take every day became out of the question) and was gaining weight. Additionally, my psychiatric drugs were causing weight gain side effects. Basically, I was gaining weight quickly. Thus, a movement that says that all bodies are beautiful was a balm to my soul.

But honestly, first of all, it’s not about how you look. It’s about how long you’re going to live. Being fat can greatly shorten a person’s lifespan, and that’s a tragedy. And for most people it is an avoidable tragedy. You should love your body at any size because it does good things for you. Plus it’s a gift from God to even beyond this Earth. But the most loving thing you can do for your body is take care of it. Right now, I’m dealing with some stuff. I’m in the middle of a weight loss process. I’ve lost a lot of weight but I still have a fair bit to go. I am determined and counting calories daily.

I didn’t need to hear fat acceptance messages. That’s not helpful. Being overweight can cause serious health problems. And while it’s true that because of the medications I’m on and because I have somewhat limited mobility, I may never look like somebody on the cover of Cosmo, I can be thinner than I am, and I should aim for that goal.

But the really bad side effects of the movement isn’t affecting people like me who have weight to lose but aren’t shockingly big. The people the movement is really hurting are those who are 300 pounds plus. Many of the Body Positive influencers I followed years ago are dead now. One of them was something like 7 or 800 pounds. She seemed like a nice person, but she embraced her weight because of this movement for far too long and in the end, it was too late for her. She tried to make healthy changes and lose weight, but the damage had already been done to her body. It’s very sad.

No, society doesn’t need to be cruel to fat people, and no, you shouldn’t judge fat people. Everybody has their sin. Some are just more visibly obvious than others. But to tell people that you can be healthy and weigh that much is just wrong. It is leading people down a bad path. You cannot be 300 pounds and healthy. You cannot be 250 pounds and healthy. If you’re an average height and build type of woman, you cannot be 200 pounds and be healthy. We need to stop lying to people. People are dying.

I used to follow Tess what’s her name too a little bit. She has caught so much flack from her former body positive community for going on a diet she needs to go on for her health. People are being downright vitriolic at her personal decision to lose weight. It’s absolutely insane. That said, she promoted that unhealthy lifestyle and made a lot of money doing it. I think it’s great she’s on a diet now and trying to turn her life around. But she should at least acknowledge the damage she did to others when there were many young women who may have put more effort into losing weight and saving their health if she hadn’t marketed obesity as being healthy. If she hadn’t pushed all that fat is beautiful and healthy at every size stuff there are probably people who are dead now who would still be living if they hadn’t listened to her. At the end of the day, everyone is responsible for their actions, but influencers know they have an effect on some people and on society as a whole. That’s why they’re called influencers. So you should influence responsibly. Some things in this world are a matter of opinion or preference, but your opinion doesn’t matter when it comes to your heart health. No matter how beautiful you might think you look or how much you hate dieting or how many times these activists say that you are healthy, you are cruising for a heart attack or other complications if you stay obese.

I think the Body Positive movement is crumbling, and I think that’s a good thing. I don’t want to go back to the way things used to be where we promoted anorexia everywhere. Let’s praise healthy, normal bodies. But lying to people doesn’t do them any favors. Sometimes, you do have to put down the fork. People should take charge of their health the best they can, and they should accept responsibility for what they put in their mouths. No one is naturally 500 pounds. And to be fair, no one is naturally my weight, either. Like I said, between limited mobility and very heavy psych medications, I may never be as slim as I used to be or as slim as some other people are. But I absolutely bear some of the blame for my weight because not all of the weight can be attributed to the pills or the injury. Sometimes I pick up a spoon when I should do something else. I take full responsibility for that. I’m glad the body positive movement is crumbling, though it makes me sad that it took the deaths of so many young women (and some men) for that to start happening.