This blog post originally appeared in My Imperfect Truth. 

I’ve written extensively on these pages about my struggle with my weight.  About my life as a fat kid called “Elephant Youngs” on the playgrounds of every grade school in Falmouth, Maine. About my victories and losses on the battlefield of Weight Watchers where I’ve easily gained and lost myself five or six times over the past 20 years.  About my shame at being faced with a buffet and my love of being immersed in water where I can float, nymph-like without a thought to what it feels like on solid ground. About clothes shopping and squeezing into theater seats, and of my deep and abiding love for a summer full of ice cream stands. There’s little I’ve not divulged here and little I have to hide when it comes to the most obvious part of me. Frankly, it’s gotten a little tiresome.

In a year I will turn 50. For some people this is a motivator to get in shape, or embark on some amazing spiritual or physical journey. I thought about that but then I realized that what I finally was going to do was give myself permission to be who I am. To be a woman of size and to be finally, gloriously ok with it. The thought of spending a year, counting, measuring, weighing, and narrowing my focus to that number on the scale was frankly not just exhausting but depressing. I decided I was going to own my fat. Own this wide, jiggly, wiggly, body with its cellulite and rolls. Wake up each morning, do my best, and stop worrying all day every day that I was too fat to exist.

Now I am no fool. I read a lot (a LOT) of ‘fat positive’ articles on the Internet. I know that the minute a woman starts being ok with her body, that the concern trolls come out in droves.  “Well it’s all well and good but what about her HEAAALLLLTTTTHH.” They all cry. “I wouldn’t celebrate promoting such an UNHEALTHY lifestyle!!” Yeah, Yeah. Let me tell you one thing, the concern trolls don’t give a you know what about any fat woman’s health, what they DO care about is that someone out there is challenging the notion that the only possible way to be happy is to be thin. Even on a closed group of online friends during a really frank and interesting discussion about body image and food a few members couldn’t let go of the “well that’s fine for you but I can’t disregard health like that” mantra. Disabusing the notion that fat does not equal unhealthy is never easy, but the discussion was a good one nonetheless.

So if I was going to do this and truly be ok with myself I knew that step one was going to be doing something I hadn’t done in years – visit a doctor to get a baseline assessment of my health. Notice I said health, not weight. Contrary to what the concern trolls think the two are not mutually exclusive. But for years I had lived with the fat girl complex that anything that might possibly be wrong with me, from a headache or cold to a niggling back pain was my fault because I had committed the cardinal sin of being fat in America.  I’d had doctors in the past who couldn’t see past my size, who said things like “eat one cookie not a whole box,” so I was naturally gun-shy. Something would be bothering me, my wife would suggest a visit to the doctor and I’d responds with “eh, she’ll just tell me I’m fat.” But thanks to her persistent reminders that even fat people deserve healthcare, and some supportive friends, and the kind encouragement of a the breast health specialist who reads my mammograms each year, I bit the bullet and made the appointment.

My new doctor was lovely. Warm, with a tendency to giggle, and a demeanor that put me instantly at ease. When I confessed I was a little nervous she looked around the room and said “of me?” My lab work was analyzed and every result fell exactly in the normal range other than a slight vitamin D deficiency (hello, it’s March in Northern New England after the worst winter ever,  this is hardly surprising), my niggling back pain was taken seriously not dismissed as just the result of lugging my fat body around. Oh sure we talked about my weight but in a very gentle way, no numbers, no goals, no “lose this,” directive. It was everything I had hoped for. I left feeling as though I had a new lease on life. I was back at the gym after a winter of crippling seasonal anxiety and depression and to my great joy my pace on the treadmill was still pretty strong. Yes I was fat, but my health was good, my heart was strong, and damn I loved the life I was living. I was so proud of myself for conquering this last hurdle and felt like I had my life on track.

Flash forward a few days and I’m happily working away when an email shows up in my in box from an acquaintance.  It’s a forward of an article linking the risks of childhood obesity to cancer later in life, with the helpful accompanying message stating ‘this is scary!”  Someone got this article and thought “hey! I’ll send this to a woman who was a fat kid who also lost 2/3rds of her family to cancer, that’s a GREAT idea!”  Concern trolling has been taken to a new level apparently. Because if for a second I had forgotten what it was like as a fat kid, if for a second I had put my three dead family members to rest in a quiet corner of my mind, and if for a second I had dared to be at peace with my size, here was a friendly reminder that I couldn’t for one second let my guard down. I stared at the email in disbelief and then hit delete. But it bothered me all day. Not the article. Not the implication of the article. But the fact that someone thought that sending it to me would be remotely helpful. When in fact it was decidedly hurtful. And rather than inspiring me to whip up a kale smoothie and run a 5K it sent me home to open a bag of chips.

This concern trolling serves no one, especially those of us who have been fighting the battle for self-acceptance with ourselves for decades. If you have a friend, like me who is fat and who has the audacity not to actively hate herself, even if she occasionally slips into periodic bouts of not loving herself all the time, even if she chooses the ice cream instead of the fruit, even if she has that second piece of pizza on office pizza day, even if she sleeps in instead of going to the gym. Lecturing her about health is pretty much the last thing she needs. Take it from one who knows.