If I want to do something active I’ll do it. If I don’t, I don’t see where that fits in with “Get your lazy butt up and do some working out, or people will think cause you’re fat you are lazy”. I’m fat and I’m lazy, there I said it. Big deal. I mean, on the Mr. Men show Mr. Lazy is thin, so what does that say?

“And after her death, these same people implied that her cancer was due to moral failing (imploded anger and not dealing with her ‘issues’) and not eating ‘healthily enough’.”

Your mom’s story might sound extreme (and it is), but I seriously don’t think it is at all unusual as our attitude toward health becomes more extreme. I have seen this same attitude toward genuinely sick people myself — generally from well-intentioned friends or strangers. It’s troubling and shows a startling lack of compassion.

When my mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, which spread into her bones and organs before it was detected and able to be treated, she was told repeatedly by ‘well-meaning supporters’ that she could conquer this disease by drinking juices and doing a detoxs. This is when she was on morphine and her entire body was shutting down. And after her death, these same people implied that her cancer was due to moral failing (imploded anger and not dealing with her ‘issues’) and not eating ‘healthily enough’. That these people were of the new-age hippy persuasion does not alter the fact that they believed being unwell was a personal failing, and therefore death was the ultimate failure. That’s an extreme example, but in our culture blaming the ill people for their illness is all too common these days.

Yes, luck is the primary component in good health, but the reason we look down on those with less of that luck is not necessarily because we are striving for a zero-risk situation. We’ve always had some idea of what was necessary to stay in good health, but staying on the right side of God just isn’t seen as the be-all end-all it used to be. Science now is that perfect route to salvation. Besides that, there has always been a portion of population that achieved social status through being born with the appropriate genetics. We’ve just decided to look down on people for something not quite as “shallow” as skin color or genitalia. We can do that because we can tell ourselves (as a society) that science is an impartial God and we can believe that it has given us all the tools we need to achieve long, healthy, eternally youthful, life (immortality even!) and if you aren’t all of these things, we get to believe that you just aren’t doing it right. It doesn’t even matter that the science doesn’t support these things, we’re taking it on faith just as much as we used to take God.

For me, part of HAES is letting go of the idea that I *must* exercise and eat twigs and leaves to be healthy….and also letting go of the idea that those aren’t options if they work for me. In a truly neutral morality, neither is privileged, which is where I really try to come from. And would like to see both FA and HAES conversations come from, too.