I’ve always had mixed feelings about the body positivity movement. Â On one hand, you shouldn’t hate your body and obviously you can look amazing at any size. On the other hand, being fat is hard on your body. On your magical third hand, I’m a healthy fat person who doesn’t like being fat so that colors everything.
I was going about my business not taking a side until a few days ago when I got a letter turning me down for life insurance. Â You know what the reason was? My “build”.
It took me a second to reread that a few times to even understood what it meant. Â Then the rage took over. Â Yes, I’m overweight. I also am pretty muscular. That adds to my weight.
If they had cared about my health, they might have asked to see my perfectly normal blood work. Â But, no. Height and weight only.
I don’t even wear plus sized clothing, for the love of chunky Aphrodite.
I have spent the last few days yelling that I am “too fat!” and swooning when asked to do anything. So far it hasn’t actually gotten me out of anything because no one agrees with me.
The life insurance company doesn’t care that my workout routine is going swimmingly. Â I did a challenge group last month. I was down 4 lbs and about 4 inches. I’m happy about that. Â I’m halfway through the course I’m using (Liift4 on Beach body on demand) and I really like it. I’ve made a routine of 7 am workouts on Monday and Tuesday and I’m actually getting out of bed and doing it. Â I also work out on my day off on Thursday and as soon as I get home from work on Friday. (I go in too early for a 7 am workout on Friday.)
So right now I’m feeling super skinny from the inches off the waist. Â I might even be feeling body positive.
How very frustrating….I really dislike insurance companies.
Um. That’s just bad business on the part of those life insurance people. I’m definitely overweight, but my blood pressure is pleasingly low and my numbers are normal and I eat my veggies. My spouse is considered normal, BMI-wise, but he’s got a definite beer belly and his blood pressure is worryingly high and he ate like a single carrot a few days ago by accident. And yet that life insurance co. would probably cover him instead of me, haha. Hm… now that I think about it, I’m probably going to outlive that man by a couple of decades at least, so maybe I ought to be taking life insurance out on him before the companies wise up about those health indicators…?
That is infuriating. I’ve been ambivalent, too, about body positivity, but things like using only height and weight as a measure of health might push me into activism. There’s a whole lot of evidence that we really have no idea what a healthy weight is and that it probably varies individual to individual — not something that you can chart.
Sorry about the insurance. That doesn’t seem fair. I have mixed feelings about body positivity, too. I have depression, and my weight changes a lot because of it. I’ve been underweight, overweight, and everything in between. I’m happiest when I’m skinny. Right now, I’m not plus-size, but I’m fatter than the charts say I should be. This is weird because I exercise more now than at any other time in my life.
Sheesh.
Wow. I can’t believe they would only take height and weight into consideration as if there aren’t a million and one other ways to better assess how healthy someone is. That’s ridiculous. I would assume that they don’t provide any life insurance to, say, body builders or wrestlers and other sorts of athletes then.