Episode 27: Permission to Stay Fat
and a bouquet of other permissions for the not-so-new year
An audio version of this essay is available here.
The NFL post-season always coincides with new year’s resolution season. Of course. I just never noticed. But I couldn’t miss it this year. The GLP-1 Industrial Complex made sure I put two and two together. Lisa and I watched every playoff game. We watched them on Hulu Live—sometimes Amazon Prime—and got absolutely bombarded with ads for weight loss drugs.
Side Note: In this piece, I’m using the phrase “weight loss drugs” to refer to the off-label use of GIP and GLP-1 agonists specifically for weight loss. GIP and GLP-1 agonists were created to treat diabetes and they offer real health benefits to people with diabetes and other metabolic conditions. I am not critiquing the marketing (or use) of GIP and GLP-1 agonists to treat diabetes and other metabolic conditions. Back to the story.
We were watching the playoffs, and I’d go from reveling in Saquon Barkley’s airborne virtuosity to flinching at anti-fatness. At some point, during the fifteenth or twenty-eighth commercial break, I noticed the flinch. And then, during the third or fourth wildcard game, I finally remembered that the remote has a mute button. I muted the next ad for weight loss drugs. I have learned to keep the remote next to me while I watch TV so I can mute them every time they pop up. It’s audio whack-a-mole. Thinking about it that way makes it a little more fun (Yay! It’s a game!) and a little less desperate (I’m fighting for my sanity and all I have is a stupid remote!).
I gave myself permission to mute the GLP-1 ads because it was upsetting to see them over and over and over again. It occurred to me that I don’t have to subject myself to this stuff. I don’t have to pretend it doesn’t bother me. I don’t have to pretend that I’m invulnerable here. I don’t have to pretend to be all better, 100% not at risk ever again.
It’s been 11 years since I first found treatment for a restrictive eating disorder. I’d been sick for a long time and in deep denial that an eating disorder was the problem. Some part of me refused to admit that this was my issue. (Could we please attribute the host of symptoms to some other ailment?) It was embarrassing. I thought I was too old and too smart and too feminist to have an eating disorder. I should be better than this. Or, at the very least, I should be able to stop without having to pay professionals.
My treatment initially included weekly sessions with a DBT therapist who specialized in treating eating disorders. Then I added occasional meetings with a nutritionist who worked with athletes and people with eating disorders. Eventually I stopped working with the DBT therapist and found a somatic therapist. I’ve been in therapy with that one ever since. My treatment also included reading the work of fat studies scholars and aligning myself with the fat liberation movement. Treatment included changing how I exercised and with whom I exercised. The yoga and meditation teacher Kimber Simpkins was especially helpful in the early days. So were my powerlifting and strongman coaches. I wrote and performed shows about the whole experience, working in collaboration with Martha Rynberg and the good people of Solo Performance Workshop. In retrospect, I consider that work to be part of my treatment, too.
By the markers that mattered to me, I got better. Treatment worked. I recovered. Success! I’m one of the lucky people who responded well to their first attempt at treatment. The eating disorder hasn’t come back. I certainly, at times, have intense emotions and uncomfortable physical sensations around the experience of having/being a body in this particular time and place. I just don’t use starvation and obsessive exercise (and the rest of the thoughts and behaviors that make up a restrictive eating disorder) to help me manage those uncomfortable sensations.
Side Note: Diagnostic categories and treatment and recovery and success are super complicated ideas that I don’t always use or find helpful. In the future I’ll do some writing about what I mean and why it’s important to hold on loosely to these ideas.
Because treatment went pretty well and has gone pretty well for a long time now, I thought I might have built up some degree of immunity to the anti-fat stuff floating around in our media. To a certain extent, that’s true. I feel more resilient in the face of anti-fatness than I used to feel, but this particular cultural moment is testing me. I’m not immune. I’m bracing against the ads for weight loss drugs. I noticed myself having FEELINGS and OPINIONS about JVN’s announcement that they’ve been taking weight loss drugs and plan to do so indefinitely. When Lisa and I were doing wedding-planning things, I noticed that I was imagining myself at my wedding and I was picturing a smaller version of me—a version of myself that’s leaner and more muscular than I am right now. I remembered that, in the year leading up to my first wedding, I did a lot of dangerous stuff in order to look as small as possible.
I need to admit that I’m in a tricky thicket right now.
It’s the tail end of new year’s resolution time.
We’re in the middle of an intensifying frenzy around weight loss drugs and the moralizing of thinness (and its attendant connotations of whiteness, wealth, and restraint/responsibility/control).
I’m planning a wedding.
I could give myself permission to take extra precautions as I wade into this tricky thicket. Permission to take eating disorders seriously. Permission to take seriously the risk of returning to disordered eating behaviors. Permission to literally and figuratively mute as much of discourse around weight loss drugs as I possibly can. Permission to stay fat or get fatter.
Side Note: My fat politics include bodily autonomy. Everyone is allowed to do what they need to do. I’m a cis white woman on the smaller side of plus size. I know it’s a lot easier for me to navigate the world than it is for people who are bigger than me, especially trans people, and Black people. I understand that people have legitimate reasons for trying to manipulate the size of their bodies. More than one thing can be true at once.
I’m curious about what the framework of “permission” does for me here.
I could think about my initial eating disorder treatment as an endeavor in permission-granting. Permission to eat a wider range of foods. Permission to eat a larger volume of food. Permission to rest, to take a break from intense exercise, to try forms of movement that weren’t designed to make my body smaller and leaner. Permission to feel and respond to information I get from my body—like appetites, exhaustions, revulsions, and attractions. Permission to get fatter. Permission to buy larger clothes and to donate the smaller clothes. Permission to exist in the material world.
A decade into recovery, there are probably new permissions to grant now that those foundational authorizations are more or less in place. It’s also interesting to me to be thinking about permission at the end of new year’s resolution season. I’m curious about what happens when I use permission in the place of resolution or intention. What does permission do when I consider where I want to focus my attention in 2025?
I have lots of smart, thoughtful people in my life who are likely better at permission than I am. (Some day I’ll tell you the story about how my friend Martha Rynberg granted me permission to buy new trash bags and it basically changed my life.) So I’m asking them about this whole permission-instead-of-resolution thing. Here’s what some of them have to say.
Jen Brooks, the brilliant film editor
My resolutions tend to come from a restrictive place, so the concept of giving myself permission to do something feels much more empowering and expansive. I don’t think it is strictly semantic, but the challenge is enacting it. My biggest hangup is not weight (which is a smaller hangup), but aging. I have a really hard time accepting getting older. I really want to be able to enjoy the gift of life at every stage, so clearly I need to give myself permission to get older and not wish it weren’t so.
Geraldine Porras, the Emmy award-winning documentary producer
In 2025, I am giving myself permission to focus less on the outcome of my goals and truly enjoy the journey. This has been especially helpful in my health and wellness journey. I have given myself permission to discover my strength and abilities through Zumba classes, yoga and strength training. It’s been inspiring to look back at the growth of my endurance and the positive impact intentionally moving my body has brought me. As a result, my anxiety has been more manageable, I have more energy, my skin is glowing, I’ve learned how to nourish my body & I’ve lost weight in the process.
An Anonymous Producer and Organizer
I’m giving myself:
Permission to only give as much as I am given.
Permission to not overextend myself especially where it's not merited.
Permission to set new boundaries as they arise for me.
Permission to do the thing that makes me feel the lightest.
An Anonymous Scholar-Educator
In 2025, I am finally going to give myself permission to stop doing a job that I am good at but that is not good for me. I am going to prioritize health instead of continuing to deal with illness after illness that results from my doing that job. I am finally going to take the exit ramp. It may be a longer ramp than I want, but I will be heading in a new direction. I give myself permission to grieve what I am leaving but to celebrate what I will find ahead.
Tania Katan, the wildly creative speaker and writer
1. Permission to Speak About the Deceased in Present Tense
This year, I’m giving myself permission to speak about my deceased mother in the present tense. To talk about my father—who is no longer here in body—as if he is. Because speaking about my parents, or anyone I have loved and lost, is an embodied experience.My mother is the hum of creativity that moves through me when I write or speak or correct an aggressive aphorism. When someone says, “to kill two birds with one stone,” I hear her voice, laughing and saying, “Why do we have to kill everything?! Let’s hatch two birds with one egg!”
My father is the irreverent voice in my head, nudging me to trust my instincts, take a risk. He’s the gambler in Vegas who plays craps until he wins just enough money to treat himself—and those who cheer him on—to a steak dinner.
This year, I’m giving myself permission to speak of those I’ve loved and lost in the present tense, because it’s in that exhalation that their absence becomes presence.
2. Permission to Slip UP
Fuck failing up, fuck failing fast, fuck failing forward. Failing is so last year! This year, I’m giving myself permission to Slip Up.Slipping up isn’t about being reckless or perfect—it’s about embracing the messy magic in the middle. Forget those bullshit phrases born in boardrooms, where “failing fast” became a badge of honor and “failing forward” a rally cry for innovation. Let’s be real: those slogans were designed for people at the top. For those of us closer to the ground, failure isn’t a springboard; it’s a pitfall.
That’s why, this year, I’m slipping up—turning a pitfall into a pratfall! Unlike failing up, slipping UP embraces a comedic sensibility that makes making mistakes more fun and user-friendly! Slipping up isn’t failing; it’s recalibrating. It’s pausing mid-stumble to see where you land—and sometimes realizing the ground isn’t so far away after all.
This year, I’m slipping up because it acknowledges the humanity in mistakes, the absurdity in missteps, and the grace in getting back up again. It’s falling with flair, laughing in the face of a banana peel, and knowing that everyone who’s ever done anything worth seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, or feeling has slipped up along the way.
So, if you need a Permission Slip to Slip UP…here you go! I use it all the time.
Katie Haverly, the genre-transcending musician and producer
I’m trying to give myself permission this year to just fucking be myself, whatever that means. Whether it means turning off the TV, or making a dance video, or coming out to people that I’m a psychic medium, or dressing how I feel I want to dress my body. Giving myself full unthrottled permission to be myself feels revolutionary and challenging and it’s a lifelong journey. But the more I’m in alignment with giving myself permission to be my full, authentic, expressive self, the more the world around me changes because of that alignment. It’s fascinating. I wish we all could give ourselves permission this year to just fucking be ourselves, whatever that means for us. Give ourselves permission to listen to our higher selves, our intuition, to trust that internal knowing and honor who we’re truly meant to be in this incarnation, in this lifetime. I feel like that moment is now. It’s funny. Perhaps the only thing that needs to happen for a seismic shift or revolution is that we each give ourselves permission and that’s it. I don’t know. It’s an interesting thing to think about.
Martha Rynberg, the masterful director of Solo Performance Workshop
I really love this idea about permission. I got your email and was sort of <gasps> about it! [...] I’ve been all over the place about what permissions would look like. I want to be minute about it and also really broad about it. Like when people talk about “praying like a lawyer”! I want to be really specific, as though I couldn’t give myself permission over and over and over again, as though I’m not the one with the say about what I have permission about.
I guess maybe the big permission—kind of like rubbing the lantern and saying, “for my first wish I will wish for all the wishes”—my first wish for the year is, I wanna be in a practice of giving myself permission. I wanna build a practice. I want to build a practice around giving myself permission. And one of the things I want to practice giving myself permission around is my continued learning how to want. I want to give myself permission to want and I want to give myself permission to ask for what I want. The naming and the asking. That feels particularly important in this time with this fascist regime that is casting a giant shadow (or maybe it’s come from the shadow or it’s casting a giant shadow that we’re living in) and I think there’s a way in which I’d like to minimize my personhood so that I have more to give to the collective. That is an old pattern that does not serve me, nor do I think that really is of best service to my community for me to dim my shine. That’s actually counter to the way I’ve been thinking about approaching this time.
For months I’ve been wondering how do we take good care of ourselves—solid, right, and good care—of ourselves and the people we are in relationship with so that we all have more energy to resist in whatever ways that looks. We have to do that from a place of sustainability, even if we’re putting it all on the line. We need to be able to make that decision. I’m not trying to cop out on the permissions, but I’m finding that these are the two big permissions I really wanna be giving myself.
I guess the third—because threes are nice—I wanna give myself permission to have pleasure and joy. Joy and Pleasure. What if I let go of the idea that there needed to be some balance with pleasure and joy? What if I just—wild abandon—lived with abundance, pleasure and joy? What if we just trusted that it would all work out—the other parts, whatever else needs to be in the mix—yeah, it’s gonna claw its time and energy, for sure? What if I let pleasure and joy come first, even in this harrowing and daunting time? It almost feels too ridiculous (that word is loaded for me) or too outrageous. Maybe that’s exactly what’s called for right now.
Those are my thoughts as I take my busted ass to school today, crossing the bridge, crossing water, crossing time.
Permission often shows up in a certain strain of covertly conservative self-help discourse as a way to dress up “bootstrapping” in more boho apparel. This discourse says, You’re not experiencing racism or transphobia or ageism or the exploitation of your labor! You just need to give yourself permission to succeed! But we can't self-help our way out of systemic oppression. That’s not gonna cut it. But, as Martha Rynberg reminds us, we can take care of ourselves so that there’s more of us to bring to the work. We can tend to the places where systemic oppression chafes our bodies. And we can do all of this in community.
In addition to muting the ads for weight loss drugs, I’m purposefully reconnecting with the work of fat activists, scholars, and journalists that I respect. (Many of them are here on Substack.) Please peruse the list of links below if you’d like to be fortified by people who care about the collective liberation of fat people and understand that these efforts to medicalize and pathologize fatness have their roots in racism, specifically anti-Blackness. We might not have the marketing budgets of Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, but we can be the counter-programming we want to see in the world. We can still make some noise for the end of anti-fat bias, weight-based discrimination, and medical misinformation.
Ragen Chastain
Ragen writes Weight and Healthcare, a research-packed newsletter “examining weight science, weight stigma, and what evidence, ethics, and lived experience teach us about best healthcare and public health practices for higher weight people.” Regan has been doing this for a long time and is a national treasure. She has covered the science and marketing of weight loss drugs extensively. Start with Ragen’s work if you want to know what the drugs are and what the research actually says. Here are some highlights:
Virgie Tovar
The title of this essay is a play on Virgie Tovar’s You Have the Right to Remain Fat. She’s another longtime fat activist, writer, and trusted resource with a newsletter here on Substack. This smart, heartfelt piece is behind a paywall and well worth the subscription:
Chrissy King’s The Liberation Collective
Chrissy has created The Liberation Collective, a space here on Substack for “body liberation, personal liberation, and collective liberation.” The title of this first piece is the perfect mantra for this moment:
This second piece is a round up of excellent books by Black women that will help us stand up to this moment while also tending to our relationship with our bodies and nourishment:
Frankie de la Cretaz
Frankie’s newsletter, Out of Your League, covers the intersection of queer sports and pop culture. It’s smart, funny, and consistently ahead of the curve. I’ve cited Frankie’s work here before, and they’ve hit it out of the park, yet again, with this coverage of the way ads for weight loss drugs are showing up in women’s sports:
Tell me what permission means to you! What does it do or not do for you? Tell me about a time when permission changed you. Tell me about other counter-programming you’re finding helpful as we weather this particularly hateful, anti-fat time. I want to know.