A Challenge: Change Your Approach

I have worked for the RCSD since 1999.  Most of my years with the district were spent at Edison Tech.  Like me, Edison has gone through a succession of changes.  The one thing that has remained a constant with the changes at Edison is that each change has led to more dysfunction than the last.  The students have changed, the number of schools within the building has changed, and the faculty has changed. 

There are times when people in our professional lives have a great impact on our personal lives.  This happened to me when a young female teacher came to work at Edison.  She unleashed her insecurities onto me and she did it in a brutal and relenting fashion.  She was instrumental in starting a pregnancy pool when I was preggers with Noah.  "Is She or Isn't She?  She's too BIG to know for sure!"  She wrote a book about me, "Abby SaurusRex" and included some wonderful graphics.  Pure hatred from someone I barely even had a working relationship with let alone a relationship where I would invite her criticism. 

I wish I could say that this mockery was an isolated incident, but it has not been.  I have been called names - even a bitch, been made fun of, pictures have been drawn of me, I was told once to not drink anything on a flight because I would not fit in the bathroom of the plane, my expertise has been dismissed, my ideas passed over, and I have flat out lost job opportunities.  Weight discrimination is one of the last socially accepted forms of discrimination.

On a systemic level - advocacy and education are needed to help bring about a change in the way we behave towards obese people as a whole.  Bringing about change on a personal level can be more difficult.  Losing weight has changed the way people treat me, but not others who remain obese.  And yes, the changes people made towards me have been significant.  Overall, I am treated with respect and without reproach in both my professional and personal life.

My initial BIG weight loss also had an interesting response from people that I never expected.  The smaller and smaller I got, the front runners who had treated me so poorly began complaining about their own weight.  Their fears were evident.  What would happen to those egos when my size/weight was less than theirs?  Would they then become the joke? 

I have shared many personal hurts that weight has invited into my life in my last two blog posts.  If there is anything that I want people to learn from my stories it is that while we learn bad habits (ect), like treating obese people poorly, we do not need to exercise these lessons.  We cannot change who we are.  I am an emotional eater.  That will never change, but my approach to my emotional eating can change.  We all have approaches toward people and things in life which can and should change.  So, have a non-scale victory (NSV) this week and challenge yourself to begin changing your approach to one person or thing.  I dare you to live better.