I’ve been contemplating whether or not I should share this. I’ve decided to try, but please forgive me if it comes off insensitive, ungrateful or ignorant.

I want to address the relationship between fat-shaming and fitness-shaming.

I love self-deprecating humor, and I know that a big part of it comes from internalized shame about my body and appearance. It means a lot to hear my friends tell me that I look good, or that I’m attractive, etc.

But it concerns me when I talk about my fitness journey, be it in a more formal tweet/post or mentioned casually (“yeah I wanna lose some weight!”), and people start trying to convince me that I don’t need to.

Now I know most people don’t mean to come off as dismissive of my goals, and I believe everyone wants to be encouraging, but sometimes I get tired of people telling me that my desire to lose weight and gain muscle is inherently unhealthy.

It definitely has some unhealthiness, but I’ve come a long way. There’s a lot of internalized fat-shaming that’s driving me, but there are also a lot of positive motivation and righteous desires. For example, I want to live a long life with my future family.

I feel like when I talk about my fitness journey, people either (unwittingly) invalidate my progress with badly-worded encouragement (“maybe someday you’ll...”) or (unwittingly) make me feel bad for wanting to get in shape.

It’s hard to explain, because I don’t want people to feel bad, and I love talking about fitness and psychology. I just wish we (including me) could find ways to encourage people to pursue what they want to pursue (healthily).

I understand that no one wants me to feel obligated to lose weight. But obligation really isn’t my main motivator anymore. Far from it. I wanna have energy and strength to dance, swim, climb, run marathons, hike mountains, etc.

I’ve been obese for at least half of my life. I’ve never known what it’s like to be “skinny” or “in shape” and I want to try it! I wanna feel what it’s like to be more comfortable in my own skin. I want my body to reflect who I am on the inside.

I know this is an idealistic daydream, that losing weight and gaining muscle won’t inherently make me happier or more comfortable. But I want to try it. I want to see what it’s like to not be exhausted so much, to not breathe as heavy, to not live in fear of heart disease.

So I don’t know where to go with this, but I just want to express my honest opinion that sometimes we try so hard to undo people’s fat-shaming that we accidentally make them feel ashamed of trying to get fit.

I have noticed (and this is purely my own perspective) that when “thinner” people post about their fitness journeys, there are less “you’re fine as you are” comments than when I, a bigger guy, talk about my fitness journey.

I just wanted to throw this out there so that we (myself included) can try a little harder to think before we comment. Sometimes, validation can actually be overkill and lead to invalidation. Sometimes, a loving message isn’t received the way it was intended.

And I hope we can all be patient with one another as we all try to be a little more conscious and thoughtful as we compliment and encourage one another. I believe that the last thing we want is to tear people down, especially our loved ones.

I think we just need to extend a little trust to each other. Concern is great but none of us are mind-readers. We can’t know how each other really think. So let’s just focus on positives a little more and try not to jump to worst-case scenarios.

Love y’all and hope this made sense.