One Woman's Surprising Reason She Won't Congratulate People on Their Weight Loss

(Photo: Instagram / @ijeomaoluo)One Seattle-area writer wants people to know that your weight does [...]

By Libby Birk

ijeoma-oluo
(Photo: Instagram / @ijeomaoluo)

One Seattle-area writer wants people to know that your weight does not determine your worth.

In a moving Facebook essay that has over 700 comments and nearly 3,000 shares, Ijeoma Oluo wrote that she regrets the five years of her life when she obsessed over calories and lost weight.

In the post, Oluo, 36, wrote that at age 22, she was sexually assaulted. Blaming herself for the attack, she started on a diet the very next day. "I decided that as long as I was fat, nobody who wasn't abusive was going to want to be with me," she wrote.

So in the year that followed, Oluo obsessed over calories, weighed herself three times a day, ran past the point of pain skipped meals so she could enjoy a cookie, and spent thousands of dollars on motivational books and magazines.

"I didn't become a better person, I didn't become a more interesting person (if anything, I became far less interesting), I didn't become more creative or kind," she wrote. "I became me, only smaller, and absolutely obsessed with what I put in my mouth."

Oluo says people treated her differently after she lost weight — it was like a 24/7 VIP experience.

"When I lost weight, I suddenly mattered," she wrote. "People held doors open for me instead of letting them slam in my face. I got better service at restaurants. People complimented my 'hard work' and 'personal strength' to lose weight. Men - men were everywhere - saying hi, striking up conversation, telling me I was beautiful, funny, smart. Women wanted to be my friends, they wanted to hang out at clubs - it finally occurred to them that I too am someone who can have fun in public."

While Oluo maintained her weight for five years, she simultaneously regretted it.

"I resented it all while desperately clinging to it, terrified that the moment I stopped dedicating my every waking moment to shrinking myself, the world would go back to treating me like a failure, and I would no longer be allowed to love myself," she wrote.

After motherhood, her career and her home took the front seat, Oluo has now returned to her original weight.

"These were the years where I packed my life with more accomplishments than I had ever before imagined. Or, these are the years I got fat again — it depends on who you ask," Oluo wrote.

"And so no, I will not talk about diets, and no I will not congratulate you on your weight loss. I will not support the harmful notion that a smaller body is a moral victory."

[H/T Instagram / @ijeomaoluo]

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