"Why would the monster stop there? If I were to lose the sixty pounds required of me to fit the BMI standards, then why wouldn't I shoot for eighty?? or ninety??? This monster within would certainly never draw the line and be happy at some arbitrary number on a scale."

EXACTLY! THANK YOU! I'm recovering from anorexia, and this is how the thought process went for me. I'd say, just 5 more pounds, and then I'll be happy. And then I'd lose those five pounds, and I'd aim for another five.. And then another, and another, and another, but no matter how many pounds I lost, I still saw that same fat girl in the mirror. Some people said I was too skinny and I ought to start eating more, but I didn't see it. The "monster" didn't want me to see it.

Today was one of my "bad days", and reading this post helped me feel better. Thanks. :)

Thank you. Beautiful post.

I am about to go out with some friends and just spend 40 minutes trying to find the shirt I feel the least fat in. And now I am dreading going out in case the friends notice how much weight I think I have put on.

Such feelings do not make sense and are, actually, pretty irrational. Yes, I realize this. No, it doesn't change anything.

The depth of my self-hate alarms even me sometimes. It's nice to know I am not alone, even in this horrible horrible place.

We know that we are beautiful, smart, capable women, regardless of our size. But there is a disconnect some days.

Maybe we can escape together!

I can't say much to the issue specifically, though for what it's worth, what people try to believe generally ends up being what they do believe. Everyone has bad days, but really, you're in a pretty good place as long as you keep up the positivity whenever you can.

What I do want to pick out is the part about BMI. Simply put, it's nonsense when applied to individuals. The BMI was developed long ago as a method for measuring height and weight ratios among entire populations. It works for that purpose because percentages of people who stray from statistical averages, and who require a higher body weight on their frame than the BMI dictates to be healthy, balances out when they're included among large numbers of people. But used on individuals, the BMI would, for example, say that 90% of players in the NFL are obese, despite the fact that only linemen are actually fat.

Ezra Klein has touched on this multiple times; this one article related to it, but there are here are a lot of similar articles online on the subject.

Obviously in your case it's more than a simple BMI number causing you issues. But there are definitely people out there who pay too much attention to it, or worse, take their doctors' advice about healthy weight verbatim- and the doctors are going straight off the BMI chart. If you want really simple evidence of the absurdity of BMI, check out the NIH's calculator.

Notice that it uses the same table for men and women. This is the National Institute of Health we're talking about. If someone still believes in BMI for individuals is good despite this, I'm not sure what else could convince them otherwise.

I have noticed that either a weight loss or gain (even when unintended) can cause me to focus more than I would like on my body size and be dissatisfied more than usual with it. (I used to be anorexic years ago so I don't know how generalizable this is, but even an unintended weight loss can make me more critical of my body instead of less so). One thing I want to point out to you is that even though you seem well aware of how unhealthy and addictive and dangerous starving yourself would be your mind still leaps to that method as a way to lose weight. I just want to point out that there are ways that many people can lose weight without starving themselves or engaging in other unhealthy behavior. I have to admit that one of the major contributors to me overcoming my ED and not slipping up since I did (besides feminism and health concerns) was that I realized that my ED was making me fat, not thin, unless I was willing to starve myself to the point of death. Sure, I got skinny during my first bout of ED but it was not sustainable. My metabolism dropped and I had to eat less and less to lose weight and during my second and third bouts with my ED I actually found myself gaining after an initial loss. Not to mention the fact that I had no muscle tone because my body ate all my muscle for energy. Now, for some, a healthy weight loss program can turn into a Ed, obsession or even less satisfaction with the body and you sound like for the most part you are happy with yourself and realize the importance of self acceptance so I am not advocating that you try to lose weight at all but it just kind of bothered me how your mind automatically leapt to starvation diets as a way to lose weight when they are actually the most least effective way to do so. Before and when I had my ED and understood less about metabolisms and weight loss and nutrition my mind went to starvation automatically when I thought about my desire to lose weight. In my mind it was starve and be thin vs. not starve and be fat. (I had a phobia of being fat due to culture and probably my genetics and personality) Getting over seeing things in such either/or terms helped a great deal. I also wanted to point out that I know you mentioned that some days you eat very little because of financial reasons, and this may not be possible for you now, but if there is any way to ensure that you eat healthy balanced meals each day and don't for whatever reason have days of extreme deprivation or over-indulgence that might help you focus less on your weight or body and just feel more "stable" overall.

I know so many people who have been conditioned to have reasons to hate themselves. I often wonder why it's so easy to create this kind of response. It seems awfully sadistic to create this ideal image of womanhood that few can ever reach, but I also add that there is an ideal version of masculinity also propagated as well. Those of us who are more sensitive, less inclined towards traditional male pursuits, and constrained by gender stereotypes often find ourselves in this dilemma too.

But neither should this stop merely with gender. I wonder why anyone was so sadistic as to try to make a one-size-fits-all standard of everything by which few, if any can actually achieve, and most do not. How does it really benefit anyone in the end? It seems nonsensical.

Something that stands out to me in this post is that you're giving yourself a very hard time for more than one thing.

The obvious thing being your weight, which you're already aware is something you need not give yourself a hard time about. The other is the fact that you feel bad about your weight/shape/BMI.

You don't need to feel guilty for feeling ashamed. You have to keep in mind that you do not have super-powers. We all come from the same fat shaming society and all have those "fat-days". And as hard as I have tried to give myself credit for my own beauty, I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I NEVER feel disgusted with myself.

I've gone from being 60 pounds overweight to being 5 pounds underweight and back again more than once. And never in the spectrum of body images I've ranged have I been able to tell MYSELF that I'm perfect and gorgeous. Never. I've always been able to tell other people that, but not me. I think for most of us, the idea that we're not good enough just never goes away. I read somewhere that only 1% of the female population is satisfied with the way they look, let alone proud.

Give yourself a little slack. Its beautiful that you try to love yourself and your body. Stick with it, and when you have those bad days, just try to remember who you are. You're a self-identifying fat-accepting feminist, which is a big accomplishment in itself!

Marianne Kirby over at The Rotund recently wrote a post that you might find helpful. The Limbo: A State of Being, Not a Party Game

You're definitely not alone. I think that most, if not all, of us who are fat and embrace Fat Acceptance have days when we still feel ugly and worthless because of our size. Living with confidence in a world that demonizes fat isn't an easy thing for any fat person to do, even one who's been involved with Fat Acceptance and Health at Every Size for a long time. I've had days like that, too—more than I'd like to admit, usually at least once a week. When they happen, I generally try to avoid looking in the mirror for a few hours and just take a walk, move around a bit and, despite the mental background chatter saying "You're fat, you're ugly, you're worthless", I just try to get through the day in a way that's as normal for me as I can get in that state of mind, knowing that tomorrow I'll probably be feeling like my usual self, fat and unashamed.

Having just come off a string of fat-days (which tend to compound into fat-unattractive-unintelligent days), I understand completely where you're coming from. When I was 19, I had an eating disorder that developed compounded with an abusive relationship, and some days I look at pictures of myself from when I was that skinny and wonder why I can't just not eat like I did then. I think we all have our own "monsters".

Sometimes we all have days where we just hate something about ourselves, and unfortunately this society has made it okay. From where I sit, my roommates have at least two magazines (in my line of vision) that have the phrases "LOSE WEIGHT!" and "LOOK SEXIER IN (X) STEPS!" in bright neon colors.

But like Spiffy McBang said, what we want to believe does end up being what we do believe. If most days you know that you look darn good, that's great. Like everything else, it takes practice, I guess.