Three weeks into the new year, most people who resolved that 2019 is the year they will finally get fit and healthy should still be on track. After all, gyms everywhere are still packed at all hours, health store tills continue to ring, and following a slow season, salad bars are overflowing with low-calorie eaters.
New year on new year, such businesses enjoy major spikes in their sales what with hopes renewed over and over again for drastic weight loss, sugar and cholesterol levels within range, and with some luck, toned arms and hard abs to go with the “new” them. The new them, that is, that for most is ever elusive.
American TV personality and body positivity advocate Whitney Thore knows this never ending struggle all too well, which is why she is always ready to tell her story in the hopes it could help others see weight loss in a different light.
Overnight changes
Despite her infectious optimism and the tremendous energy she channels via her cable TV show “My Big Fat Fabulous Life” on TLC, Thore admitted it took her a long time before she became the body advocate girls her size look up to today.
“I always suffered with really bad body image which I think, unfortunately, is terribly common,” the TV star told The Sunday Times Magazine in an interview during her visit in the Philippines.
“I was actually thin my whole life until I was 18 years old, but I was always struggling, feeling that I was fat even though I was very small. I wasn’t even chubby,” she recalled.
She suddenly went through an extreme body change during her first year in college and gained 100 pounds over her ideal body weight.
Baffled by the unexplained growth, Thore said she consulted a number of doctors to find out why it happened but had little support from those around her who dismissed her concern. They pointed out that she was in college anyway where bullying wouldn’t be as bad as it is in high school.
“At that time I remember feeling like it was a self-fulfilling prophecy because I’d always felt so fat and I always hated my body. So I thought like, ‘Wow, now I am actually fat’.”
Thore said the entire experience felt like she was living out a social experiment where she had to put on a fat suit and go out to see how the public would react to her size.
“Overnight, everything changed for me — everyone treated me differently, some in overt ways, others in subtle ways. There were people who suddenly didn’t want to stand close to me in an elevator or something like that. It was really traumatic.”
Three years later, in 2005, Thore discovered she had Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which caused the sudden physical changes and extreme weight gain.
But by the time she was diagnosed with the condition, she had already added more poundage and felt she was at the point of no return.
“I was so ashamed [with my looks] that I quit dancing and exercising altogether. I coped with alcohol and food and other things, but every coping mechanism I turned to just exacerbated my weight gain.”
‘Rude awakening’
Thore continued living unhealthily for a long time until she decided she needed a complete change of scenery to lift up her spirits. She flew 7,000 miles away from her home of North Carolina and embraced a new life in South Korea as an English teacher.
“I just didn’t know what I wanted to do after college. I had a college friend who had moved to Korea and he said it was [a] good [place]. He was also a teacher and he said you could travel and the job was fun and all that so I just went for it.”
But what she thought was the change she needed turned for the worst as Thore was met with ridicule in a foreign country.
“I experienced a lot of hate. I got assaulted, I got spit on, I got called a pig, I got laughed at and pointed at every single day.”
Thore said she realized the Asian’s beauty standard is much more rigid that the American’s.
“In the West, things are pretty covert, I would say, but in Korea it was very overt. And I think it had to do with the amount of exposure that a lot of people in other countries have never had. I was like literally the fattest person a lot of people [in Korea] had ever seen so that made me a really big anomaly.”
Still, she loved the opportunity to teach young minds and the children whose lives she touched.
“I would talk about stuff like this from time to time with my Korean students and they were brilliant and very open and accepting. And that gave me hope that things can change there too.”
Time for ‘change’
“All the same, I wanted to prevent my experience in Korea from ever happening again to me or to anyone else, so I decided I had to lose weight,” Thore continued her story.
She then flew home after her four-year stint in South Korea to finally embark on her “weight loss journey,” but it was anything but healthy. She became a slave at the gym and worked out almost four hours a day, every day of the week. She also followed an extremely restrictive diet, and hardly ate anything. The result was neither her ideal weight nor her dream body but a terrible eating disorder.
“I ended up losing 100 pounds in about eight months, when in reality I was suffering from an eating disorder. Still, everyone was like, ‘Wow you look great! You are so disciplined’ when I was just dying inside.”
In her brief moment of triumph, however, Thore realized the feeling of contentment she thought would wash over her if she slimmed down a little was neither there.
“It hit me that nothing had really changed because I was still fat, just less fat and life was still bad. I thought people still hated me because I still wasn’t small enough just as I did when I experienced ridicule abroad.
“But one day I just told myself, maybe the answer isn’t just weight loss, maybe there’s something else, maybe I can be happy without that. In a way, my experience in South Korea was the catalyst to the catalyst I had for this journey.”
The next question Thore had to deal with was how she could take on a journey toward a healthier lifestyle and self-acceptance differently.
“And just as instantly, I thought that instead of trying to lose all these weight again, I’m just going to try to live like I wasn’t fat, and here we are. My life changed pretty much, once again, overnight.”
Her confidence back, she found a job as on-air producer of a radio show titled “Jared & Katie in the Morning” in North Carolina. Her love for dance also re-emerged and even resulted in a dance video project she wholeheartedly dubbed, “A Fat Girl Dancing.”
Soon, the video went viral and Thore found a platform and a personal mission to promote positive body image. Once they heard her story, the likes of “ABC News,” NBC’s “Today Show” and The Huffington Post came knocking so that millions of others can find inspiration in her journey.
But that’s not all.
“Two months later I had a TV show. Really, it all happened very quickly!”
In the spotlight
The year 2015 became a pivotal year for Thore as the popular cable channel TLC began airing “My Big Fat Fabulous Life” in early January.
She quickly gained a following who related with her lifelong battle with yo-yoing weight, her determination to become healthier and eventual triumph in self-acceptance. The show became such a success that it just went on its fifth season this month.
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me, ‘When I first heard about your show, I wasn’t sure about it, then I watched it and I fell in love with you!’”
Thore believes that one of the things that have made My Big Fat Fabulous Life such a hit is its innovative portrayal of fat people on television.
“It’s really about humanizing fat people because we don’t typically see them in the media as full three-dimensional human beings. We’re just like props so I’m just trying to live and hope that people catch on.”
As the show progressed, Thore also noticed she was no longer just representing people of bigger sizes.
“I think my biggest accomplishment is that I hear from folks all over the world who are actually nothing like me but who turn on the TV and say, ‘I see myself in you.’ I think it’s important for people to see someone who isn’t the societal norm but who is still representing themselves with confidence on a platform as extensive as television.”
But if there’s so much love for Thore from her fans around the world, there are also those who raise their eyebrows and accuse her of promoting obesity. She always says after all that slimming down is not her end goal.
When The Sunday Times Magazine asked her to comment on what others deem as a dissonance between the big happy woman she is and her call for a healthy lifestyle, Thore replied, “For people who say ‘I think you’re really promoting an unhealthy lifestyle and obesity,’ and they feel that it’s their job to change that or something, I always ask them, ‘Do you walk down the street and knock cigarettes from people’s hands? Do you go into fast- food restaurants and tell people not to eat there if they want to be thin? Do you ask people how much sleep they get every night?’ Of course, their answer is no and it becomes clear they have a fat prejudice and not a concern for health.
“I think the best thing to do is just lead by example.”
Start the journey to happiness
Rounding up the interview, Thore stated she hopes fat people everywhere will realize they deserve all the love and respect like the rest of the world and for that feeling to eventually empower them to make a conscious move to start their own journey of happiness.
Easier said than done, Thore also enumerated the ways in which people with insecurities can hold their head up high.
“When I started to gain recognition and all these people started reaching out to me to share their stories, I was actually really sad at first. I thought life was so awful, that people are just so awful, and that there’s so much pain in the world. But I realized that if I wasn’t unique in my struggle, then I wasn’t alone. There is strength in solidarity and knowing that you are not alone. I think that’s the first step in beating insecurity.
“The second thing is what I tell people when they ask me, ‘How do you become confident?’ There are numerous reasons why people struggle with not having confidence, and I think that the way we view that is really backwards. We tend to think, we have to have confidence to be able to do something. But I think it’s the reverse. I think it’s when you do something that you actually gain the confidence.
“If I had to wait to have the confidence to do the things I did, I would never be here right now. I think that you just have to do the hard stuff and get out of your comfort zone and then the confidence comes as a reward. So I urge people not to feel they can’t do something just because they’re not confident.
“Lastly, I advice people to surround themselves with people who are supportive. I’m really lucky to have supportive family and friends, and it’s so wonderful to realize that you deserve to be loved, to reach out and make connections in your life, and support other people and get that same support back.”
At the end of the day, Thore said she simply wants to be remembered as a TV personality who went the extra mile for her viewers.
“I just want to be remembered as a woman who put everything about her out there — the good, the bad, the hard stuff, the fun stuff, the scary stuff — so that other people can find someone they can relate to.”
The post Whitney Thore is fat, happy and proud appeared first on The Manila Times Online.