One night when I was still fairly new to Los Angeles I attended the premier of some friends’ comedy show. If I had known then that making friends with aspirational actors and producers would be a liability to my happiness I would gladly have altered course in this time of my life (people whose purpose in life is to “make it” do not make good friends). But the show was fun, though small, and afterward I walked up to congratulate my friends on their job well done, stepped onto the curb to the only open spot in the small ring of people currently conversing, only then realizing to my right, the person next to whom I’d so cavalierly planted myself, was one of the greatest actresses who has ever lived. My friend noticed my speechless paralyzation and said to her, “Oh, this is my friend, Nathan.” She turned and looked directly into my eyes and my insides turned to absolute mush, extending her hand as if I should be so worthy to take it. “Hi,” she said warmly and without any presupposition I’d know her, “I’m Anjelica.” My response was something unconsidered and inane, like, “Oh, yes, I know who you are,” instead of something vulnerable and kind like, “Wow it’s so nice to meet you. I have loved you all my life ever since your terrifying performance in ‘Witches.’ You are an inspiration to young people everywhere. Did I already say I love you?”

Living in LA is often like this. Like the time I was going for a walk in my neighborhood and saw Heather Locklear hanging out of her Mercedes Kompressor enjoying the sunny, beautiful day, or that time a friend and I decided to peruse a Sur La Table at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning when one of the fellow customers shouted across the store, “Oh, Kate honey I need a drink!” and it was Goldie Hawn looking as fabulous as ever and the Kate was, you know, Kate Hudson, her daughter, browsing at the other side of the store, leaving me gobsmacked and suppressing an urge to laugh at the incredible randomness and fortune of life. My favorite encounter was finding Sarah and Laura Silverman at a West Hollywood fabric store right before Halloween. They smiled warmly at me and my friend since we all knew we were there to make silly costumes and have the time of our lives and not because any of us were serious clothiers and I had to ignore my crazy-person thoughts to ask if they wanted to be best friends for ever and ever. Less of a household name but still an amazing star in her own right was author Rachel Cohn, one of the most beautiful people I have ever met, whom because of a more personal connection I was actually able to spend time with and absolutely enjoyed every moment, and she kindly even tried to help me get published, with no accounting for my lack of talent. 

I have been obsessed most recently with Lizzo (no, unfortunately have not met her), skipping everything in my current playlist down to her more recent entries every time I get into the car. If there was any hesitation at all to become a loyal fan it was immediately quashed when she gave a direct, earnest, and uncontrived shoutout to gay boys in Boys. So you can understand why I was absolutely incensed when a prominent, celebrity physical trainer from one of those ‘I’m going to torture you until you die of hunger,’ shows derided Lizzo and her fans for celebrating Lizzo’s physical appearance as much as her talent and person. There is absolutely no world in which I encounter this trainer and feel even an iota, a smidgen, a trivial crumb of the kind of glee and admiration I felt in my encounters with these other aforementioned women, even though she is “skinny,” and “takes care of herself.” Worse, this trainer perpetuated false information about diabetes, equating weight gain with diabetes, which is both irresponsible for someone of her public influence and embarrassingly naive for someone in her profession, and markedly callous toward those who do have the disease. Diabetes is not caused by weight gain, and even if someone has the disease it is not a reflection on their worth as a person. We can celebrate those with diabetes, and weight gain is protective against the forces of stress which cause the disease and others like it. Diseases like diabetes exist not to punish those who supposedly lack self-will, as she so asininely implied, but because biochemical processes take place in our mortal physiology to imbalance the function of insulin and the metabolism of glucose. Weight gain should be celebrated, because it is evidence that your body is still healthy and is taking care of you and doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing when we come under the kind of environmental stresses which cause it. Ironically this person does not realize that in all reality Lizzo is most likely healthier than she, as an actual state of worrying health is a person who experiences metabolic stresses but does not gain weight, not that she is actually concerned for Lizzo’s health. In the case of someone that cannot gain weight during stress that person is more likely to die suddenly, since the body has no stores of nutrients from which to withdraw resources in times of severe stress. This phenomenon is seen frequently in exhaustive athletes who train and compete until they begin to lose not only fat but lean muscle and body parts like the breasts, hair, and functions like sleep, erections, and happiness, problems which are caused exactly by people like this personal trainer who try to elevate their own social status by taking direct advantage of someone for their weight and denigrating them for it. It’s a lame, cliche act of bullying, but more than that it imprisons not only those who hear it but the perpetrator themselves into a world where they cannot under any circumstances show evidence of human mortality and fears more than anything their own demise. The person who said this mistakenly equates “skinny” with beauty. Whatever that means. Strangely she seems unaware of the obvious evidence of the fallacy of her own position. She is not beautiful by any standard I ascribe. Perpetuating body shame, harmful dietary behavior, self-hatred. Her face shows evidence of a person tormented by these concepts of living—sunken cheekbones, eyes shrinking into the back of her head, a dull and listless personality. In truth she is as much a victim of her position as those on which she seeks to perpetuate it. That’s something we do as humans—trying to unload our misery onto others because if it happens to other people then it means we are not alone in our suffering and so find some small bit of comfort or justification for it. She cannot understand how someone like Lizzo is, at least somewhat, immune to the burdens of such arbitrary and harmful ideas of physical beauty and self worth which is based solely on such shallow and impermanent aspects of existence. Lizzo’s apparent ability to enjoy herself and her life and attract legions of fans not in spite of but also because of her body is something this trainer has never experienced and cannot understand, and the feelings of jealously and powerlessness which rise within her are followed by resentment, which then lashes out as so many bullies do through contempt and derision to mask their own painful fears and insecurities and incongruent worldview. She knows no reality in which she can be loved and valued if she were to gain weight, and this world exists all around us because of those who sustain and perpetuate it, but more to their disadvantage than ours. 

So as not to be one-sided I will call out some of these celebrities for using only the most chiseled, adonis types of men as the love interests in their music videos. It’s quite a broad double-standard, and being overweight does not shield a person from practicing the same kind of shallowness and objectification displayed by the objects of my displeasure in this article, as I unfortunately learned as a younger man when trying to date someone who was fat who while we were together chided me for gaining a few pounds even though he had been fat the whole time we were together and is still fat to this day, and his behavior was part of the reason I dumped him. Ideas of beauty and physical attraction cause so much unnecessary harm not just to the objects of their contempt but also to those who hold these ideas. Have you ever seen someone recovering from liposuction? Their torso bleeding all over their bed as they bide finally the onset of that happiness elusive? A face which fails to express the life inside for an excess of botox? A total stranger who advises someone on their weight and appearance as if you’re allowed to do such a thing? You do not need to be part of such a confining and destructive worldview. Real beauty comes simply from the value inherent within existence. This can be exaggerated by personal growth and physical wellness—but not being “skinny,” WHATEVER THE HELL THAT MEANS, but having a functioning metabolism and the wisdom and experience to know that you are valuable as a person not in spite of your flaws but because of them. One particular aspect of a healthy metabolism happens to be the key feature for being physically attractive which has nothing to do with the shape of your body or how much you weigh. When the body is healthy and has good thyroid function the eyes sit outward a little from the skull. This gives the eyes a bright, open expression which more strongly reflects the energy and spirit of a person. The eyes can be a lure to the promise of connection and encounters, to experience the presence of others. Conversely, when a person becomes metabolically ill, such as this personal trainer who has spent their whole life abusing their body, the eyes begin to sink backward into the head because the muscles and connective tissue which support the eyes become fatigued and weakened. This appearance is made worse by a dearth of energy and thus enthusiasm for life, and the eyes lose their sparkle and happiness. It’s an effect that often plagues those who are depressed and withdrawn, which is no surprise since these people are often overwhelmed by environmental stresses which cannot be overcome through sheer power of will. It is also why those with these problems avoid eye contact, though such encounters would heal them, the fear of rejection should anyone see what is inside bears out stronger. When I was at my most sickly my eyes were quite receded into my skull, which gave me a constant appearance of tiredness. As a young man, tall and attractive I often wondered why satisfying romantic connections were difficult to come by, and photos of me from that age show a boy wracked with depression and metabolic illness, even though he was still fit and handsome, my eyes pained by torment and frustration, and because life is difficult for everyone no sane adult wants to adopt that kind of burden into their life willingly. I once ran into someone I had not seen in a very long time whose eyes were so far retreated into his head as to make him appear like some kind of indie cartoon (it was quite unnerving). Lizzo’s beauty comes both from being healthy and her enthusiasm for life but also a willingness to show off her life experience, wisdom, and embracing the limits of mortality rather than resisting them. It is a place this personal trainer has never experienced and as such does not understand. Even when I thought I was undesirable due to my weight and illness I had nothing left to lose and as such stopped averting my eyes from potential connection, and was surprised to be approached by guys whom I would have judged out my league, because I did not understand what real beauty is. Further confusion came when, while still “overweight” I began drawing the eye of many in my daily encounters, more than what I thought possible even if I were shredded. What had changed was the restoration of my thyroid function which in turn restored my enthusiasm and hope for life (also a changed sense of self due to my life experiences) but which also caused the structures of my eyes to more prominently present this new outlook and appreciation for myself through bright, expressive eyes no longer burdened with metabolic disease. This in turn caught other people’s attention because through my eyes they could more fully experience the promise of life and the potential for human connection. That is just one of the things people find beautiful about Lizzo—about Sarah, Goldie, and Anjelica Huston. It’s something that those with severe body dysmorphia and socially warped ideas of humanity do not understand, because they have not yet been able to go through the experience to its resolution—it has very little to do with how you look and is, instead, who you are.

I suppose we should be compassionate to those who deride others for their physical appearance, and try to help them find liberation from such stigma through our own experience. in truth their behavior originates from deep despair, loneliness, and lack of the very self-worth they pretend to exude. Getting out of that frequently requires living through health challenges rather than seeing it. Before I got fat I never understood my real value as a person, nor of how special and important my body really is. It’s a shame that everyone can’t also find that. Sometimes we think everyone is judgmental or possesses the same standards of beauty, but as humans we only see what we expect, and expecting judgment or shame we only listen to the one or two loud assholes who exploit people’s differences for their own personal gain, conveniently ignoring the far greater number of those who are kind and loving simply because they do not fit into our expectations and personal worldview. Part of the process I’ve seen in those who use my book or coaching is that when confronted with the option of getting well through proper nutrition though it means gaining weight, they are also confronted with their own misconceptions about how the physical world actually works and the fortitude and resilience of their own body, and thus find greater liberation in the process, a liberation which actually helps them achieve real beauty, by confronting fears and acknowledging our shared, and desirable, mortality. Real beauty comes from the soul. Health can accentuate it, but that doesn’t mean conforming to societal standards. That path will lead you to grotesque plastic surgery, social anxiety, harmful dietary behaviors, and contempt for yourself. Real health comes from sufficient nutrition, which includes ample caloric intake from good foods which are well-made and produced, and most importantly compassion and appreciation for your physical body no matter its state. If you have a hard time finding this, you can easily find it by doing things which accept and utilize truths which are based on physical reality such as the temperature and pulse diagnostic in the chapter on self therapy in my book. Using hope, waist-lines, and nebulous symptoms to diagnose progress are the kinds of behaviors which promote body shame and self-hatred, because they are based on ethereal ideas that have little basis in reality. Using data-driven and actionable tools like the pulse and temperature diagnostic are instead informed by actual cause and consequence, thus empowering a person to understand and recognize the real parameters of their health and thus that of reality and their own self-worth. Realizing that your body is actually trying to take care of you instead of sabotaging your strenuous efforts imparts a love and appreciation for your body and life, and since we are our bodies this extends to our opinion of ourselves. If you want to go further down this road of healing and resolution you can then practice the personal and fear inventories in the chapter on spirituality, since these therapies effectively catalogue, describe, and resolve pain and trauma from our past from which our conceptions of ourself and life originate. By confronting the reality of your experience rather than through the coping mechanisms our mind has created to protect us one can further dismantle the walls which prevent satisfaction and open us to the reality of self-worth, our position in the universe, and ability to connect to others. Which honestly has nothing to do with a fucking waistline. If you want to learn more about diabetes and other metabolic illnesses and get your eyes sparkling and full of life you can read articles such as this one on the cause and cure for diabetes, or get a copy of my book.