Have you heard of the fat acceptance movement? It is a loose affiliation of individuals and organizations uniting around the idea that fat people are unfairly targeted for discrimination and hatred in our society. Of course, any of us who are or who have been fat know the truth of this like we know our own names. The revolutionary idea, to me at the time at least, is that this is not okay. Being reviled, discriminated against and treated poorly simply because we are fat is not okay. And, conversely, it’s okay to be fat.

In 1998 I was in my late 20s. It’s sometimes hard to remember exactly how I thought back then, because my worldview has changed so much in the past 10 years. But I recall feeling like my weight was the only thing about me that really mattered, and that because I was so fat I was really just an unacceptable failure as a human. The fat acceptance community helped me to see the irrationality of this belief, and I started to truly understand that I had intrinsic worth as a person and that I had a right to respect from others and, more importantly, some self respect.

There are many people who are active in the fat acceptance community and there are many points of view. There are strong disagreements about certain things within the community. Some people within the fat acceptance community feel that to even want to lose weight is a betrayal of yourself and other fat people. I have to disagree with this perspective. I have seen too many people, myself and others, whose health, mobility and quality of life have been severely compromised by obesity. I have had the experience of losing weight and keeping it off through healthy lifestyles changes, not “dieting.”

But the fact remains that the heart of fat acceptance, the idea that fat people have just as much of a right to stand tall in this world as thinner people, is fundamentally true. And I was able to take on this belief in my own worth because of fat acceptance. And maybe this is what helped me to start loving myself enough to begin to make the changes that have taken me where I am today.

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• What Does it Mean to Offer Ourselves Radical Acceptance?

There is a critical, self-loathing voice inside my head, and it seems like it has always been there for as long as I can remember. Perhaps you have one too. It tells me that I’m just not good enough, that maybe I don’t really have my life under control, that maybe I’m just a misstep or two away from living in squalor and filth again, that maybe my eating is already out of control and I’m back on the road to morbid obesity. It tells me that I can’t trust myself, that I have to be self-critical and hard on myself or my life will fall apart again. The voice both creates and expresses a sense of fear and anxiety that can be paralyzing at times.

A month or two ago I was discussing this self-critical voice with Bill. He asked me a question that boggled my mind: “Catherine, what would it take to accept the part of you that does not accept yourself?” At first this question seemed so paradoxical that I could not even comprehend it. My self-loathing voice is like an enemy who is determined to make me miserable, an enemy whom I cannot escape. I desperately wanted to eliminate this part of me, not accept it!

And then I stumbled across Radical Acceptance, a book by Tara Brach. Brach is a psychologist and a meditation instructor who has woven her own life experience, her clinical experience with clients and her Buddhist beliefs and practices into an approach to dealing with the crippling inadequacy so many of us feel. Brach tells her readers that they can offer every feeling and thought friendly acceptance — even feelings of inadequacy and our most self-criticizing thoughts.

In an interview posted on Beliefnet.com, Brach says:

When some people talk about accepting themselves they have this fear that they’re condoning some bad behavior, or that if they accept themselves, that means they’ll never improve. But the truth is, we’re not saying, “It’s OK that you did that bad thing.” All we’re accepting is the actuality of our experience in the moment: I’m accepting this shame is here, I’m accepting this fear is here, I’m accepting this anger, I’m accepting that there’s craving, I’m accepting the truth just now, that I acted out of that craving and I ate too much. I’m accepting how bad I feel about that. But in the moment of accepting, we’re not condoning. We’re just acknowledging the truth of what’s here with kindness. The reality is, if we can do that, it actually begins to free us so we can in the next moment, be a lot more wise.

Reading Radical Acceptance has opened a window for me into the possibility of a powerful sense of acceptance of all the thoughts and feelings I have, even those that I would prefer to be without. I feel like I’m just starting to get an inkling of how profound the practice of radical acceptance really can be.

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• Did Fat Acceptance Help Me Lose Weight?