If my body were a landscape, those who dared traverse its roads would find themselves travelling through rolling hills and deep valleys. I think that is a very romantic way of describing my fatness. I have always been fat. Pictures of me in dresses or in diapers and my dad’s snapback both attest to my ample belly and chubby cheeks. I literally have no experience of being a normal weight. What I do have a lot of experience in is being a person made to be outdoors—made to explore and walk and trek and scramble up granite-strewn paths. Though I would never call myself an athlete, being fat never stopped me from doing those outdoor things I love most. Understand that I’m not actually an “advocate” of obesity—I would only be so if I wholly denounced my background in public health—but I am slowly becoming an advocate of me. What?

I recently found some photos my mother took of me during a period during which I was doing things like 5Ks and hiking the Tallac trail (only the five mile in-and-back to Cathedral lake as the peak was a bit too ambitious—someday, though). The conversation in my head as I looked at the photos of me was pretty much, “Oh wow, I look fat. I can totally see my rolls and I’m really wide from the side view. I look like one of the mountain peaks I hike among.” I know that sounds judgy, but it was more of an observation of fact. When I take photos of me, I do that weird thing where I place the camera above my head and look up, using the perspective to minimize my largeness, and I usually don’t take full body photos of myself. I almost never take head shots from the side as my jutting underbite and miniscule nose result in my visage appearing as flat at Half Dome’s face. So, I definitely have some sense of shame surrounding my physical appearance. Interestingly, this has been a more recent development. I was never the big girl who felt ugly, and in fact I still don’t feel ugly. I just feel noticeably, uncomfortably different. 

“Different is just different.” Right? The truth is that I reached a point in which I really was limited in what I could do physically and that started a spiral of negative thinking that led me to accept that I didn’t deserve to be an outdoors person. “I’d take up too much space on the trail and move too slowly. Oh, and everyone would hear my breathing.” Those thoughts kept me off the trails for three years. Instead of doing short jaunts at my own pace—and safely working up to longer distances—I stayed on the couch watching videos of the outdoors (and cats, let’s be real). I built a figurative prison and locked myself in it for those long years. A year ago, I found a hiking group on Instagram that promotes hiking (and being outdoors) for women of all sizes and especially fat women. As I perused through photos of women who looked more like me that the usual REI models, I began to see myself in them and their experiences. It was like they gave me the keys to my own prison. I realized that I am “worthy of the trail” and that my greatest obstacle to getting back outdoors was inside my own head. 

“I don’t care how slow I go, how short the distance, or how loud I breathe, I’m going outside.” My inner dialogue began to change and one day I just went outside. That single step led me from wishing to be healthier and more active to being healthier—making better decisions and getting on the trail. I go out most weekends now, and I try to get on the trails as often as I can. That sacred time, when it’s just me alone in nature’s cathedrals, do as much (or more) for healing my soul than any of my other tools. So, yeah, I’m much better at advocating for me now–for the girl with the flat face, wide body with funny rolls, and ample rear. I don’t look at those photos and think, “Gross!” I look at them and say “That’s me! And I deserve to be outside.”