Dances With Fat

 

Hi, I’m Ragen Chastain.

 

I’m started this blog in 2009 and while I don’t post much here any more (I primarily write about the intersections of weight science, weight stigma, health and healthcare at WeightAndHealthcare) but there’s still lots of content here and you can still join the newsletter list to get a monthly dose of fat positivity!
I’m a Speaker, Writer, Researcher, Board Certified Patient Advocate,

ACE Certified Health Coach and Functional Fitness Specialist.

 

Get info about my speaking

 

  Read my newsletter about weight science, weight stigma, and healthcare

 

Check out my other writing

 

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Monthly Online Workshops!

May Workshop
But What About Fat People’s Health? – Weight, Health, and Social Justice
(Video and Pay-What-You-Can Option Included)
Click Here for Details and Registration

Why “danceswithfat?”  I started this blog when I was competing in partner dancing. I blogged here because there are people who hate themselves and their bodies because they don’t think they have another choice, and because there are people who diet only because they think it’s the only way to pursue health or happiness.  I’m not trying to tell anybody what personal choices they have to make.  My goal is and has always been to let as many people as possible know about the options of Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size.

I believe that basic human respect is for people of all sizes. I believe in the concept of Intersectional social justice and I wear the label of Social Justice Warrior like a badge of honor. I know that ally is a verb, and I know that understanding my own privilege and using it to help dismantle the systems of oppression from which I directly benefit (including, in my case, racism, ableism, healthism, transphobia, and the good fatty/bad fatty dichotomy and more) is crucial, and my basic responsibility in order to be a decent human being. My pronouns are she/her/hers.

Want to see some of that dancing?  This are my coach and I doing a West Coast Swing showcase to Bette Midler’s I’m Beautiful. Enjoy!

Buy the Book!   Fat:  The Owners Manual – Navigating a Thin-Obsessed World with Your Health, Happiness and Sense of Humor Intact is now available in soft-cover and e-book.  Just click here!

You can color me!  I’m super excited to be part of Toni Tails Body Positive Coloring Book, click the image below to download and color. (After you color it you can even post it to The Coloring Book’s Facebook page)

You can also color me in Allion Tunis’s absolutely amazing Body Love: A Fat Activist Coloring Book

I’ve been lucky to have had a lot of opportunities and experiences in my life. I’ve been a cheerleading captain, a multi-sport varsity athlete, my class valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar, and played Carnegie Hall. I’ve published books, started successful businesses, won three National Dance Championships, and hold the Guinness World Record for Heaviest Women to Complete a Marathon. In 2011 I left a successful consulting career for my dream job of speaking and writing full-time about Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size.

I consider my greatest accomplishment to be learning to love myself and my body, and to be truly happy living completely outside the cultural beauty norm.  While I discuss my own journey as a fathlete, I always want to be crystal clear that nobody is ever obligated to participate in fitness, and that my goal is just to make sure that every body is welcome.  I am an unwavering advocate for Size Acceptance – the civil rights fact that fat people have the right to live in fat bodies, and it doesn’t matter why we’re fat, what “the consequences” of being fat might be, and whether we want to, or even can, become thin. The rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and basic human respect are not, and should never be, size dependent.