Thanks, sanjeewani. I am shaken and bewildered. Really struggling to grasp how my reading of this situation is so clearly failing to correspond at all with that of people with whom it does on almost every other issue to date, but I accept that it somehow does and I will back off of course. Fed my (pale) fat baby feminism up on Kate Harding and Shakesville, and more recently live on BGD (aah and thanks for reminding me to get back to Autostraddle more often), so maybe I've just grown too used to spaces where fat=worthless doesn't get to operate that way. Anyway, thanks the third.

Okay, I did not intend to belittle or scold - so I am very sorry that I did that and made you feel crap. My bad for poor communication. I am genuinely glad for any woman who finds some kind of body peace. Yay for happier women having full lives!

And sorry too, this from Shakesville is the good fatty story I am talking about: http://www.shakesville.com/2014/04/notyourgoodfat.... The essence is: "It's essentially the fat equivalent of Playing the Exceptional Woman — exceptionalizing yourself to gain acceptance with the privileged class."

Upholding the principle of medical exemption from fat culpability is like lobbying for a rape exemption from abortion restrictions: honestly, hugely fantastic for those who squeak by, but a) that's a tiny minority of those who need it, and b) it actually works counter to the overall principle, and throws everyone else a little deeper under the bus.

I wish you the best with your process, and hope that in time you can see that at the same time as you are hurting and healing, you have the power to hurt other women, and make their worlds that tiny bit more inhospitable, if you present your ongoing fat hate as above criticism or reflection. And you also have the power to help them that tiny bit with their own healing, just by trying to make it really clear that you don't actually believe (together with literally everyone else in the rest of the world) that they are worthless.

Hi Nichole. I do understand that, but I also wish you would (later in the piece?) distance yourself from that position for the sake of those whose world you create with your words. Knowing that even my allies, my sisters-in-arms, can unreflectingly imply that I am awful and worthless because I don't have a good medical excuse for my depression and fatness is pretty damn terrible. You can obviously write what/how you like - I just wanted to flag that this might be something to be more sensitive to in future.

Disease not convenient, of course, but diagnosis is.

No, sorry, I don't think this is a matter of reading in implications as much as it is reading the actual written text. She literally says that it was the PCOS diagnosis that made the difference between her feeling awful and unworthy, and feeling okay. This is the "good fatty" story all over again. This position is not later disavowed or distanced from. It seems to be the essence of this story: I got fat and it was the worst; then I realised I was certifiably sick, so I started to become okay with being fat.

"As I researched PCOS, I discovered studies linking it to various psychiatric complications like depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. I worked my way through the internet, reading as much as I could, relieved to know that I wasn’t an awful person, unworthy of life. "

Please think again before saying things like this. Fat and depressed woman here - no convenient PCOS or thyroid or any diagnosis to make. So I guess that makes me an awful person and unworthy of life?