After about ten years of hard work, I have managed to disentangle movement from my body size. I do not exercise to lose weight. I do not exercise because I hate my body or because I had cake last night. I exercise now because I want to be strong, flexible, and emotionally stable. I exercise because it makes me feel better in the moment and in the long run. I exercise because it helps me sleep at night, provides community, keeps my internal organs healthy, and makes aging a little easier.

It has been a slower and more difficult process, but I am also learning to love food and to resist eating based on “should.” This book, which I am working through with an extraordinary Registered Dietitian, has been a gift.

But I am a long way from loving myself. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I were in a smaller body, that I don’t feel some measure of shame for the size of my gut, the hunch of my shoulders, the fold of fat behind my knees.

In 1959, Stunkard and McLaren-Hume reported on the failure of weight-reduction programs for the treatment of obesity. 1959. Since 1959, we have knowingly trapped fat people in cycles of dieting and weight gain. We have known this cycle compounds problems and creates lasting physiological and psychological harm. But golly day, there’s a lot of money to be made from the endeavor.

In an effort to reclaim my brain from body shame, I’m naming the unhelpful thoughts. They’re the Evil Corporate Overlords. The ones who made billions telling people like me that we were weak-willed and gluttonous. The ones who flooded magazines, television sets, billboards, and newspapers with images and words designed to make me believe that my body was wrong. As a young person, I didn’t have the tools to fight back. Hell, I’m not sure I had the tools two months ago.

But Evil Corporate Overlords are easy to identify, and pretty fun to say a big “fuck you” to. This is my top-of-the-head list. Feel free to add yours in the comments.

• Slim-Fast
• Weight Watchers, aka Invus (private equity)
• SnackWells, formerly Nabisco
• Jenny Craig, formerly Nestle now Nutrisystem
• Atkins (it’s holding company has created billions in shareholder value!) and South Beach (Nutrisystem)
• Nutrisystem, aka Kainos Capital (private equity)
• Ozempic, aka Novo Nordisk (BlackRock is an investor!)
• Wegovy, aka Novo Nordisk (see above)
• Ro, initially started to make Viagra easier to sell to men
• Oprah’s wheelbarrow of fat
• Healthy Choice, aka ConAgra
• Victoria’s Secret (but we know the secret now)
• The Sport’s Illustrated Swimsuit edition and every magazine at the grocery check-out counter that let us know it held the secret to losing ten pounds of belly fat, fast
• Lean Cuisine, aka Nestle
• Special K, the K is for Kellogg’s
• Curves, owned at one point by the same private equity firm that owned Jenny Craig. Hungry women can’t build muscle.