I think if you are femme, you can only lose looks-wise. Either hated or belittled, harassed either way.

Health and weight are very tricky. I am no health expert, but it’s about calories intake on the one hand, but also about your metabolism on the other hand. My experience is that learning to cook helped me keep a very decent weight while not being physically very active. There is a plateau to learning to cook where you struggle with setbacks until it sets in. In my exp, as long as it’s made from scratch as much as possible, homemade food is pretty much always better than ready made (except if you like only do carbs or meat). Becoming vegan or cutting down on meat and diary might also help. Legumes are pretty nutritious and absorb flavors very well. Figuring out spice combinations is a bit tricky but once you have got it, it’s frankly amazing to have a good lentil curry dish that tastes really nice for cheap and not a huge time investment.

about becoming chauvinist by losing weight: I think nobody would shame trans women about getting FFS as long as they don’t become binarists or shit on non-passing trans people (which seems to be the exception rather than the rule), which i think is somewhat similar to your concerns. Like in a perfect society, we wouldn’t feel forced to confirm to this or that standard, but nobody can seriously expect of individuals to defy all norms all the time at once and to the utmost. If you feel too much distress by social norms on weight, adopting to fit them to some degree is acceptable as long as you remain critical of them and don’t enforce them on others, even if your health is already good. You also demonstrate consciousness about these issues, which is the best guard against chauvinism imo (besides being directly affected by it obv)

I’m not an expert and speak only from personal experience. I dropped 50 lbs over a couple of years and then gained 25 lbs back over the next three.

It was a weird experience from a self-perception standpoint; after a while at the lower weight, old photos of me at the higher weight seemed less like “me”, which was a bit disconcerting. The pros more than made up for the cons, though, because it was a lifestyle change that just physically felt really great. Running and jumping was easier, my skin was clearer, I took up cycling, I got so used to eating less that I would occasionally have to eat a bit more at the end of the day just to hit a calorie minimum(!), just good stuff all around that was absolutely worth the calorie tracking and Apple Watch ring closing.

Then COVID happened and made my schedule so unpredictable that the exercise became less constant, snacks became more available, and healthy solo meals became McDonald’s for the family. Regaining the weight has been a bit of a bummer, and I definitely perceive things that I didn’t before losing the weight: I can feel the puffiness in my face and recognize my lack of muscle definition.

I have zero regrets about going through all of it, though. It’s a really empowering feeling to take charge of your body and make it the way you want it by stubborn determination, and I know that if I really want to, I can get back to the lower weight by being extra stubborn and doing what worked before. Being at a lower weight for a while also helped me discover more things that my body feels good doing, and I’ve kept those as part of my life even after regaining half the weight I lost.

I don’t feel like a failure; I feel like I did something for myself and learned a lot.

That feels like the key for you: make sure you’re ultimately doing this for yourself. If nobody else in the world had any opinions about your weight, positive or negative, now or in the future, would you still want to change your body? If so, just go for it and deal with your concerns if and when they come up. There’s no such thing as failure here, no letting anyone else “win”, just you doing what you want to do with your body.

If you want to lose weight, you should try it. It is your life and only you can set your goals and desires. I think you’re a really good person inside and I think you are holding yourself to unrealistic moral and value standards. HEAS is something that I agree with and it sounds like you’re quite healthy at your size. It sounds like the goal is more vain and I don’t mean that to demean your goal. That is perfectly valid and you’re very informed about the subject.

I don’t think you losing weight is abandoning the HEAS cause especially when you can explain your reasoning as clearly as you did. Your reasoning isn’t simple and if you do become thin, you will still retain your sharp mind and ability to explain your reasoning and defend others from bad faith actors when needed.

Edit:

On my struggles with weight, my failures felt worse when I pretended my desire to lose weight were tied to my health. I want to lose weight for vanity reasons. My health has and can be improved by flexibility, weight lifting, and cardio work at my size. I think if you can keep your critical perspective it might help stabilize your mental health on your attempts whether successful or not.

I’m scared I won’t be able to eat yummy food again so I can maintain the new body

Comrade I eat so much junk food it isn’t even funny. Losing or maintaining your preferred weight isn’t really about what food you eat, it’s just about knowing how many calories are in that food and not eating too much.

It’s your body, you can change it how you can and should feel good about that so long as it isn’t causing you greater harm (the latter would be how I’d categorize an ED, for example). Same goes for someone that wants to gain weight or muscle or change body “types”, like going from big a muscular to smaller or vice versa, etc. Society itself is toxic about our bodies and I’m sorry it (and your father) impacted you negatively.

I’ll touch on your fears:

• You might not succeed but that’s okay. It’s not easy to change our bodies! They’re resistant to change. Also things can happen that prevent whatever strategy a person wants to take. Maybe you decide to do a particular exercise bc every day but then get injured, for example. This is all okay. It’s okay to qualify your goal, to work towards it but be okay if everything doesn’t go according to plan on your ideal timeline.

• People have different metabolisms so it’s hard to generalize about what maintaining a body situation looks like, but generally speaking if your methodology is a concrete and healthy lifestyle change then maintenance is just continuing to do the same thing. I’ll give a simple example: eating more veggies (not extreme, just more!) is a surefire way to cut calories in a healthy way and over time your body will start to crave them and your mind will start to expect more of them in your meals. This is a sustainable habit and you eventually won’t have to think about it deliberately, let alone worry.

• It’s okay to yo-yo, our bodies do this with the seasons and as we live life. Maybe you get an injury and have to be sedentary for a few months and gain a few pounds. No biggie. Maybe some initial weight loss was water weight and a few salty meals make you “gain” it back. Maybe you have a tough few weeks and breaking your diet helped you cope. None of these things are abnormal or unacceptable. The important thing is to forgive yourself (there’s nothing to forgive!) and feel okay to resume the new habits if you want to. Most people have to make repeat attempts at changing a habit.

• You won’t lose your empathy or knowledge and suddenly become body-shaming, no need to worry about this. If your changes are healthy (better food and exercise) you’ll probably just have more energy and feel a bit better overall (at least from endorphins from exercising).

• Yeah other people complimenting your “new looks” is gonna happen and be both annoying and affirming. There’s definitely an emotional contradiction there! I don’t really have advice for that, it’s gonna be confusing.

• You can definitely still eat tasty food. This will happen in two ways: (1) you should adopt a diet that isn’t about cutting out all of the food you like. If the food is caloric, just have less of it and have a lighter (veggie heavy) meal later to offset. (2) As you find new meals as part of your diet, you’ll start to crave those instead. Some of your previous favorites might even start to feel unappealing as your tastes habituate.

• More people being attracted to you might happen. Being perceived can suck or at least bring up conflicting feelings.