— Big and Beautiful (@fatandbeautiful) December 1, 2011

Lingerie and clothing lines have cashed in on the trending fat acceptance culture, too. “I am strong, I am beautiful. I am size sexy,” crows the Ashley Graham plus-size lingerie company on its website.

Target garnered a lot of fashion media attention when it launched its first plus-size only brand, AVA & VIV, in February. Rue21 now caters to the overweight teen market, while Lane Bryant has long been a plus-size retail destination.

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New obesity statistics, meanwhile, for the United States show that nearly two-thirds of adults are at an unhealthy weight.

An analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine this past June found that 75 percent of men and 67 percent of women ages 25 and older are either overweight or obese. This is the first time Americans who are obese outnumber those who are overweight.

“We are surprised every time we return to the U.S. from overseas,” said frequent traveler Jim Purcell of Columbia, Maryland. “In Europe, people walk a lot, and don’t eat nearly the portions we do here. It’s like Americans are addicted to food – and (they have) laid down their arms in the battle of the bulge. It’s OK now to be enormous in America.”

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On her blog Fat Is the New Black, author KC O’Day chronicles her life as an overweight person and cautions readers to watch their verbiage. “By the way, words like ‘obese’ and ‘overweight’ should be avoided. They suck. They’re mean, and stupid. ‘Overweight’ implies that I’m not perfect the way I am, right here, right now.”

But that is exactly what she is. The terms “overweight” and “obese” do not imply that she’s in some way unacceptable as a person. They are medical terms for her weight status.

If you don’t celebrate yourself at a heavy weight, you now suffer from “low self-esteem.”

Obesity can lead to diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea and a host of other health problems. The American Psychological Association says some researchers believe obesity is second only to smoking as a preventable cause of death.

Interestingly, weight — once something objective to be measured and recorded by your doctor and either improved or maintained — has now become subjective and linked to self-esteem. If you don’t celebrate yourself at a heavy weight, you now suffer from “low self-esteem.”

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The “esteem” part of the word comes from the Latin verb aestimare, meaning “to value.” While the new rage is to value yourself as you are, the phrase “to value” can and should have a more active interpretation: Value your health enough to change.

With the number of obese children on the rise, healthy parental modeling, a good mental outlook and action plans are critical.

“It is OK to celebrate who you are as you are, while making steps — eating a balanced diet, walking and exercising more — that move you toward better health,” child psychologist Laurie Zelinger told LifeZette. “They are not mutually exclusive. We should value ourselves as individuals no matter what our weight, while making sure we are trying to get healthy, and modeling that to our kids.”

If you are not accepting of overweight people, you may be participating in “body shaming.”

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“When it comes to either body shaming or glorifying, there are typically two arguable sides to this conversation. One is that it is good for your self-esteem if you accept it (obesity), and the other is it can be a health risk,” psychologist Shaelyn Pham told LifeZette. 

“Before discussing whether it is a question of good esteem, we need to understand what self-esteem is,” Pham writes in her book “The Joy of Me.” “Confidence and self-esteem are related, as one is an expression of the other. Confidence is what is being shown, and self-esteem is what is built within. Having high self-esteem is knowing who you are.”

Some overweight people, for medical reasons, simply cannot shed excess pounds. But in a culture in which we increasingly define ourselves based on how we look, acceptance may have less to do with a healthy self-image and more to do with simple mental inertia when it comes to being healthy. 

“It is easier, and it feels better, to accept being too heavy and call it ‘good self-esteem’ than it is to do something about it,” said an employee of a Boston-area gym. “Meanwhile, people’s arteries are clogging, people are developing diabetes, and people are dying from something that they can change, in many cases.”

“It’s great that people want to celebrate whatever size they are, but for morbidly obese people, sadly, their party will be pretty short,” Purcell said.