Archive for March 10th, 2010
Since I’ve started examining myself and my thoughts about fat/being fat/living fat/calling myself the fat girl, I’ve had a couple of realizations. One, I’m a much more complex person than I knew. Two, writing about myself and putting it out into the public does motivate me to do what I say I’ll do (most times). And three, I am not alone in my obsessive worry about how others see me as a fat girl.
To address the third, you can read up on “Losing Fat–And Losing the Voices” from earlier this year. This will give you an idea of how it is to be in a fat girl’s brain, what with our constant nagging and thinking and comparing and self-degradation. These voices eventually find their way out of the single-minded hatred of self in our heads and morph into a twisted type of mental conversation with the people we meet each day. Long story short, instead of constantly judging myself from inside my mind, I imagine the judgmental comments others have about seeing me.
I didn’t realize this for years. Decades even. I mean, maybe there are people out there so shallow in their worldly interaction that they do take great glee in seeing I’m sporting an extra roll or that the chub rub won’t stop, but the more metacognative (thinking about my thinking, in short) I get toward my fat girl issues, the more I’m starting to see that what I think others see in me might not be what they’re seeing.
And, even worse, as I’ve realized this, I’ve felt as though I’m the only person who thinks this way. I felt as though I’m the only person around who imagines others only see me for the fat–in a most obsessive-thought-type way, I might add. But today, in catching up on my blog reading, I discovered that I wasn’t alone.
If you’ve never read Jeannette Fulda’s Pasta Queen blog or her wonderfully fun, serious, thoughtfully emotional Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir
The only bad thing about my current weight is all the time I spend thinking about what other people think about my weight. It’s a problem caused only by itself, like a snake eating it’s own tail. It’s a cyclical worry cycle, and I’m getting dizzy spinning around and around in my head all the time. I’ve wasted so many hours worrying about food, the scale, what I ate, what I should eat, and nagging myself to exercise, all because I’m worried people might be disappointed about how big I am if they meet me. Aaaaaaah!! It hasn’t been about about me and my health, it’s been about other people.
(from PastaQueen blog)
My reaction was one of pure relief. There’s something about being trapped with all those voices, those mean, smarmy, fat girl voices rattling around in my skull, that tends narrow the focus of my thoughts so much so that I think I am the only person in the entire universe fighting this stupid, crazy, mostly-losing-to-this-point battle. It’s not a good, mentally-healthy place to be. Jennette’s words gave me a tiny bit of hope toward the thought that I really can shut those voices down, turn my ways of thinking around to be successful at this. She proved this to me with her next statement–one realized after gaining some of her weight back:
That’s why when I’ve gained a few pounds, I freak out a bit and feel like I should do something drastic, because WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?! When really, I should just chill out, and get over myself. People don’t think of me half as often as I think they do, and people who judge me on my weight aren’t people I want to like me anyway. I should just get my slow burn on and take care of myself for my own sake, not because I want people I don’t know to like me. It’s so easy to make up a reason that I should be ashamed of my weight. At my thinnest, I worried I was still fat. Now that I’m fatter, I worry that I’m not thin. It’s got to stop. There’s no way to win.
What is it about losing weight and the interior thoughts that accompany our actions that lead us to believe we’re alone in this? Or that the world is against us? Or that everyone else judges us based on outward appearances? The worst part of feeling as though everyone sees me as a fat girl, not a great person, is that I don’t see that in other people. Sure, I tend to notice size but I don’t slap a judgmental label on someone. I love people for what’s inside–heart and character. That’s genuine–I really don’t judge people by their weight and looks. So why do I do it to myself? Even worse, why do I do it on behalf of others to myself?
