Fear of gaining weight: An eating disorder origin story—and how to write a healthy ending
See the eating disorder journal prompt at the end of the post to start writing!
What comes to mind when you hear the F word?
No, not that F word…the other one.
Fat.
If you were raised in the 90s like I was, you may shudder at this word. You may tense up. You may start a mental slideshow of everything you’ve eaten today. Because the 90s taught us that fat was bad and low- or non-fat was good. And that was the end of the story.
Despite the diet-drenched decade of the 90s, my eating disorder didn’t start as a diet. It didn’t stem from an overbearing, body-shaming mother. It didn’t come to be because of teasing from classmates. It was born from a desire to be eternally thin. And from a paralyzing fear of gaining weight.
During my impressionable years, I was bombarded with diet messaging from every angle. Fat was the enemy. Thinness was aspirational. And there was one singular ideal body type.
If you didn’t fit the mold, you were practically subhuman. And as a middle child, I craved attention—I wanted to attain the unattainable.
But beyond my own experience, I know there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people who clung to this same messaging, grasping at something that would make us seem more desirable, and maybe even enviable.
Unfortunately, by striving for the unattainable, we sank even lower than where we started.
So how can we unlearn these messages and learn to neutralize our body image?
Here are a few ways to get started.
Deprogram your negative self-talk
I don’t know about you, but it has taken me years to learn how to unlearn. Diet culture programming was so deeply (and is still somewhat) etched into my internal narrative that I actively, and sometimes out loud, need to redirect my line of thinking to get out of the toxic slush pile that is diet speak.
Self-talk was one of the first things I worked on when I started eating disorder recovery more than a decade ago.
When my body-negative script started rolling or a compulsion to exercise threatened to derail my entire day, I forced myself to sit with the feelings and thoughts, focusing on the physical sensations they elicited.
Was it hard? Very.
Was it uncomfortable? Extremely.
But over time, I didn’t need to try so hard. It became automatic to allow the thought to emerge and then quickly shift the track to a more positive destination.
Redefine your definition of ‘fat’
At some point during our lives, we learned or were taught how to define “fat”. We learned what value to assign to it, maybe where it’s most likely to pop up in what we eat, and what it means to be a fat person in this world. Maybe we also learned how it differs from other nutritional elements like protein.
Now we have the opportunity to erase this page of our mental notebook and start fresh. But first, let’s seek out the source.
Grab a piece of paper or open a fresh doc and answer these questions:
What have you been taught about what it means to be fat?
How does your eating disorder define “fat”?
What scares you the most about the concept of fat?
At this moment, what does the word “fat” mean to you?
I hope this writing exercise brings to light some of your existing fears about fat and can help you build a strategy to address predefined concepts and perceptions of something that doesn’t have to be so scary.
Celebrate fat-positive figures
Fat isn’t the shameful F-word it used to be. It’s a movement led by some pretty incredible people.
I’ve loved seeing the exploding popularity of fat-positive advocates like Aubrey Gordon of @yrfatfriend, Victoria of @fatfabfeminist, and Vinny of @fierce.fatty. They (and many more individuals) are changing the narrative around the concept of “fat” and are taking a stand against anti-fat bias.
The idea of what’s considered to be an acceptable body size is changing, and I, for one, am excited to see my niece and nephew grow up in a world where fat isn’t a dirty word, where (hopefully) they’re celebrated for who they are, not what they look like.
But we still have a ways to go. And some of us are still stuck in a messaging rut. But hopefully, with the tips above and an army of fierce voices, we can start our own journeys toward body indifference.
Pause & Prompt
One way I can tackle my negative self-talk today…
