CW: talk about weight, mention of ED
I'll preface with: I'll be blunt from here on out, as I can't get better without truth. I know I'm overweight, and I've always known/always have been.
My mom spent a good amount of her life obsessing over weight (no thanks to my dad). She isn't at the level to have ED or anything but would find new fad diets to start (but not finish), have motivational food posters around, comments on how bad she or anyone else is eating and how it's a bad thing, things like that. My dad was never shy to tell me how fat I was and how fat I was getting. Said the same to my mom as well. My mom would comfort me during those outbursts, but still put me on similar fad diets or weight loss programs. None of them stuck.
What triggered the current push to lose weight were 2 things:
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There's a traveling adult bouncy house that's coming to my area, but there is a weight limit. My friends seemed excited to go, but I'll feel so much shame to say I can't because I'm too big. I also don't want my weight to get in the way of doing other fun things down the line.
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I plan to travel for my 30th birthday and the country is pretty fatphobic, I don't think I'll be able to (mentally) handle it and feel it'll be better to lose weight than draw unnecessary attention to myself. I visited a parent's home country a few years ago, it's been a long time since going, and my grandma couldn't say anything else to me than how big I was. I couldn't say anything back but take it, knowing the people around me were hearing it too. Some people would say something too like "She's just thick nothing wrong with that", but I just felt more shame that I couldn't say anything back, and deep down I agreed with her. It was embarrassing, and I felt embarrassed to look that way. I don't want to experience that again.
I don't even know if these are good enough reason to lose weight or if it just a self-esteem thing or both. I also can't tell if this is actual motivation or my own internalized fatphobia. Deep down, I like to imagine myself as thinner, only because it'll be more convenient to move through life that way. I'm otherwise happy.
Last year I lost a bit of weight, one of my friends complimented me on the loss, and it freaked me out. I felt perceived and observed, it opened up my mind to the fear that people were thinking negative things about my weight the whole time and only felt comfortable enough to talk about it because it was going down. The panic slowed down my progress and I gained the weight back.
I'll feel guilty abandoning the HAES cause and the fat community. Like I was only following it because I'm bigger and needed to cope. And when I get thinner, I won't need them anymore for comfort. I also feel shame losing weight because it admits that there was a "problem" and I didn't do anything about it until now. It also proved all the terrible, maybe well-meaning, people from my life right. All their comments were correct, and I was too prideful to admit it. That opens me up to being treated differently if I do lose the weight, and it makes me angry. Like my friends and family would be impressed but think "what took you so long?". Then, will I be respected more? Will more people be attracted to me now? I'll forever feel like people are only interested in being close to me because I'm thinner, just like how some people want nothing to do with me because I'm bigger.
I never really felt like my weight was an issue, it only stopped me from doing activities with a weight limit. I still exercise and whatnot without issue. But, since a young age, I was always told it was an issue, so it sits in the back of my mind constantly.
Fears:
- I'm scared that I won't succeed
- I'm scared that I will but will forever have to obsess over my weight and eating habits like my mom
- I'm scared it'll yo-yo back and forth, or I'll just gain it all again (so why even start)
- I'm scared my personality will change, and I'll get cocky like the other fit people who lost a lot of weight and get to brag about it
- I'm scared of how I will be perceived during or even after the journey, comments like "homhom lost so much weight it looks good" make me feel like people will be relying on me to keep the weight off, opening up the possibility of being a failure
- I'm scared I won't be able to eat yummy food again so I can maintain the new body
- I'm scared more people will be attracted to me <- I don't get this one, I think it's also about perception
S/N: my current Doctor has a side practice that specializes in weight loss. She never made me feel bad for being overweight, and never pushed the practice on me. All of my yearly physicals are perfect, too, minus a few vitamin deficiencies. I've also been in therapy for a while, but never felt comfortable enough to discuss weight, I don't discuss with many friends either.
I think you have good reasons for wanting to lose weight beyond subconscious prejudice, so I think you shouldn't feel guilty about it at all. I'll go over a few of the fears here because I think I might be able to speak on them a little, though I don't have any experience with losing weight myself.
I think this is a situation where you can kind of take comfort in the fat community. It's not a "failure" or "success", it's just different states of being. And yeah, you might not manage to reach this other state you want for various reasons, but it's not a failure, any more than losing a game would be a failure. It can be disappointing and that's totally valid, but it's not something that would reflect on you at all. I doubt anyone would be really all that angry at you for not being able to use a bounce house, and any friends that would hurt you just for being fat can fuck off.
I think this one is a bit more complicated, and I don't have any experience with this, but I'll try to take a shot here. I think the difference in motivations is a huge factor. You're doing this for mostly utilitarian reasons, and while you might have a small undercurrent of social influence in it, just like your mom might have a small undercurrent of utilitarian use (people being nicer to her, because we live in hellworld
), altogether given your knowledge of and solidarity with the fat movement this seems unlikely, because I'm going to assume those unhealthy obsessive behaviors are probably rooted in a fundamental fear of being fat. If you don't have that, or are actively working on uprooting that from your brain, then that seems very unlikely to happen to you.
Well, this might seem silly, but if your goal is to do it for travel to a fatphobic country, and for a bouncy house, than... It might not matter. You could just save those things for your "slim" moments. Again I have no experience here but it seems to me that anyone who would legitimately judge you for "backsliding" into something that isn't even inherently bad is a dick. Human bodies just seem like something that change a lot so, if nothing else, embracing it to stick it to people who disagree seems like it could be satisfying.
I honestly think the fact your worried about this makes this unlikely. I've always assumed the reason you see that is because the people most able to be fit (with the resources to do so) are going to be really privileged and also not have much else going on in their heads. There are many fit comrades that don't act like this, think about all the revolutionaries that probably had to condition themselves for physical combat. You don't really see them bragging about it every time someone interviews them.
This is probably a form of confrontation all of us would prefer to avoid, but I would confront people on that if they do that shit, if you can. Maybe just a snide comment about "Oh, so I didn't look good before?" (tell them they're lying if they say yes) to shut them down and hopefully stop yourself (and others around) from internalizing that shit.
I think this fits with the yo-yoing thing a bit. If you kind of embrace the changing nature of human bodies this seems like it would just be a whateverburger, though I understand that's hard to do with all the shit thrown at us constantly in media and culture.
No, no, that makes sense to me. As a AMAB person (I don't like using birth categorizations but I don't know how else to describe it succinctly) I don't get objectified all that much, but the stories I've heard and accounts I've seen are pretty horrific. I think this is a legitimate concern, and I (if I can play armchair psychologist a bit) assume it would also be heightened by a fear of "abandoning" the fat community, sort of a horrific one-two punch of fears.
If I could suggest it, I would look into a lot of different punk dressing and presentation styles. You don't have to be fat to be look subversive, or avoid being conventionally attractive. I've heard of at least one style of dress that involves purposely wearing ill-fitting clothes (Unrelated but I've also heard it's conveniently very good for trans women because trans women and cis women both look ill-fitting in it, lol)
This was all very helpful. I wrote some of it down in my journal. I took from it that the body is always changing and my worst(ish) fears are things that I've never done before (growing an ego) and things I already am (yo yoing or "failings" or being perceived). Accepting the constant state of the human body changing over a lifetime relieves some of the pressure I feel to succeed.
That’s great to hear!