On "Feeling" Fat [ED]

[Descent]

This is so true.. I find myself "feeling fat" a lot..

[Crazedglass]

I am overweight and I too have dealt with and tried to overcome. Just in the last week or two, I have had 2 people make "fat" comments to me. One of them was through my four year old who in explicit detail told me what her dad told his wife about my physical appearance. Now I know I'm no model, but I'm quite positive I'm not repulsive to look at. Hearing her instantly made me cry and in all her innocence said, "But Mommy I think you are pretty." A few days later I was out to breakfast with a friend and we were talking and I was laughing at whatever we were talking about and the man in the booth across from us leans over and says, "Ya know, the great thing about big people is that when they laugh, all of them laughs with them." I was completely and utterly appalled, but could do nothing but stare at my coffee. He then said "you aren't all mad now are ya?" I shook my head no and politely excused myself to the bathroom...

[DogOnlyKnows]

"I feel fat" are the words I have been using lately to say "I believe I AM fat".

This is new for me, because it is a sudden weight gain caused by medication. That leaves me feeling.....scared.

I'm in the same boat... it's very difficult!

[FilthSparrow]

daily battle.....

[cariad]

-nods-
i have a laminated post-it note stuck to my mirror and fridge. (seems to sort of take the meaning out of post-it notes as its covered in plastic <shrugs>) they both say 'fat is not a feeling' on them.
and i have another one saying 'you wouldn't call yourself protein'
it helps to remember that fat is needed for the body to stay alive, not even to be healthy, just to live.

[FilthSparrow]

@ tempete, <3 exactly

[Lofticries]

I've been struggling a lot recently.

I've gained some weight, still in the low end of healthy with a bmi of [a number].

I've just been having a really hard time in general and it's really triggering. I feel fat. I miss the way anorexia helped me cope with negative feelings and stress. I feel like I really need it to cope again. Feeling fat is really getting me down and emphasising other related problems, for example problems in my relationship.

I've started feeling uncomfortable with my boyfriend seeing me without clothes on. Something I have never had a problem with.

[swirlish]

Hey!

I wanted to ask if you've read this post yet? http://buslist.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=27168 It's a great post and I thought of it when I saw yours.

Do you have any help to cope with these thoughts?
What can you think of that you can do to challenge them and work on getting healthier ones? What coping strategies can you try?

Also, welcome to bus!! I hope you'll like it here. Let us know if there's a problem or there's anything you wanna talk about!

Mia

[Lofticries]

^ Thanks, I hadn't seen that. I'd scrolled through the posts on this thread but hadn't clicked the link.

That does help a lot. I think the black and white aspect of it "fat or fine" really appeals to my Borderline thought patterns.
There are other things going to as well as that which I think cause me to struggle.

I don't really have any coping strategies in place which is probably why I have minor relapses so frequently. I'll have a read through the forum and maybe try and put some in place that I feel would work for me.

[Just Pomegranates]

^ Building on Mian's suggestion of challenging ED-ish thoughts/urges, I was thinking that maybe trying the Before You SI Questions from the Before/After section of the forum could be possibly be helpful/useful? Instead of answering them to an SI theme, you could be try re-wording them slightly to an ED theme and try challenging some of your thoughts/urges that way and see if that would be useful to you?

If you want to try that I could PM them to you? Because you have to apply to get access that part of the forum as well as Workshop and Please Be Healthy and you probably haven't applied yet with having just joined the forum and the mods for that section haven't been around much that I've seen recently. On that note, I'd also really recommend joining the Workshop/Please Be Healthy sections because they're really good as well for trying to make positive changes and challenging potentially problematic thoughts/urges and developing better methods of coping and whatnot in general and getting feedback on that as well.

[Lofticries]

Yeah, I'd like to try it if you pm it.

How do you apply for access to other parts of the forum? I'm glad you brought it up as I was wondering about it as I tried to go on the Please Be Healthy section, I think I'd like it.

[Just Pomegranates]

To get access to other sections of the forum you go into your User Control Panel, click on Usergroups under the Options section on the left hand side of the page, then select which usergroup/section you want to apply to for access and submit the request and wait for it to be approved.

And I'll PM you those questions as well.

[kiwi33]

Because you have to apply to get access [to] Workshop [and before and after]

Lofticries, all members (including you ) can post in Workshop and before and after without needing staff approval.

Edited to correct:

All members can *read* in the workshop forum whenever they want to but *posting* there does need staff approval. Saint Jimmy (above) and Mia (below) have described how to get approval to post there.

[Just Pomegranates]

^Ahhh my bad, I thought you had apply for that as well. Silly me.

Thanks for clearing that up/correcting me!

[Lofticries]

^ It's on the apply page so I've applied not realising.

I didn't try as I assumed I couldn't get on to it.

[swirlish]

PS - all admins can approve people for usergroups as well, so if the mods aren't always around, you can let one of us know as well

Mia

[angelclown]

Oh man I am so glad I found this thread, and I'm so thankful you posted the link to that post

I am fat. As a descriptor, I am fat. Overweight. That's my physical status. That's what the numbers say, that's what my shape says. Sometimes I feel ok about this, but a lot of the time I really, really don't.

**trigger: abusive language/loathing, SI, SU**

It's hard when you get abuse for it. I've been shouted "hey fatty boom boom" at from a car whilst walking home. I've been mooed at. (It doesn't get much more dehumanising than to have animal noises directed at you). Some ned sang "Who Let The Dogs Out?" at me (I f---ing HATE that song). I've been told by a ned to "move [my] fat arse". In a pub I had a guy, without provocation, solicitation or even prior conversation with him, look me in the eye and say to his mates clearly "I'm not pulling THAT".
It's led to a lot of my slips and it's even led me on the brink of taking my own life before.
****************************

It makes me angry how people, and it's mostly been men in my case, feel the right to judge me based on nothing else other than how f--kable I am to them, and if I'm not, then apparently I'm less than human and deserved to be treated as thus. I hate fat-hatred and body negative attitudes towards people whose business they really shouldn't mind.
Well bugger that and bugger them. Besides, cows are bloody awesome.

Oh dear I've rambled on; in short, thank you, it was much needed! I shall read, I shall also join the usergroups

[noldo]

I know this is also a really old thread but reading through it, I think it also still applies to a lot of people and definitely to me.

I am fat, I know that - all feelings beside - my weight and my body frame are telling me that objectively. I could write a whole essay about 'feeling fat' and being made 'feeling fat' even if you aren't and getting really awful reactions in public because of it.

I gained a lot of weight because of meds and that also helped my ED - which I had already a couple of years back than but it was relatively tame to this point - to develop a lot more and stronger. I often changed between binging and restricting (though a lot more binging which caused me to gain more and more weight). I was disgusted with my body at least since I was 12,13 years old, a time where I was at a healthy BMI but not stick thin, one of the reasons for the bullying at school I experienced. During 2017 I restricted a lot for a longer time and lost a lot of weight. I have been honest about that with some people, mostly my therapist, telling them how litte I was eating and everyone found it okay (well almost everyone) and congratulated me on my weight loss. I know it's healthy and good for me to lose weight but the way I was doing it was like f.ex. a fair bit of anorexic people would be doing it. And since I was fat, it didn't matter how I achieved losing weight and my ED didn't matter to most people. I feel that fat people get approvement from others for losing weight, using methods which would be disapproved with people at a healthy BMI (or slightly overweight or even sometimes even slightly underweight) cause when you're fat the most important things is to lose weight. So everyone encouraged me and after a couple of months, my body turned to binging again and I gained all the weight back and then even some more (even quite a lot) and the reaction of some people was... well, not good. I literally cried out for help and everybody ignored me and when I gained weight again everyone was very concerned and blamed me for everything.

'Feeling fat' is a horrible feeling and I think it's society's fault that being overweight and obese is seen as weak, horrible, uncontrolled, lazy, ugly (etc etc) while at the same time people - even children - are more often overweight nowadays. It's pretty f***ed up! Sorry - well no, not sorry - but this evoked a lot of feelings and thoughts and I never read this thread before and just wanted to express my thoughts on this and encourage people to read this here and of course to read the original thread (first post, the link there) and share their thoughts on it.