Fat is not a Feeling

There are some things that, after recovering from an eating disorder such as anorexia, you learn not to say. “I don’t eat that”, “I’m starving”, “I’m on a diet”, “I need to go to the gym more”. I used to just throw these comments out there without a second thought, and now I’d never think to say them. Not just because I’m censoring what I say so as not to worry other people, but also because since recovering from anorexia I have a new and different perspective to food, health, and my attitude to my body. One sentence that you could easily have heard me say a few years ago was “I feel fat”.

I think many of us know what this feeling is; many people will be able to empathise with feeling fat. But I’ve come to realise just how nonsensicle that sentence is. Because fat is not a feeling.

What I now understand is that, although it is not a feeling, it has emotional friends. Guilt, depression, anxiety, embarrassment, low self confidence, sadness. These are all joined at the hip with fat. I associated them so closely with being fat that they became one and the same. And so the minute “I am fat” came into my head, either from someone telling me, catching a dodgy angle in a mirror, not fitting into old clothes, looking at someone slimmer than me, “I am fat” turned into “I feel fat”. Even when I was at my smallest, at a dangerously low weight, I had days where I felt fat. It just doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t feel good at all.

What we need to understand is that if our happiness depends on our appearance, we’ll never be happy.  If we measure our self worth by just the amount of space our body takes up, we will never feel worthy. If we continue to believe that being fat is the problem, we will never feel better.

Instead of allowing these fake emotions to intoxicate our brain, we need to recognise when they arise and stand up to them. Look fat straight in the face and say: you cannot control my emotions. Whether I am fat or not, I am unique and loved. My happiness is measured by so many other things, it is determined by so many other factors, and it cannot be dictated by my hips or my thighs.

Because fat is not a feeling.