Posting about our emotional baggage

There has been a wonderful thread going on today (thanks Karen!)  about the Ontario Forum, and I read every post with great pleasure.

I just wanted to voice an opinion about something someone said - and y'all can feel free to cut me down if you so desire.

I think that we all have emotional issues (some more, some less, some more likely to admit to them ...!) and in many cases those issues led to, or at least facilitated our weight gain.

In some cases, they still rule us years later.

In some cases those emotional issues are extremely serious ones dating from violent horrible events in our past, but in other cases, they are more along the lines of "hurt feelings".
In my own mind, I tend to call our collective mindset "Fat Girl Syndrome". (sorry to the guys ...)

It's a funny combination of apologizing for being on this earth and taking up everyone else's valuable time and space / feeling feisty and in-your-face "yeah I'm fat so what?" / and seriously concerned about our physical wellbeing in the future.

I guess the purpose of this windbag post is to encourage everyone to own up to the emotional crap that led us here. It's all valid. It's all worth taking out of the closet and shaking a bit, having a look at it, and then resolving to work on it.

And then moving on to really LIVE our lives, you know?

I thought I had resolved all of my emotional crap until I started going through this process.  Now it's in my face and I have no idea how to shut it up again.  I would completely agree with the " fat girl syndrome " analogy.  I haven't any horrific past events in my life just a lifetime of being the "DUFF" of the group.....any group and feeling as though I haven't the right to take up as much space as I do on the planet.  I hate to go out socially, feel I haven't any right to advance my position in the workforce, go to a restaurant, eat in public, go to the gym, enter a non fat girl clothing store, or access the medical system because I am solely responsible for being like this.  To clarify, these are distorted thinking patterns that tortured me when I was younger, and had either resolved or laid dormant until I started this process.  I'm really hoping that they resolve again once, if ever, I have surgery done.

Ask for professional help to deal with skeletons that simply overwhelm our sense of well being. And know it greatly hurts when anyone says "good ridance" or "good, they're gone" referring to a specific person.  There is no nice side to that!  If you're going to show a mean side here, expect to be blocked especially when many of us carry lots of said emotional baggage!  Whether you are a vet or a newbie there's no excuse for being ignorant!  

I have to agree with you.

I lug around the fat girl.  Inside and out right now.  I am slowly trying to pry her pudgy fingers off of me. 

I have days that are good and bad.  As witnessed here on this forum ! lol

We all have to remember that we are not perfect.  This journey is so individual and yet the same :) 




 

Ya, I am just learning to nurture my inner child with my therapist, at age 56, there is a lot to uncover, discover & recovery....so I am putting on my seat belt for this journey....whooo...hooo....

I think my big emotional issue when my weight loss starts to become noticeable is how I'm going to deal with the positive attention.  I'm outgoing and not shy, so that's not the problem.  The problem, I think, is going to be the resentment.

I've lost 100 lbs before, in my early 20's.  When I started getting more attention from men, it pissed me off.  I wanted to ask them, "Where the hell were you when I was 260 lbs, you shallow creep?"  I'm married to a really great guy, so I'm not worried about that kind of attention from other guys anymore.  But I know I'm going to notice changes in the way I'm treated, and it's going to really bother me, whether it's flirting, or even just better service in stores and elsewhere.

To me, fat is a political issue, not just a personal thing.  You're right, Gabygee, too many of us feel apologetic for taking up too much space, because society makes us feel like we should be ashamed.  That feisty "yeah I'm fat, so what?" is a completely understandable reaction.  I feel conflicted in some ways, because sometimes it feels like my conviction that the world should be a much friendlier and accommodating place for obese people is being betrayed by my desire to join the ranks of the "normal-sized".

I think that airplane seats and bus seats should be larger (or some larger seats set aside for obese passengers).  I think that anyone providing seats or any other equipment (e.g. turnstiles, medical equipment, etc.) for the general public should take obese people into account - we make up a larger and larger (no pun intended!) percentage of the population all the time.  And I think that there should be a lot more awareness of sizeism and fatphobia in the media, in our daily conversations, and in our society overall.

Now, combine all this political conviction with the fact that I'm actively trying to leave the ranks of the obese.  And that so many of the non-scale victories I'm looking forward to will happen BECAUSE of the current discrimination on an individual and systemic level towards fat people.

So, do I celebrate when I can finally fit comfortably into a plane seat and I no longer get hate stares from other passengers who just hope the fat chick coming down the aisle isn't going to sit next to them?  Does this mean I now forget about the fact that there is still a systemic barrier to the rest of the obese people out there flying on planes (or avoiding flying on planes, as I have for the past year and a half)?  If that barrier wasn't there to begin with on airplanes, there would be no NSV for me to celebrate, right?

Same with getting positive attention from the opposite sex.  Do I celebrate the NSV of more guys flirting with or paying attention to me, and forget that they still probably treat fat women like they're invisible?  This NSV is dependent on society still indoctrinating so many of the people within it to think of fat people as unattractive and not worth noticing.

Do I celebrate the NSV of being able to buy a $5 shirt off a clearance rack once I'm into "normal" sizes, even though I know that fat women will still have to pay 5-10 times as much at a plus-size store for a comparable item with maybe only twice as much fabric in it?  This NSV is dependent on obese women still getting ripped off in plus-sized clothing stores.

This is the kind of baggage I'm going to be struggling with, I think.  I'm not sure how I'm going to resolve it, honestly.  Maybe I never will, and maybe I shouldn't.  Maybe it's a good thing not to forget that the privilege I will gain in society as I become thinner will happen because of the discrimination that still exists towards those who are still obese.

It will be easier for me to celebrate NSVs that don't depend on society's oppression of obese people in order to exist.  Like being able to walk long distances, or maybe even run.  Or having more energy.

Fantastic post - agree 100%.

I have been "the fat girl" forever, and being not-quite-so-fat will likely not change that mentality.

Thank-you!  And yes, like you and Karen, I think I'll always have "the fat girl" in me, no matter what size I reach.  And that's probably not completely a bad thing.

 Onward and downward your post should be published.  It speaks volumes and is so true I have booked marked it in hopes of sharing it with my family and friends thank you

Wow - I'm flattered!  Thank-you for saying so!