Feeling Fat and Shameful

It’s disturbing to explore how deep the rabbit hole of body image issues descends.

It was raining today, and so I wore jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. A close-fitting long sleeve shirt and close-fitting jeans. As I crossed a street, carrying my favorite umbrella and a bag of new-to-me books from the Salvation Army, I looked down at my stomach and immediately felt an all-too-familiar twinge of shame. My belly was quite conspicuous, bisected round the middle by the line of my jean waistband.

Before I had a chance to counter any thoughts I had a wealth of mean, self-hating quips ready. Admittedly I didn’t exactly have the desire to counter those thoughts- I felt I deserved every one. The word disgusting came to mind. As did the thought that
Maybe you should stop eating regular food and go back to the poor, starvation diet of lentils and rice everyday.
This makes more sense if you factor in my recent loss of a few pounds. I don’t even know how much I lost, only that I can tell that I have dismissed a few extra inches or pounds from my frame due to my lack of money for food, walking more often, and the intense humidity of Manhattan August. Considering that I spent a greater part of my summer sitting in a car cross country or sitting at the bar in my hometown drinking cheap beer and talking the night away, I feel it’s appropriate and understandable that my body move back to its somewhat usual shape and size.

But my feelings about this recent weight loss extend beyond "understandable" or "appropriate". I have been feeling proud of the weight coming off. To further clarify, this goes far beyond the healthy aspect of things. I’m not feeling proud of taking care of my body. I’m returning to my more healthy lifestyle of decent food and regular body movement after a summer of relative debauchery, but my gratification has little to do with healthiness. It’s deeper and darker, and I’m ashamed that these thoughts are still so much a part of me.

I think there has been built into the system map of my brain an automatic pat on the head and tangible pride when I lose weight, regardless of how it was lost. I remember having similar feelings when I was too depressed to eat more than a cracker or two for a month a few years ago, which I think is an excellent example of losing weight unhealthily. Not all weight loss is healthy, but all weight loss triggers warm feelings about myself in the pit of my gut. Not all weight gain is unhealthy, but it all unequivocally makes me feel ashamed.

What was so disturbing to me about the conversation within myself was how far I took things in so short a time. I identify as a Fat Acceptance Feminist, among many other things. I’m fat and happy with myself for the most part. Catch me on a day when I’m feeling fat, though, (especially after a few days where my lack of money has, in my perception, prompted a loss of fat on my body) and I almost immediately jump to the conclusion that I ought to return myself to a deprivation diet that completely lacks basic nutrition. Great solution, Emily.

I think that it’s especially upsetting because I have spent a lot of time and energy fighting a culture that I have been immersed in all my life. If not fighting the entire culture, then at least fighting to uproot its tentacles from my life and my psyche. I feel accomplished most of the time, because I don’t carry around a lot of body shame. I’m larger than the average woman, and I’m fine with that. I love my body, I love my belly, I love the way my body feels, and I love that my body is ME.

But I still have bad days. And when I examine my thoughts on those bad days, I feel as though I’ve made no progress at all or that there is no hope for redemption. I feel discouraged and I fear that I will always carry a masochistic monster deep in my flesh, a monster who is only waiting for its perfect opportunity to jump out and starve me into fitting the BMI expectations.

Why would the monster stop there? If I were to lose the sixty pounds required of me to fit the BMI standards, then why wouldn’t I shoot for eighty?? or ninety??? This monster within would certainly never draw the line and be happy at some arbitrary number on a scale.

Which is why I accept my body as part of myself. I can do this on a cognitive level very easily these days. I feel good in my body most of the time. My body does what I need it to do, again most of the time. I like the way my body looks, most of the time. It makes sense to do so.

Adopting these beliefs on a deeper, more innate level is proving much harder. Some days I feel it deep down: I am beautiful. My body is me and I am my body and it is beautiful.

However, I continue to have days like today and when they come I cannot help but wonder if there will ever come a day when, even if I do not feel like a goddess, I find that heinous monster’s voice, the one urging me to starve myself, missing.