"Not Fat Yet": How To Make It Make Sense

And so we move forward in grudging stalemate, my sense of body image and I. Maybe later, I tell it. And it grumbles acquiescence because I've trained it to metabolize self-hate in shorter and shorter amounts of time.

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

Having to listen to three ignorant idiots continuously talk about how I need to lose weight, and how I'm fat, has proved a major hit to my body image lately.

The experience brought into perspective a number of things, including, once again, the question of how to bridge the gap between what you know and what they don't want to know. 

Now, I'm not fat by any measure, traditional or non-traditional. (For instance, I'm in the perfect BMI range, and BMI is kind of a messed up and biased scale.) 

Nor do I believe/ feel that there is anything wrong with being fat. The hardest part of this has always been convincing myself that this belief holds true not just for the bodies of all the other people in the world, but also my own. For years now, I've been perfectly able to see other women's bodies as lovely, regardless of size and shape, while berating my own. 

I've spent over a decade trying to unlearn the extremely unhealthy views propagated around me when I was younger. Some years have been easier than others. 

But even that being said, it is more than a little demoralizing to think that 7 days is sometimes all it takes to be once again raddled with self-doubt a paralyzing hate for one's own skin. Perhaps I'm overstating the case a little, as it stands, but only a little. It's currently taking a lot of emotional energy - expended continuously - not to feel that way. 

As a result of my own internalized thoughts, I unconsciously developed a low-tolerance policy for talk of weight loss or crash dieting around me. This is, first and foremost, a matter of self-preservation. It is also deeply mingled with a sense of disbelief. That people are unable to separate the toxic self-image society has thrust upon them from what actually looks back at them in the mirror. That they often don't even try. 

Now, of course, that last part is me being hard-nosed and displaying a profound inability to empathize. So I remind myself of that, and bite my tongue, and try not to say anything beyond constant positive reinforcement. Until the need for self-preservation kicks in, like the other end of a see-saw rearing, and reminds me of why I'm being un-empathetic to begin with. 

Because this is one area where I cannot afford to give myself a break. I, who wouldn't think twice about indulging my sweet tooth, absolutely refuse to indulge my toxic self-image. 

So where does that leave me? I came out of this last week in shambles, but in relatively less shambles than I have in the past. I came out feeling keenly the need to stop being "fat", with a steep yearning for a size zero body. Within a day or two, that sensation dulled, leaving behind a vague anxiety about my weight, and occasionally thinking about whether or not I was eating too much food. Leaving behind a mild aversion to eating a whole bar of chocolate, something I promptly treated with 2 bars of dairy milk chocolate in a single sitting. 

And let's be real here for a second -- what do I even do with a size zero body? I don't want to go out, I don't want to show off a flat midriff, I don't even want to engage with people. What am I gonna do, pile more clothes on top of it? Seems like a waste of effort.

And so we move forward in grudging stalemate, my sense of body image and I. Maybe later, I tell it. And it grumbles acquiescence because I've trained it to metabolize self-hate in shorter and shorter amounts of time. What was undone in a week can be redone in another week's time.

Or at least, as comfortable as I ever get, all things considered.