Content Warning: Discussions of internalised fatphobia and consequent self-hating thoughts.

Thoughts

  1. The folks over at Maintenance Phase Pod were absolutely right – dieting may lead to weight-loss, but more often than not it leads to rapid weight gain later. I experienced it.
  2. According to the BMI scale, I am 1 point away from Obese. The word hangs heavy in my chest.
  3. My clothes remind me that I am fat, and somehow, by extension that I am a failure.
  4. As a tall woman (according to Indian standards), I generally tower over most of my friends. But my fatness makes me feel big. I look big in my photos. I look big compared to my partner. I look big.
  5. The word that comes to my mind every time I see myself: ogre, unfeminine.
    1. Being fat makes me feel that I am not woman enough.
    2. Being fat makes me feel monstrous.
  6. Every time I pick up food, I think of what it is composed of.
  7. I label my expenses on sugary, carb and fat rich foods as poison.
  8. Sometimes, when I feel sad, I have started reaching for poison.
    1. It makes me feel good. It centres me.
    2. Later it makes me feel like shit.
  9. I know why I have been gaining weight.
    1. I am too tired to workout (mentally, physically, emotionally). Navigating panic attacks and work is exhausting.
    2. On days I feel too spent to cook and eat my carefully curated diet food, I just reach for poison.
  10. My fitness journey, earlier motivated to feel stronger, more flexible and be healthier is increasingly being motivated by an urge to look thin. Dainty. Feminine. Petite.
  11. When I was thinner, yes I was falsely led to believe that I am fat and I did think I should be thinner. But I did not spend so many of my waking hours thinking about my body. I just existed in the world. I moved through it with ease.
  12. It is difficult to exercise when you are fat because motivating oneself to exercise is hard enough; doing it becomes even more challenging when the world and, even, you deem yourself a failure.
    1. The joy in movement fades. Everything becomes a mechanical forced task you must do to achieve that sexy bod you dream of.
  13. I feel undeserving of self-confidence.

What now?

  1. I will not lie and say I have unlearned my internalised fatphobia. I want to be thinner. And I will probably keep working towards that goal.
  2. But I will not try to follow an extreme diet this time.
  3. Every time I see myself in the mirror, I will make the conscious effort to not call myself an ogre.
  4. My femininity is not determined by my bigness.
  5. I will try reorient myself to grow stronger, more flexible and healthier.
  6. I will let myself have food, and I will not categorise it as poison.
  7. I will do my best to become fitter, and accept that it might be slow.
  8. I will focus on progress on lines of the metrics described in point 3 rather than thinness.
  9. I will allow myself feel bad about clothes not fitting, or not having clothes in my size in malls but I will not beat myself up over it.
  10. I will try, again, to just exist in the world and move through it with ease.