I’ve been pondering this entry for a very long time and I know it might be a bit of a touchy subject but I’m going to write from the heart and hope and pray that I don’t offend anyone.
I want to first tell you that my journey toward acceptance has been a wonderful trip. It has had mountains, valleys and even a few rivers I’ve had to traverse but it’s been worth every minute.
The “touchy” part is something I’ve observed on some other acceptance blogs and some books I’ve read (not all, just a very few). The issue I’m speaking of is whether a fat person has an eating disorder or not and whether or not they need outside help. That is a very personal thing and is different for everyone.
Something I’ve noticed about some other authors regarding acceptance is that “it sounds so freakin’ easy!” [Paraphrased: Just start accepting yourself. Poof! Some have even said that fat people don’t have eating disorders, they’re just fat…period. Maybe diets don’t work but if you start accepting yourself, your life will be perfect.] (ok, so I over-simplified some) But the gist of it seems to be that some people may be made to feel, after reading from those authors (like I said, very few), that they really didn’t have an eating disorder or that they really didn’t need the therapy they’ve had or are planning to get.
Ok. I’ve stopped dieting. I’m grateful for my fat thighs that help support me and take me walking. I’m thankful for my droopy fat boobs that my husband seems to love. My thin blonde hair does look good most of the time. I’m accepting of myself more now than I’ve ever been but IT AIN’T EASY!!!!
All I can relay to you is MY journey and my journey involves an eating disorder with a good dose of emotional abuse and some abandonment thrown in the mix. I can honestly say that until January of 2005, I didn’t know I had an eating disorder. It wasn’t until I went to a counseling session with my husband that I was told I had one and that I needed to get help.
Yes, I knew I had serious issues with each member of my family. I knew religion was a huge issue for me. I knew that my marriage had suffered a great deal (even when we were dating). I knew I had NO self-esteem or self-respect. I knew I hated myself on a daily basis and I knew my life revolved around food but I didn’t know I had an honest to goodness eating disorder…I just thought I was a failure at dieting.
Once I realized I had an eating disorder, I recognized that it wasn’t just my eating that was disordered but it was my whole life. My marriage. My relationships with other people. My work place. My thinking. My beliefs.
Do I know fat people who don’t have an eating disorder or issues that need to be dealt with through therapy? I’m sure I do but I’m not one of them. In all reality, I probably should’ve been in some intense therapy very early in life but my parents didn’t believe in therapy and thought it reflected a lack of faith in God to take care of you. But as soon as I was out on my own, I looked up the local mental health center and booked an appointment.
I think the point of this post for me is to reassure you that getting help is not a sign of weakness. Recovery from an eating disorder is hard. I’m here to tell you that living a life of self-hate is not something you fix overnight so don’t expect that to happen. I would venture to say that even those who consider themselves recovered and living a life of acceptance still sometimes wish they looked a little different or wished they hadn’t eaten something that they did. Recovery is about progress, not perfection. Please do not deny yourself outside help if you are even thinking about getting some. AGR and I (not sure about WRT2) are huge proponents of therapy and counseling and know that we would not be as far along as we are without what we’ve gotten. Sometimes it takes a true leap of faith to reach out but it can be worth it.
If you’re fat and happy then BRAVO! That should be our ultimate goal…health and happiness at any size! If you’ve had an eating disorder and are now recovered, I applaud you and look forward to being able to say the same thing about myself soon. BUT, if you’re in the throes of what you think is an eating disorder, please consider getting some real time help.
In closing, I just wanted to say “give yourself some grace” and love on yourself a little bit today (notice I said “today”…today is the only time you can focus on now). Don’t expect things to happen too quickly when it comes to self acceptance (especially if you’ve had years of experience degrading yourself at every turn). You’ll easily disappoint yourself if you expect too much too quickly.
Take care my lovelies and have a good weekend.
~sas
Angry Gray Rainbows 
Thank you for this post – I am just beginning this journey and am so confused as to whether or not I have a place in the ED community. I feel like I am the personification of what anorexics hate and at the same time I don’t feel like I belong in the FA community because I really do hate my body.
I also can relate to your statements about probably needing therapy from a young age, but I lived in a family with a mentally ill parent (maybe two actually) and my mental health was really the last priority of my family – although my physical health and weight was commonly the subject of lengthy family discussions. When I was finally out of college I did seek out therapy and was promptly ushered into an OA group. Needless to say that FREAKED me out – I attended one OA meeting and stopped seeing the therapist immediately. In hindsight she did know that I had eating issues, but she went about the process in the wrong way. I came to her for adjustment issues and she pinned me as a compulsive overeater. I felt like it was a bait and switch.
In grad school I found an amazing therapist who helped me deal with my anxiety and although we discussed eating and body image issues she never used an ED label. I now find myself wondering a lot about whether or not she actually knew about my ED and was just waiting for me to realize it. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but I wonder nonetheless.
So that brings me to my current state where I am willing to admit that maybe I do have an ED. I’m being see by a therapist in an ED clinic and that is hard. I feel so out of place when I am in the waiting room and I feel like all eyes are on me and are judging me. That is probably something to talk about in session sometime, but for right now I guess I am just trying to stick it out and tolerate the label and maybe even learn to feel better about myself.
thanks again – it helps to know that I am not alone
“…The issue I’m speaking of is whether a fat person has an eating disorder or not and whether or not they need outside help….”
::steps into that circle::
well…I get these vibes from people sometimes, because I appear healthy and am probably seen as “fat” to some of the population. More often than not, if I try to explain my situation (EDNOS and bulimic features – cycles of restriction)the vibe from others is sort of, “just…get over it!” or other people will try to pinpoint a REASON that I’m “fat”. They want to fix me, because I’m sure they equate heaviness with unhappiness. Sometimes I can just see their minds working……you hardly eat anything…how did you GET that way??
I don’t overeat…in fact, I probably under-eat. My mother started making me diet when I was about 10 years old, so yeah, my metabolism is sort of jacked-up.
And in addition to that, I have a severely limited palate – there are just very few foods that I will, or do, eat.
I think a lot of people misunderstand the relationship between the inner and outer worlds of an eating-disordered person. I have a distorted and unhealthy relationship with food and with my body, so I consider that “disordered”. It isn’t natural, the way I think of food, my body, and my relationship to it.
Without talking to someone, you can’t really make an on-sight diagnosis (even when I am brave enough to tell someone about ED, they’ll assume it’s COE or binge-eating that’s my demon – no!! wrong answer!) about someone else’s fatness.
Now that I’m a full-grown, middle-aged woman, I would like to enjoy some peace and happiness in my own flesh before it is time for me to die, so, I try to be less concerned with what, when, how, or with whom I eat than whether or not I’m happy….
…you’re right…it’s hard…
It has been a long hard road for me. I began starving in middle school and when I could starve no more I became bulimic. I knew I had an ED b/c there really was no denying it when I did it several times a day. When I was in college I wanted to see the counselor but thought I needed to loose 10lbs first.
I am older know and haven’t purged in many years. The bulimia went away when I went on the BC pill but the need to stuff remained. I went to a T when I realized I wasn’t solving my problem and maybe someone else could. She was pro-OA and I went to meetings for a few years. I always had some objection to it (now I know why) and could never stick to my diet, er I mean food plan.
In the last few years I have been to a counselor who is trained in the overcoming overeating method and it has been helpful. I feel bad because this is taking so long. I have had such a hard time giving up on the need to overeat to soothe myself and my body hatred.
I still worry about what food is doing to my body almost every day. When I am discourage I remind myself that I have a great wardrobe which garners compliments, I rarely become jealous of thin women or feel less than and that I am far more comfortable in my own skin.
Not every fat person has ED. I think many women, thin and fat alike do have a disordered relationship with food and their bodies.
This resonates so much with me – I see so many FA community posts saying, “NOT ALL FAT PEOPLE HAVE EATING DISORDERS!” and, while I can grok that it’s true, I *do* have an eating disorder. When I eat, frequently it *is* emotional and I’m finally taking the steps to see a therapist who specializes in EDs so that I can work through some of my final garbage.
It’s frustrating seeing people post about how they’ve so easily overcome their issues by “just” accepting themselves and then looking back at my own FA history and realizing that I’ve been doing this for *six years now* and still have disordered eating…
For me there’s just no “just” about it. I have made progress but I have more to make.
I wish I could find an OO-trained counselor…I’m certainly “shopping” for one who is at least health-at-every-size-ish
I hear ya! I’m still in therapy… a total of 7 years now! Acceptance was such a hugely hard lesson for me to learn with the eating disorder mucking things up, if ya know what I mean.
I also sometimes am a bit jealous of the folks who have had to do a lot less or even NO (GASP!!) recovery work, because they weren’t ED’d.
ED recovery can take years, but it’s worth it – I can assure you. I try to just focus on progress, not perfection. 🙂
I am so grateful for this post!
I think that there are several different reasons people can be fat, but it can basically be divided into three. The first is people who have a genetic predisposition to fat, who come from fat families, who would share the same body weight with an identical twin raised apart, who cannot continue to lose weight on a diet even when they’re on starvation-level rations. And I think a lot of the strongest voices in the FA community come from this group. It’s so obvious that it isn’t about diet, that it makes it a little easier to fight the haters.
Then there are people who suffer from a disorder that results in weight gain — certain thyroid diseases, PCOS — which cannot be controlled through diet and exercise but need separate treatment.
Finally, there are the rest of us. We have gained weight because we took more calories in than we used. The reasons for this can range from psychiatrically recognized issues, such as eating disorders or atypical depression, or from genetic issues that aren’t straight metabolism, such as impulse control problems, lower energy levels, etc., or from social/ psychological situations, such as eating as a coping mechanism or a demonstration of love or machismo.
Regardless of how you got fat, science has not come up with a way to get rid of it, and that is a failure on more than one level. Diets don’t fail only because some people’s weight plateaus due to genetics. Diets usually fail because people fall off of them. Whatever issues make people fat appear to be stronger than the methods developed by the diet industry.
That can make you feel like a failure, and make fat acceptance much, much harder, but it shouldn’t. When you are joined by pretty much everyone else in the same situation in failing to stick to a diet, there’s something wrong with the diet, not you. All you can do is try to love yourself as you are, try to take care of yourself as much as you are physically and mentally able, and stay involved in this community, ’cause it really helps with both.
I am in love with all you guys! I feel so much compassion and understanding from you all that it is sometimes overwhelming. I want to reply to each of you individually but I’m strapped for time and my home computer is on the fritz so I won’t be able to respond until at least Monday. I know that AGR will jump in and help me and WRT2 when she gets a minute.
I post here to feel that sense of comradery and understanding that I felt I was lacking and I’m sure finding it here. Thank you so much for that.
~sas
sioneva – Have you tried the OO website? Maybe someone can make a suggestion. I could not recover without a T who didn’t value size acceptance and IE.
Trabb’s Boy – I think another type of fat that goes across all lines includes those who have dieted up and away from their true set point. We know diets don’t work but they do the opposite because we often put on pounds after a diet.
Interesting point about the FA community. I think the overweight/COE/Non-diet/ED community is great because it supports those who are struggling and is very understanding of how hard recovery can be. I don’t think the FA community is very accepting or even likes to acknowledge these struggles. It is not the opposite of FA; it is about recovery and striving for FA as part of recovery.
I do overeat and I have gained a few pounds since starting OO but I have never had such body confidence either. I used to think my pounds overweight reflected my problem with food. If I was XYZ overweight, I thought that the XYZ percent reflected how much I was overeating. Ex. 20 pounds over my ideal weight, than 15% of my food intake was due to ED.
I now know that the body is more sophisticated than that (again, diets don’t work) and even if I intuitively eat for the rest of my days, my weight will likely be where it is now. I do hold on to the hope that once the COE ends, my body will respond to going down to its set point. Fantasy- I know, I know. I also worry but am trying to accept that my set point is where I am now. Everyone in OA and many other recovery groups (not OO) say if you stop overeating, you will return to your natural body size. Problem is, I just presumed my natural body size was slender. Who says a slender body is the natural body size for all humans? Who says there is one standard body size? Oh and by coincidence (not) that standard body size is the thin idea. No wonder I am having such a hard time breaking out.
“…The issue I’m speaking of is whether a fat person has an eating disorder or not and whether or not they need outside help….”
I went to therapy in my 20s. I fully expected to be told I had an eating disorder because I was morbidly obese and my food choices were wacky and I was gaining weight.
Turns out “no interest in food, usually eats one fast food meal a day because body insists OMG FOOD NOW”? Was part of clinical depression. “Inability to plan meals/shopping”? Part of clinical depression. Not seeing anything to live for? Part of the clinical depression.
I’m just glad my therapist realize this, and didn’t shove me into OA.
You lucky duck! My therapist didn’t shove me into OA, but the relative who was helping me pay for therapy while I finished uni did make 3 OA meetings a week a condition for getting any help in paying for therapy. Agh. How much faster could my recovery work have gone without all the opposing messages (vs. therapy) that I got from OA about how I should be obsessing on food and dissecting my every food behavior and thought…
Yeouch. Fortunately I was out of college by then and working in software, so I had the money for therapy. My employer’s insurance even paid for half the cost.
Hi Jenny Rose,
Can I ask what OO is? I figured OA is Overeaters Anonymous. My fat life began with atypical depression then, as treatment does not always work very well, eating as a general coping mechanism for stress, all of this exacerbated by dieting (as you point out). I don’t have the funds for ongoing therapy, so I was thinking about looking into Overeaters Anonymous or something like that. Sounds like they aren’t well liked by FA types. I try not to care what I weigh, but I would like to come up with a coping mechanism that doesn’t add to the issues I get stressed about! If OO is good, whatever it is, I’d like to look into it.
Like Julie said, OO is Overcoming Overeating… the method is outlined in the book Overcoming Overeating and on the website overcomingovereating.com
I don’t recommend OA. I tried it for years and it seemed to only make me more obsessed with food and unhappy with my body. 😉
In addition to OO, there are other books that are good that have similar methods: Intuitive Eating, Health at Any Size, When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies, Fat!So?… and anything by Geneen Roth.
I think we all have to find what works for us. OA is supposedly not opposed to methods such as OO or IE, but in my years of going to OA I never saw these methods talked about. It was all about the no flour/no sugar thing… which is ultimately a diet.
I have questions. Can you help? I am having trouble losing weight, and am trying to talk to others to see what might be going on.
Do any of you see a physician? If so, what type? GP, FP internist? Endriconologist?
Are any of you on thyroid medication? If so, what type?
I have food allergies. I am allergic to wheat products. This causes depression & weight gain. It also causes strong mood swings, from the changes in my hormone levels from the food. Do any of you ever struggle with this?
Has anyone ever checked any of you for food allergies?
Thanks so much!!
Fat can be caused for all sorts of reasons. People can diet themselves into higher set-points. People can be born to be fat. Anti-depressants can cause weight gain… so can thyroid issues.
I won’t be approving any comment that suggests taking any specific meditation, because we’re not doctors here and we cannot know what medication is right for you or what medical condition you have. 😉
What I do recommend is trying out lots of docs. You already know about the food allergy. Maybe you can manage the allergy better… or maybe there is some other medical issue… or maybe your body is optimally healthy when it is fat.
Ultimately, what size-acceptance (and this site) is about is realizing that fat isn’t a moral issue or the end of the world. Do you have any questions from an acceptance POV?
I’m fat because I look exactly like my great-aunt Anne on my mother’s mother’s side. OCD, depression, and some really interesting coping mechanisms appear to run in both sides of the family, as well as a tradition of body hatred.
My various, and scintillating, anxiety disorders may or may not stem from both sources.
That’s what I’m in therapy to find out.
So, I’m genetically fat (and even fatter through diligent dieting, I won’t lie) and I also use certain types of food (eating or ignoring) as self-medication.
Since I stopped dieting and then started my self-acceptance journey, I have learned to get the self-hatred out of the way (more or less) and see my binges and denials as signals and signs that something else is probably going on.
Do I have an eating disorder? Eh, I don’t know. But I know that I want to have a little mindful serenity about what I eat and how I eat—and to stop using food as either spackle or turbo boost. And I’m not there yet.
If my body changes during this process, okay. If it doesn’t, that’s okay, too. And maybe that’s the essential point?
“If my body changes during this process, okay. If it doesn’t, that’s okay, too. And maybe that’s the essential point?”
I agree!
Overcoming Overeating. It’s a book, and a way of living that hopefully entails a sane relationship with food.
Thanks all on the OO thing. I’ll check it out!
Hi, finally, I’m able to reply! It’s been an exhausting week!
I am on the same page as AGR and Sassy when it comes to therapy, but if I can add to the diversity of this blog, I would say that on the spectrum of disordered eating, I’ve not been very far on the disordered end. I say this humbly, and to say that at times my eating has felt out of control, but knowing that some people have symptoms and experiences that are different than mine, is being honest.
I’m going to try to get some sleep before working on a bigger response, but I’ll be around.
I think this was a fabulous post. This is why I feel I belong here, because in part what I’m interested in is recovery, and open discussion about what helps us recover — without defining recovery as weight loss. As spoonfork put it “If my body changes during this process, okay. If it doesn’t, that’s okay, too. And maybe that’s the essential point?”
I recommend “The Diet Survivor’s Handbook” — a practical guidebook to an OO approach. It has helped me a great deal.
I also want to add that it’s great that there is a space to talk about this without either the assumption that every fat person MUST have an eating disorder, or that NO fat people have (or had) eating disorders. We are in the gray area (the Angry Gray Rainbow area, to be precise) — musts, shoulds, nevers, alwayses are best set aside.
WRT2 touched on a very important facet of what we want to across to people. We want to talk about recovery that’s “not about weight loss”. If your focus/goal for recovery is, in fact, weight loss, then we’re not the blog for you. For too many years we have focused on weight and food and look where it’s gotten us.
I had focused so much food and weight in life that I practically ruined my marriage. Food and dieting were more important to me than any sex, quality time with my hubby or even serious discussions about anything except weight loss.
Dieting had me so obsessed about doing things “right” or “wrong” that I’m having to retrain my mind about gray thinking and non-linear thinking. Life happens and it doesn’t revolve around food or how much of it I eat.
So what do we mean when we talk about recovery that isn’t weight loss related? We’re talking about taking care of your body, soul and mind. Listening to your body, soul and mind. Becoming more aware of the needs and wants of your body, soul and mind. It’s an all encompassing process that takes some getting used to after you’ve been so weight loss focused.
Examples of recovery in progress for me are:
*reading a good book to keep my mind from stagnating
*taking jacuzzi baths when I’m exhausted from working in the yard all day
*preparing good, cold, refreshing dishes when it’s steamy hot outside
*moisturizing my body and using sun screen
*singing and dancing when I’m happy
*crying when I’m sad (it can be so cathartic and to hold it in too long can be quite hard)
*playing with my beloved four legged fur baby, my yellow lab
*snuggling with my wonderful husband
*watching a funny movie
*sitting quietly on my back porch in the late evening and listening to the frogs
*taking a walk
*taking pictures
*keeping my body hydrated
*if I go to the gym, I do the things I consider to be fun movement that make me feel better when I leave than when I came in
*journaling (or blogging)
*emailing friends (hate the phone since I’m on it a lot for work)
*taking pride in what I do and doing a good job
Do you get the gist? Recovery is living a life without the focus being on weight or food. Recovery is possible…you just need to be patient and steadfast.
For those who think that “weight restoration” is part of recovery…well, good luck with that. In my humble opinion, you’re only setting yourself up to fail once again (or at least it FEELS LIKE it’s YOU that’s failing) and how many times will you keep getting back on that dead horse?
~sas
I tried OA once or twice, and I thought it was completely insane. I overate because I had (have) emotional problems, I wasn’t addicted to sugar. I wasn’t interested in food abstinence then, and I’m absolutely not now. I’m not quite where you are with this, and have decided that my recovery would include weight loss, and now that I’m about at “normal weight”, my life still sucks. Maybe even more, as I don’t have weight to blame or food to comfort me, and still have to face my issues. OTOH, it’s easier to buy clothes, and people ignore me less.
My perspective on OA is that it is the right thing for some people. I know it hasn’t been right for me. For some people, it is the right set of tools and it works for them.
An assumption that because I’m fat I need OA bugs me, but I think that for the people it works for, they feel the desire to spread their recovery tool to others.
And, as julie says above — “I still have to face my issues.” I think that many, many people have emotional stufff they are working on. Taking good care of oneself, as Sassy outlined above, can include actions that lead to weight stabilization in a comfortable range — I know it has for me (and I’m still fat).