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Chrissie Batten
Although I’d decided to write a series of articles under the title ‘Inside The Mind of a Fat Person’, I’ve found myself really struggling to get started on this third one. So I needed to identify why I felt reluctant to write more on this topic, as I’d already faced my personal demons and taken the challenge to expose my ‘fatness’ to the world, when I wrote the first article on this subject.
However, after examining my reluctance a bit more closely, I was quite surprised to find that I’d been avoiding writing about being fat because…
1) I didn’t want to be perceived as a ‘victim’!
2) I didn’t want to be condemned for not losing the weight!
3) I didn’t want to be criticised for speaking my truth!
4) I didn’t want people to pity me, or feel sorry for me!
In fact, if I’m totally honest with myself, I’d say the basis of my writing difficulty was that I didn’t want to be seen, noticed or even acknowledged!….Gasp of frustration…Deep conditioning created over my many years, that still impacts me now…!
Blast – I thought I’d come past all of this crap!!
I don’t know why this realisation surprised me, as I know myself very well! I know the self-doubt I face each time I make a choice, or face an important decision. I recognise how I talk myself out of moving toward the direction that could make me feel happier and more fulfilled, because I feel ashamed about the way I look! I totally accept that I am the controller of my own destiny…yet it still upsets me that so many of us FP put our lives on hold, until we lose the weight that keeps us rooted to the isolation of our imagination, that convinces us to believe, without doubt, that we are not good enough as we are.
It’s normal to doubt ourselves during childhood. But when there is ‘An Issue’ present, including overweight, then life takes on an avalanche of unlimited possibilities for personality destruction, because the child perceives they are judged by others according to their ‘issue’, thus doesn’t know who or what to be as it matures into adulthood! In the case of obesity, life becomes filled with questions about what’s right/wrong/good or bad food, what you should/shouldn’t eat, when you should/shouldn’t eat! What you should or shouldn’t do or wear to make you look thinner, less fat! What you must or mustn’t do to get noticed, avoid being seen, get attention, and be acceptable or invisible to others!
Eventually, life becomes filled with self-doubt, self-debating and self-berating, where instead of embracing who we are, and allowing ourselves to reach our full potential as we mature, we struggle to find a mode of being that makes us feel acceptable to the limitations of the outside world!
In many cases we question everything, until we reach a point where we imprison ourselves in our own negative emotions, that dictate that shame and guilt rises each time we consume anything! There is no enjoyment to be gained from mealtimes – only guilty pleasures that make us feel ashamed and regretful, after we’ve digested the delicious mouthfuls of food that just for that moment satisfied us, made us feel better, or pacified our despair!
FP/TP want to be considered normal. But how can we feel normal when we react so badly to eating something as small as one biscuit, or a couple of pieces of chocolate? Don’t normal people eat these things? Of course they do! The difference is normal people usually stop when they’ve had enough. Or, if they do binge, they do not repeat it on a regular basis. But because FP have so much emotional agenda that rises when they eat forbidden food, their impulse to eat is stimulated by the bad way they feel. Which makes it almost impossible to control their appetite, because they are being driven to over-eat by impulses created from their emotional discomfort.
Our self-perception is strongly influenced by the way we look, so when we try to manage or control weight issues that make us feel inadequate, our mind is geared-up to give us what we want to get or avoid. The problem with this is that we create a ‘perfect rule-book’ in our mind that is often unworkable, because it’s unrealistic. For example… we decide to go on a diet, stick at it a couple of days before our resolve sta
Mentality - How Changing Your Mind Can Change Your Life & The World! by Chrissie Batten
rts to falter, and we eat what we shouldn’t. So we come off the diet feeling we’ve failed – we’ve blown it yet again! This repetitive process builds-up shame and guilt energy within our persona, that guarantees we will continue to fail in the future – because we don’t believe we can succeed in our aims.
We rarely admit to ourselves that most people find it difficult to change their lifestyle. For if we did we would see our ‘normality’! Instead we just perpetuate our shame by believing we are inferior, inadequate, incapable of success, and fat is a problem we cannot control, change, get rid of, because we’re not strong enough to hold our resolve!
FP/TP live life feeling in or out of control! This is why life becomes so hard! But even though we are over/under weight, even though we’ve failed on a million diets, there’s still things we can do to help ourselves, that will change our perception toward food, and help us feel more confident about what we can do!
It’s great to be able to plan ahead. But it’s not only FP that find it difficult to fully commit themselves for any given period of time, as other addicts will attest to. So there are other ways of approaching our problems! If we looked at our life style one day at a time for example, if we have a bad day today we make the decision to start again tomorrow and do it better. So instead of giving up on ourselves because we’ve broken our promise to us, we persevere each day until we get it right, by making little adjustments in our life, that support healthy living.
One of the most important tasks I set myself, many years ago, was to abolish any emotional attachment I had to food! I’d tried to do the right things and dieted all my life, yet I was still fat and unhappy! So one day I made the decision that my relationship with food had to change, as whilst I hated being a FP, I hated being so miserable even more!
Once I recognised how I stimulated so much internal pain each time I ate, I decided to eat what I wanted – when I wanted, and make sure I enjoyed everything I digested. If I didn’t like it I wouldn’t eat it! If I over-ate I would enjoy the gluttonous feelings and feel rewarded and satisfied! If I over-ate and felt nauseous, I would laugh at myself for making myself feel so bad! I learned how to relax when I ate, instead of stressing myself out with my list of rules that I was breaking.
It took a few months of working consciously to divert my bad thoughts to neutral thinking, but it worked for me by setting me free from the ‘eat – guilt – shame – overeat’ process. Eventually, and quite naturally, I became more choosy about what I wanted to eat. I could leave food on the plate, I could resist the ‘forbidden’ foods more easily – all without forcing myself to do so! I had gained control over my eating, by simply allowing myself to eat what I chose to, when I needed to eat!
I rarely binged and I lost some weight – even though I wasn’t dieting! And this was how I cured myself of Binge Eating Disorder!!
So whilst I’m still fat now, food rarely stimulates my guilt or shame! I’ve broken the rules and set myself emotionally free from guilt/shame each time I crave something. And most importantly, realise that even though I am a FP, I am entitled to feel pleasure, satisfaction and enjoyment from the act of eating – just as normal-weight people do!
Life is challenging for most of us now, and pleasures are harder to find because of our high stress levels. But food is meant to feed our body to promote good health, it’s meant to sustain us, and is a way to experience pleasure and satisfaction. If you are a FP/TP, and your relationship with food is not rewarding, then find a way to change the rules in your mind, to break the rules of rigidity that contradict your own natural needs.
Learn to eat consciously…Eat and enjoy food, glorious food….!
Also become aware of what you eat, how you eat it, and why…!
But just remember that…. sugar acts as a poison to your body, and wheat is an allergen, so because your body has problems processing these they could make your body swell up. If you avoid these as much as you can, you may eventually feel healthier and not have such a weight problem in the future!
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