Does your mind automatically spew fat shaming thoughts?
It’s possible to make compassionate choices and to respect who you are, even in the midst of an war on obesity. If you want support for your food journey, you can check out Overeaters Anonymous, a free food addiction group based on the 12 steps.
Oftentimes fat shaming occurs as an act of bullying, singling out, discriminating or making fun of a bigger person. Sadly, the shaming is often given under the pretense of being kind and helpful.
Here are my thoughts on:
- Body Hatred in Culture (mins 1-4)
- The Increasing Frequency of Fat Shaming Thoughts (mins 4-8)
- How To Accept and Retrain Your Mind (mins 8-10)
The technique for today is Acknowledge Fat Shame And Acknowledge An Aspect of Your Self Worth.
For example, “I am struggling with body hatred thoughts right now, AND I am hard worker”.
Fat Shaming Commentary:
Body shame and weight stigma are becoming increasingly more frequent.
The war on obesity is part of our cultural language.
I can’t help but think …
Only in America would we have a ‘war’ on obesity.
A war on drugs, how effective is that?
A war on obesity, how effective is that?
Obesity rates are still going up and up … how’s this working?
Is shaming millions of people really working?
And what about the old saying ‘Oh, fat people are lazy?’
Is that really true?
And isn’t it sad that the #1 propagator of weight obesity is our health care system? From doctors to personal trainers and every one in between.
We seem to have decided that being fat is morally bad.
And that’s too bad.
Thank fully there movements like Health At Every Size, Intuitive Eating, Love Yourself, Body Positive and more and more recognition that Shame Just Doesn’t Work.
Weight stigma has gone up 60% in the past 40 years.
Now why am I talking about this ‘War On Obesity’? Aren’t I supposed to be talking about how to reduce fat shaming?
Yes, I will get to that 🙂
But it’s really important that we understand the gravity …
The depth …
The difficulty.
Because the only solution is compassion towards ourselves.
And compassion can be incredibly difficult to practice!
Yet, one thing can make compassion easier to direct towards yourself …
And that is realizing that …
You are in a violent culture.
You grew up in this violent culture.
There are media pictures all around you …
Magazines and celebrities all around you …
Restaurants making snide comments …
Clothing stores not carrying your size …
etc, etc, etc …
So you are going to have fat shaming thoughts!
And it’s going to be difficult to get rid of them!
Because when you see the immmense difficulty …
The almost impossible nature of fat shaming and how prevalent body hatred is …
Then you naturally become more compassionate.
Now that isn’t to say that you’re immediately going to start thinking positively though, no.
Heck, some studies have shown we think 60,000 thoughts per day.
And for me, I just think that number is a little bit high, so let’s go super conservative and say that we only think 1000 thoughts per day.
That’s a pie cut into 60 pieces and only taking 1 of those pieces.
Then let’s also say that …
25% of your thoughts of negative fat shaming thoughts about your body.
Give or take. I’ve had some people estimate close to 50% of their thoughts are fat shaming thoughts.
And we think the same thoughts, day after day …
So that’s at an extremely conservative estimate …
250 thoughts per day about how …
Horrible your body is.
How despicable your body is.
How much you hate and loathe your body.
And you have drilled these thoughts into your brain …
For years, decades even …
Repeatedly thinking these thoughts.
These thoughts have built up momentum and now they are hard to stop!
It’s like a faucet spewing out negativity that you can’t turn off!
So how do you deal with this impossible situation?
You flow with it.
You don’t fight it.
The technique for today is Acknowledge Fat Shame And Acknowledge An Aspect of Your Self Worth.
For example, “I am struggling with body hatred thoughts right now, AND I am hard worker”.
Both can be true.
This is how you ‘fight’ fat shaming thoughts.
By not fighting!
This is the enlightenment!
This is an example of the weight loss enlightenment I am so passionate about!
Fighting and judging doesn’t make things better.
It just doesn’t.
When you catch yourself having a body hatred thought, you must realize that you’ve been programmed by the culture and environment you live in to have this thought!
Don’t judge, resist, hate yourself for having this thought!
This means accepting that currently you do hate your body (based on the previous thoughts you’ve thought about your body).
This is the nature of karma.
However, we can also create new karma.
By acknowledging and valuing our self worth, we can reprogram our mind to evaluate our self worth …
Not based on our body …
But by who we really are.
