If you resonate with this keep reading ❤️
How many times have you said to yourself or to others;
“I feel fat”
Countless I’m sure, I know I did some years ago too.
And back then, alongside my clients who first begin with thrive, I thought it was directly linked to my body.
I felt fat because I was flawed, because there was something wrong with me, because people would judge me, because I wasn’t enough….
And when you express it to peers you’re met with;
“Don’t be silly, there’s nothing on you, you look great”
All confirming that this feeling is linked to how we look right?
Wrong…
And the misunderstanding I see trips so many into damaging behaviours with food and bodies.
Feelings of fatness arise because of emotional dysregulation.
I feel fat is different to I have body fat.
We all have body fat, we need it to survive, it’s protective, it’s supportive, it helps with hormones and metabolic processes.
Of course, too much body fat can be harmful to long term health, but that’s for another day.
Today we are focusing on “feeling fat”
I felt fat in both of these photos 👇🏻
There’s a significant difference in the body fat levels I had.
The reason for feeling fat, was nothing to do with how much body fat I had but deep routed feelings that I was brushing over with self criticism and harmful thoughts.
Alongside that, demonising natural bodily processes like digestion.
Eating certain foods and instantly grabbing my tummy,
Concluding “I felt fat”
In reality there were NO significant changes within my body with these feelings.
On a Monday when I felt fat, my body looked no different to the Wednesday I felt ok,
So what was it?
A habit I’d formed that was based on not allowing myself to feel, not allowing myself to acknowledge emotions and instead demonising myself.
Shockingly this habit never ended in a positive body image or any healthful habits, it became a cycle of restriction, bingeing and actually poor mental health.
When you try and squash away any perceived bad feelings you actually diminish your ability to feel your happy feelings, it’s not a “squash bad and I’ll get more good” it’s rather squash bad squash everything…
And the self critical analysis gets greater,
You feel worse in yourself,
You hate your body,
Compare her,
Scrutinise her,
Working through feelings of fatness is very little to do with body fat levels, it’s working through dysregulation to allow yourself to feel, and respond with compassion, knowing this is a normal and acceptance part of humanity,
Despite being told growing up “stop being silly, don’t worry about it”
A suppression tactic pretty much most people have been taught.
Here we learn the art of feeling, acknowledging and working through emotional granularity that not only supports feelings of discomfort in your body, but allows you to respond with adaptive, helpful strategies that are supportive of your health long term.
Not binge eating the hobnobs and giant buttons like I used to each time, welcome to my emotional suppression party.
Here we celebrate the messiness of life, understanding triggers, how situations can cause feelings and how to then pause and respond.
If you have ever felt fat and now you’re curious about how this stems and what you can begin doing, check out the latest episode of the podcast 👇🏻
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