Cognitive Distortions and Pervasive Anti-Fat Bias
Trigger Warning: Anti-fat and weight bias. Eating disorder thoughts and behaviors.
Anti-fatness is dangerous. Anti-fatness (or fatphobia or weight stigma) is used to discriminate, oppress, denigrate, blame and harm. Weight stigma is so pervasive we often can’t even see it but we feel it. We feel it when we criticize our bodies for not being small enough, for gaining weight, for not losing enough weight etc. I don’t think I have to list all the ways our anti-fat culture has conditioned us to hate our bodies.
These next few entries are steeped in weight stigmatizing language. The eating disorder was in control and tried to use anti-fat bias to manipulate me into a restrictive diet (my eating disorder used veganism and vegetarianism as a socially acceptable way to restrict). TRIED. It didn’t work. By journaling and getting those thoughts out my healthy-self was able to push back. I didn’t start another diet
As I continued to move through recovery one of the most challenging obstacles was identifying, challenging, dismantling and rooting out my internalized anti-fat bias. It was also incredibly liberating. I still have some residual anti-fatness inside of me but I can often recognize it and neutralize it quickly.
For more information about anit-fat bias, please check out:
- I’m a Fat Activist. I Don’t Use the Word Fatphobia. Here’s Why by Your Fat Friend
- Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift by Lindo Bacon and Lucy Aphramor
- Can We Put an End to Fatphobia in Woke Spaces by Melissa Toler
- Weight Stigma Awareness Week by Be Nourished
March 30, 2015
I Feel Fat. I felt fat yesterday after that huge lunch we ate. Plus, that veggie burger made me uber gassy. I was also a bit hungover so that didn’t help the situation.
When I feel fat, I feel ashamed and I tell myself that other people will like and respect me more if I was thinner. I relate to that line in 8 Keys about thinking that if I reach a certain number on the scale, I will magically feel better about myself and everything will be better.
There is also guilt involved when I feel fat. I feel guilty I was out of control and let myself eat so much. I often think that the whole day is ruined if I feel fat. I should just go to bed and watch tv because I’ve failed.
I am feeling fat today. I caught my reflection in the window when I was taking the dogs out. My belly is bigger. I look pregnant again. Our neighbor is home and I thought that he might ask me if I was expecting again. I changed my shirt to hide my tummy. I am drinking a cup of coffee which is nice, but I can’t escape the feeling that I should work out today. When I feel like this I just want to hide. I feel shameful, lazy and unattractive.
March 31, 2015
Feeling okay today. Some struggles because I have a bit of a breakout on my chin and I have likely put on some weight. I know I shouldn’t get wrapped up in that but it’s hard not to. I am trying to stay away from triggers and today I was with my mom and I had a couple pieces of hard candy. I’m a little tired and I didn’t get to write today. I got up at 5am but I didn’t get to focus much on my recovery. I spent most of the time working on my writing class. We learned about point of view.
Argh, I feel fat right now. Fat and tired. Which in turn, makes me feel lazy. Am also leaning to possibly going to a vegetarian lifestyle again or at least making fruits and veggies the main source of my diet. I am also leaning toward giving up my 3- 4 cups of coffee a day. I am going to go off the stuff for a few days and see how I feel. I wonder if what I felt as a vegan/vegetarian had more to do with feeling good because I knew I was eating healthier. And the positive feeling at the end of the day might have just been pride that I had put good things in my body that day.
April 1, 2015
I decided to get up today and focus on my ED. The past few days I have been thinking about how over the past 5 years (since Wyatt was born) the ED has looked different than when I was younger. Bingeing and purging aren’t a daily struggle, but distorted body image and cognitive distortions are a daily issue. Every single day I think, “If I was thinner more people would like me, and I would have more fun.”
Time to work on my cognitive distortions:
- All or nothing thinking: (I.e. black and white thinking).
- If I eat one bad thing, I’ve ruined the whole day.
- If I feel fat and ugly the whole day is ruined and I just want to lay in bed and watch tv.
- Or more recently, with graham crackers, I ate one graham cracker, I may as well eat a whole sleeve. I do this with other things too. I ate one Aussie bite, I may as well eat 5.
- Over-generalization: I can see this in me in varying degrees.
- There is a part of me that’s worried because my ED self has been in control for so long that my healthy self doesn’t have much of a shot of gaining control. I’m not sure she’s ever had it.
- I am also concerned that my natural body weight is going to be where it is now or heavier – that might not be the right category of distorted thinking, but I think about that at least once a day.
- I also thought that because some of my eating habits were based on ED that all of my eating habits are influenced by my ED self.
- I think it’s possible that being a vegetarian may have more to do with eating well and being kind to animals than my ED.
- Being vegan is much more restrictive and I think may have more of an ED influence. I genuinely have sympathy towards animals and understand that we don’t have to eat them to survive. Plus, the meat industry is questionable at best.
- Discounting the positives: Yeah, hello me.
- I tend to always feel that compliments are people just being nice and they don’t mean them.
- That sounds weird. There is that cognitive distortion again, of course, they are being nice. I feel like they are being nice but not being sincere, which is pretty mean of me.
- Or when I get too many compliments my head gets too big and I start to self-sabotage. As soon as I start feeling good about myself, I start to sabotage it all by overeating or bingeing and purging. I have done this for many many years. I so desperately want to feel healthy and happy but as soon as I do, I hate myself and feel unworthy. I don’t know how to fix this.
- I can say I will accept a compliment, but I am really scared about my head getting too big and then sabotaging myself. I would like to just feel confident and happy and go with it. Be able to take a compliment and not let it go to my head. I mean it is okay to feel good but not to let that good feeling scare me. That’s it. As soon as I start feeling too good, I get scared. Scared that I’m fooling people but mostly scared that I am going to ruin it. Which I always do. How do I keep myself in check? Just keep moving forward, one step at a time. Keep writing. Keep spending time with Mom, that will certainly keep me humble. As will my boys.
- I tend to always feel that compliments are people just being nice and they don’t mean them.
- Emotional reasoning: (You believe your feelings make it true).
- I feel fat so I am fat.
- Ummm…yep. I look at pictures from my honeymoon and, at the time, I thought I was so fat, but I looked fantastic. I was so self-conscious about my looks.
- When I feel hopeless, I am hopeless.
- If I do something that I am not proud of then I struggle with feeling like a bad person.
- If I eat that piece of pizza than I am a bad person. I have no control so I may as well just give up. I do that a lot. If I feel like I did something poorly, I tend to just give up because I think I am a failure. Instead of giving up, I need to keep putting one foot in front of another. It may hurt, it may suck but I must keep moving.
- I feel fat so I am fat.
- Mind-reading:
- For whatever reason, I always think people will like me better and have more respect for me if I am thinner and stronger. I suppose some friends kind of reinforce that a bit. But they are sweet and wonderful, and I don’t think they mean it.
- As an attorney, I thought if I was thinner Judges and attorneys would respect my arguments more and listen to me. Crazy. I thought the same thing as a sales associate.
- For as long as I can remember my self-esteem has been rooted in my looks. As a kid, I was always told how pretty I was and wherever I went I often wondered if I was the prettiest person there. I remember being at a concert and looking at all the girls to see if I was the prettiest person at the concert. OMG, how messed up is that!? My whole identity was wrapped up in how I looked. Reinforced by attention from boys. At Kris’s swim meets, I was known as his pretty sister (or that’s what I was told). I was conditioned to believe that people liked me because I was pretty, or they didn’t like me because I was pretty. I didn’t have many friends. I had trouble seeing value in myself outside of my looks. I was a horrible student and couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t work very hard because I thought it was too hard. I spent a lot of time watching tv.
- Personalizing and blaming: I suppose I do this to some extent.
- I typically accept responsibility for my own actions. Unless I am too embarrassed and then I might try to blame something or someone else.
- Magnification or minimization: Hmmmm… Things are either too much or not enough.
- I am either too fat or not thin enough (I understand these are the same). I suppose I do tend to magnify. I did “this” so it has broad implications in my life. I am having trouble thinking about an example.
- Mental Filter: I do this.
- I’ll eat well for most of the day and then take a bite of the boys’ food or a cookie or graham cracker and then the day is ruined. I need to start remembering that my day is okay even if I eat something I deem “bad.”
- Yesterday I was proud of myself. I had a couple butterscotches and then had half a graham cracker. I felt myself getting anxious and uncomfortable. But instead of eating a bunch of graham crackers, I came home and grabbed some vegetable juice and a piece of lunchmeat and kept going. I also reached out to Steve. Hmmmm… yay me!
- Should statements: Yeah, I do this.
- I should be able to do this on my own.
- I should be in better control of my eating.
- I should be a better, more patient mom.
- I should do this I should do that.
- Labeling. Yep.
- When I did the Gold’s Challenge and didn’t lose any weight, I felt like such a loser and a failure. I felt like everyone was judging me because they could tell I wasn’t losing weight. I judged others too and that wasn’t fair. I don’t do well being pitted against someone else. I want us all to win. I really do. If I’m winning, then I sabotage myself and if I’m not winning, I feel like a complete loser.
Dialoguing with my disotorted thoughts
- I am fat and ugly. I am not fat and I am not ugly. I am much stronger than I use to be.
- No one likes me because I am fat and ugly.
- My nose is too big and I don’t like the wrinkle between my eyes.
- I am a bad mom.
- I am stupid.
- I am not good at anything.
- Food will always have power over me.
I haven’t finished the exercise yet.
***This post is part of blog series called Revealing My Road to Recovered. For more information about the series please click here: Revealing My Road to Recovered
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