Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 20 The Other "F-Word": How to Stop Seeing Fat as a Dirty Word
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: Fat. How do feel when you hear that word? Do you feel a tightening in your body or like a visceral flinch? Does it just feel like I said a bad word? For many of us, fat is the original slur. It's the first weapon kids use on the playground because they've already learned at such a young age that to be seen as fat is bad. We have been conditioned to vilify a biological reality and turn it into a character flaw or worse, a moral failing. We've reached a point in our culture where a staggering number of women would literally rather be hit by a bus than be fat. When our fear of a body type outweighs our instinctual survival, this goes far beyond dealing with the beauty standard, we're dealing with a cultural crisis. So today we're gonna look at the F word and we're gonna peel back the layers of shame and see how we've been influenced to think this way and ask the question, What happens when we stop making an enemy of fat and of our own body? Let's get into it. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural worth, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. We were not born into this world hating fat. In fact, you might even have memories of being a child where you would see people who were fat and well, you probably didn't even know they were fat. They just were. It's not until we get conditioned to view bodies differently that we start to make this judgment in our minds. And this conditioning comes from our culture, directly from our friends and family who are part of the culture. But a lot of it comes from our exposure to the general media. If you were someone who grew up with television in 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond, you would have been inundated with the idea that being thin is what is beautiful and attractive. And being fat is ugly and to be made fun of. I'm not sure there's ever been a leading lady or character who's been not thin. It's always the best friend who's fat and on the side and we can kind of make fun of her. And we can think of some cultural references from the 80s and 90s. of Fat Monica on Friends, of how terrible it was and how it was this big joke to make fun of her of when she used to be fat. But you know, now she's okay because she's thin. We could also look at popular shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, where Uncle Phil was constantly being made fun of. Or characters in movies like Bridget Jones from Bridget Jones's Diary, or Natalie from Love Actually, who really most people objectively wouldn't call fat. And yet just because they had a little bit of extra weight, they were called chubby or ashamed for it. So any amount of fat on the body becomes something that we're supposed to see as bad. It becomes vilified. It becomes something we're supposed to worry about and get rid of. This isn't accidental. There is a multi-billion dollar industry that profits off of this. Selling weight loss is so easy. I often joke that sometimes I wish I was selling weight loss because it would sure be a heck of a lot more lucrative in this culture that is absolutely obsessed with thinness. Our insecurity becomes their profit margin. As I mentioned in the intro, there was a survey that was done where roughly 50 % of women said that they would rather be hit by a bus than be considered fat. This highlights a very deep-seated internalization of shame and a real fear of being negatively judged by other people in society. We view fat right now in a completely black or white way. We are incredibly off balance with it, which means that we're not actually seeing it clearly. We're not seeing it truthfully because nothing in life is purely black or white. There is always a gray. There's always nuance. All we need to do is look at nature. Nature comes in all different shapes and sizes, even amongst the animal kingdom, and so too do bodies. We are genetically made up differently. Some bodies are going to carry more fat than others very naturally, and we can see it in children. And we can also see in children that they harbor no judgment about it. It's just their body. It just is. You don't see two-year-olds or three-year-olds shine away from the mirror or pinching at their stomach. It is something that they do once they learn this idea that I'm less than because I have fat in my body. I can remember a story from my youth when I was in about the third grade. I had a friend and we were playing and he was a little bit upset with something I was doing. He called me a fat tub of lard and I can remember feeling the impact of that. I knew that when he was saying it to me, it was meant to hurt me. And even though I may not have directly known that fat was bad, there was that association that was made in the moment. He was saying something to me to hurt me and used fat as a way to do it. That was implanted in my brain that said, fat is bad. This is not a good thing. You don't want to be that. But this is a belief. Fat actually isn't bad. in and of itself, and it's relative. You have to have somebody else to compare yourself to in order to be called fat or thin. If you were the only person who existed in the world, you could not know if you were fat or thin. So these descriptives, they're purely based on comparison. And when we're comparing each other and attributing character assessment or a moral judgment on it, we're going to put, no pun intended, some weight on it. We're going to care then how we look or how we appear because it's hitting on a survival instinct with us that says, I want to belong, I want to feel safe. And if those around me are not accepting me, then I feel unsafe. And that exactly is what is going on at the deepest level when it comes to how we are viewing fat in our culture. Because it's Cultural and it's historical it is of the time it has not always been this way There is a culture in Africa that would send a woman to a quote-unquote fattening hut before she got married so that she would get fatter because it was seen as a sign of wealth and Fertility I'm not saying that that's the best thing to do either when you're forcing somebody to gain weight But we're just looking at the ways that fat in and of itself is actually neutral We have just learned to imbue it with certain qualities. And in our culture, it's extremely obvious that it is almost entirely negative. But we lose a lot when we do that. People in the quest to not be fat have to deny themselves their joy, their happiness, their health, because of kneeling like they need to suppress their body weight and do everything that they can. to not be fat. So when we are so skewed onto one side, we are creating an equal amount of problems on the other side. The way that we're viewing fat is also influencing the way that we're viewing health. We like to think that research is totally objective, except people are people, and they're going to be putting their own lens through it. There was an article I read called the obesity paradox. where they were showing some of the beneficial effects that fat had on people's health. And they called it a paradox because it was like, well, ⁓ my goodness, this must be some kind of anomaly. No, it's just a bigger part of the conversation that we're missing when we're looking at fat through this lens. There's a really good test that you can use for yourself to look at and say, okay, well, is my not wanting to be fat really about health? And here's a simple way to do it. Let's say you were at a size that you didn't think was ideal. If you were in perfect health and you knew that you could be that way your whole life in that size body, would you still want to lose weight? And if the answer is yes, then you know it's not actually about health. It's hard for us even to assess what is our true desire for weight loss because we have this bias built right into it. And we can see this happening with the GLP-1 boom. because there are many people who are taking it who are already in smaller bodies and becoming even thinner. So it can't just be purely about health. There is a deeper driver that is underneath it. Let's not forget, there were also times historically where having fat on your body was seen as a good thing and was seen as a sign of health. because there are positives to having fat on the body that we have completely lost sight of because we're only looking at it through a negative lens, like the fact that it protects organs and helps with hormone balancing, just two things among others. It is a natural part of our body. And when we are living in a way that feels good to us, we're eating in a way that feels good, we're living a life that feels balanced and healthy and we have fat on our bodies, That's not a mistake. Yes, you can be living totally out of balance with your body. You can be extremely stressed. You can be really struggling in other areas of your life and weight gain may be a result of that. But it doesn't mean that the weight gain is what's at fault. It might be that we're out of balance. But out of balance can also mean that you're in a body that's much too thin for you. And if we are deeply afraid of fat, it's going to be harder. to bring yourself back in balance from a smaller body because thinness has social currency and people do not want to give that up. Especially if you really care about how you are perceived by other people. If you're trying to protect an identity from other people and thinness is a part of that, then it's going to be hard to give it up. What it ends up costing you, it's yourself. You're ending up denying your own self, living truly in alignment with yourself when we are giving it up at the cost and the fear of what other people are going to think of us. So it's not an easy thing that I'm talking about with making peace with your body when it comes to fat, because it hits at our survival instinct. But you might be experiencing a point where you said, I've been on this dieting treadmill. I've taken the GLP-1s, and I don't like the side effects. I don't wanna keep running in a circle or constantly worrying about my body or constantly thinking about food and living this life thinking I'm not good enough or less than because of fat on my body. That pain often has to get higher than the pain of trying to keep your body small. And if you are at that point, then I'm here to tell you this is a portal to your freedom. Because when we are constantly denying ourselves for the approval and appreciation of other people, We are never actually going to be happy or fulfilled because true peace actually means making peace with ourselves. We need to be able to see it though, that the way that we're viewing fat is a belief. That is a conditioned belief that we have learned it is not a fact. So when you look at your body and you think it's ugly, when you look at it and you judge yourself and criticize yourself, it feels bad. You feel terrible about yourself. And that is. your emotional guidance system, your inner wisdom telling you how you are viewing fat right now and how you are viewing your body and yourself is out of alignment with the truth. Because when we are in alignment with what is true for us, we feel peace, we feel good. But we have a whole mind here that has been programmed with these negative ideas about fat. And so then that inhibits us from being able to truly live in alignment with ourselves. because we have to stop ourselves at certain ways in order to not be perceived negatively, in order to not gain weight, perceived negatively by others or by ourself, but is a belief. And when you can root that belief out of yourself, you open yourself up to true peace, because maintaining thinness in order to meet an idea will only ever give you temporary satisfaction. And it's a satisfaction that comes with stress, because there is always this constant hum underneath the surface that's saying, I have to keep it, I can't lose it. And you're constantly worried about gaining that weight. It's not a healthy way to live. It's not the way that we're meant to live. That's why we're so stressed and anxious about this. People aren't really truly at peace when they've met their weight loss goal because they have to maintain it. Now we just think that's normal. That's what we're told, but it's actually not. Now we can absolutely focus on feeling good in our bodies and that is my whole intention certainly of the work that I'm doing otherwise why would I bother doing it? Why make peace with your body if you're going to feel worse? It doesn't make sense. What we need to do is root out the ways that we are viewing our body and seeing ourselves that are causing us to be out of alignment. So you know when you're out of alignment with the way that you're eating, with your movement, with your stress levels, with your relationships, with your work. You know that you can feel it. So you focus on putting yourself in alignment internally and your body, whatever it ends up being, that is then the healthiest weight for it at that time. But we cannot be viewing bodies and just making these automatic assumptions that fat is bad because it's different for everyone. And here's another test. If you were to just wake up one day and we lived in this culture that didn't view fat as bad, that just treated all bodies equally, how would you feel about your own? Would fat all of a sudden be this thing that you needed to worry about and challenge and get rid of, or would it be okay? I'm gonna guess it would feel a lot better. So it's not actually the fat itself, it's what we're believing about it. And so when we can see it differently within ourselves because it has to start first, that's when you can free yourself. Now the biggest piece is, well, how are other people going to view me? I don't want them to see me as lazy. I don't want them to see me as I'm letting go. I don't want them judging me. That is something that's going to happen. But when we keep living our life caring so much what other people think, you again are costing yourself your own happiness. And the truth is, is people are going to judge you no matter what. And it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with their own belief system. So the freedom that comes in making peace with your body, that comes in rooting out these beliefs that are actually false and how you know as they feel bad, you get your own peace. And then other people get to think whatever they want, but when you feel okay in yourself and you know the truth of yourself, it doesn't matter because you feel okay in you. So rooting out this idea that fad is bad and is ugly and is unattractive and everything else that we've seen, that is a huge piece that's going to be able to bring you into true health for yourself. Because now it's no longer about needing to manage and control your body, it's being able to listen to it. And if that means that you need to gain some weight, then so be it. It also might mean that you end up losing some weight. Because the irony is, that when we're trying to manage and control and we're hating our bodies and we're criticizing it, it's stressful. And it can often cause the very behaviors that we're trying to avoid, like the overeating or the not exercising. Shame really does a number on our health and our system. So when we come into more peace, our body could very well lose weight, but that's none of our business. The body is smart and intelligent. We don't need to be the one who's saying, ⁓ body, need to be 10 pounds lighter. We don't know that. Our business is how do we feel inside ourselves. And when there is a belief like fat is bad, that is clouding it up, that feels shameful, then we're not in alignment. We're out of alignment because we're believing something that's not true. If you could imagine like we've all been put under the spell that fat is bad and ugly and we're only taught to see thin is good, that is like a spell, but you can wake up from it. And it's much better to wake yourself up from it than waiting for other people to wake up from it too. Fat is not a bad word. Fat is not terrible. It's what we have come to make it mean that makes it bad. And when it feels bad, it means it's not true. You can start to root this negative belief about fat for yourself. And that's how it's actually gonna change the culture, because we are the culture. We can stop with you in terms of spreading it down the line of the generations. This is the work that I do, is to help root out these false beliefs that are taking us away from our inherent peace, which is our birthright. So if you wanna do some work in this area, if you wanna change the way that you're seeing fat in your body, you're welcome to explore body peace coaching with me. There's a link below that you can look at it. Or can also start out with my free guide, the guide to body peace, link below in the description too. So I'll end this by saying fat doesn't have to be a bad word anymore. And when you bring it back to its rightful meaning, which actually is neutral, you free yourself from it. Hope this episode gave you a little bit of a perspective shift. Look forward to seeing you in the next one. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved, leave a rating and review. It will help the show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become. Enough worthy and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.