Have You Become Who You’ve Been Told You Are? Rejecting Weight Bias

I look at weight loss “support” groups periodically and I was quite shocked to see this comment from someone talking about women who had lost a significant amount of weight:

I think that post-obese women—are stunted and the worst—because they’re stuck in the mindset/emotionally fucked where they became obese.

So you have to be “emotionally fucked” to develop a serious weight problem? You might expect such a viewpoint from someone with the all-too-common weight bias against overweight people but shockingly, this statement was made by a woman who is formerly fat, “post obese” herself. I once saw an interview with her in which she asserted that all obese people have emotional issues and if those issues are not apparent, just keep looking, you’ll find something.

What makes someone who has dealt with weight say something like this? As this woman is known for voicing her opinions quite extensively, I have to wonder if she deals with such shame that she needs the security of convincing herself that everyone else is like her. And therein lies what likely drives most of our responses to weight—how we deal with shame.

Our culture projects horrific shame on fat people. And it’s a consensus: Seemingly everyone, including medical professionals, is willing to believe that serious overweight is entirely caused by emotional issues that drive behavioral choices. And unfortunately, many of us are willing to believe it ourselves. We call ourselves “broken” and much worse, literally affirming and even asserting the labels that are hung on us. Why?

When you are told something all your life, you will find yourself believing that it’s true. When your peers are convinced of it, the media constantly echoes it, authorities and experts confirm it, and people you trust concur as well, it can become difficult if not nearly impossible to want to defy something you are told is the truth, even if you should be the definitive authority on the reality of your own life and your own body and mind.

There is a highly destructive dynamic at work here. Tthe judgment that is leveled against seriously overweight people is as vicious as it is because it is less a commentary on physical appearance and more of a value judgment against character. Fat people are seen as undisciplined, weak-willed, lazy, ignorant, indulging self-destructive behavior. With this being the paradigm, it becomes easy to believe the “explanation” for such behavior is that fat people have got to be, well…”emotionally fucked.”

The response for many when faced with such an avalanche of projected shame is to beg for sympathy. I believe this is why so many overweight people will decide to identify whatever difficulties or ordeals they may have faced in their lives as the “reason why” they deal with weight. They hope they can present a sympathetic explanation that excuses at least some measure of what is truly collective character assassination by our culture.

The result of this vicious dynamic goes beyond shaming people; it pushes them into a cycle of failure that magnifies the sense of shame on multiple levels. Instead of working within the myriad of biochemical and physiological factors that can contribute to weight, many, many fat people will persist in believing what they are told about themselves—that they are fat because of a personal failing, a weakness of character, an inability to deal with the life struggles that we all face, even that they deserve to be fat because of their own lack of discipline and motivation to “do something” about their weight. Believing it’s all about “what’s eating you,” people desperately make futile attempts to address perceived behavioral and psychological issues to control their weight. Like guzzling cough medicine to calm a toothache, they will fail repeatedly, intensifying their own shame.

It gets worse. In an ironic reinforcement of the paradigm, well-intentioned political correctness speaks out with the claim that shaming fat people only makes them get fatter—because they’re already considered such emotional cripples, it’s assumed their fragile psyches are being wounded again and again.

It can be very difficult to defy a paradigmatic voice of public opinion. But when we look within ourselves, we can reject being told who we are and what we’re supposed to be. Fat people do not share a collective emotional defect; no one gets through life without pain, trial, and struggle. For those of us whose brains can be overwhelmed by thoughts of food, life in a food-obsessed culture presents unprecedented challenges for managing our weight.

Discover that truth that is yours alone.