First, let’s get the boring stuff out of the way… Last night I made a veggie soup because I wanted to use up all the veggies in my refrigerator since I’m getting another farm share tomorrow. I cut up about 2/3 of a white onion and sauteed it in a little nonstick spray, before adding zucchini, summer squash, and cabbage (the veggies I had). I added some veggie stock that my boyfriend had over the weekend along with some water and salt and pepper, and cooked it for about 20 minutes.
For lunch today, I added a serving of tofu to add some protein, and just chopped it up and poured the soup over it.
I also had a piece of whole wheat toast with it (1 pt) so the whole meal was 4 (1 for the soup, 2 for the tofu, and 1 for the bread). The soup was fine – - nothing spectacular because I didn’t add much flavor/spices, but it was fine. There’s a lot more of it in my fridge so I’m going to have to figure out something to make it more fun… TBD.
“Fat Girl” Mentality
A reader named Joanna emailed me yesterday to ask about my thoughts on the “Fat Girl” Menality. She said “Can I ask, do you ever have a hard time not thinking of yourself as that fat girl in your head, even tho you look in the mirror and know thats not who you are anymore? I’m really having trouble with that, and I’d love your perspective.”
So first of all, let’s talk about what exactly the Fat Girl Mentality is. If you’ve ever been the fat girl, you know exactly what it is, but it’s kind of hard to put into words. It involves this general paranoia where you just sort of assume that anyone who is whispering or looking at you is saying or thinking something about you and your size and is judging you just because you are fat. If someone at a healthy weight sees someone else look at them, they might think that they are being looked at because the person finds them attractive. The fat girl mentality makes you automatically assume that the only reason anyone could possibly be looking at you is because you are fat and that they are looking at you in a negative way.
It’s hard NOT to let this take over their life and for you to be afraid to put yourself out there for fear of being judged. A good example is being downright frightened to go to the gym because you know that most of the people there will be thinner than you and just look at you and think, “What is she doing here?” even though the gym is where you should be to change that. I remember when I first started going to the gym I used to hate to be on the treadmill if there was a line because I figured the people in line were wondering what I was doing taking up one of their treadmills since whatever I was doing on there clearly wasn’t working.
As you start to lose weight, your outside clearly changes, but you’re still the same person looking out from within. Because your insides don’t change, it’s very hard time to shake this fat girl mentality and paranoia that comes along with it. The mental aspect of losing weight can be one of the hardest parts because you know what you have to do to lose the weight (eat less, move more), but how do you get out of the trap of feeling like the fat girl who everyone is judging?
Well, it’s not easy, that’s for sure. I still struggle a lot with this, even though I’ve gone from a size 20+ to a size 8/10. While I’ve made a ton of progress in this area, I still have to talk myself out of it more than I’d like to. Sometimes I’ll catch someone looking at me and think, “Oh shit. Are my pants to tight? Is a fat roll hanging out?” when the truth is they could be looking at me for a variety of different reasons, and it’s probably NOT because my pants are too tight. I think the thing that has helped me the most in trying to get myself out of the mentality is just trying to be positive and using the fake it til you make it attitude. When I start thinking those negative thoughts, I try to immediately stop them and think about the fact that people aren’t looking at me for my size anymore because now I’m just average. I try to congratulate myself and my body every time I go for a run or a bike ride or do Bikram because my body is capable of doing these things and I need to embrace it rather than focus on the negatives and shortcomings. As time goes on, it becomes more and more natural for me to think positive things about myself and my body rather than negative things even though at first I had to make a very diligent effort to not let the negatives take over.
Do you struggle with the “Fat Girl” Mentality? What tips or advice do you have for overcoming it? Do you see yourself ever fully getting away from it?
