hey fat ass

Hey, fat ass!

My in-my-own-head voice would look around to see who was talking. My in-my-own-head voice would berate me for being a fat ass. My in-my-own-head voice would call me that all the time. My in-my-own-head voice was an asshole.

If you have read my blog posts at all, you know I had some giant issues with body image and disordered eating. Some days I still struggle. I remember so many times feeling so much despair because I didn’t look the way I thought I should look. I didn’t look the way other people thought I should look. Giving a shit about what other people think of me kept me small. It kept me from having any confidence. It kept me from having any positive self-esteem. My self-worth was super low at that time.

I remember weighing myself every.single.day. I remember feeling so frustrated every.single.day. I remember feeling depressed every.single.day. I let the scale define me. I let the scale tell me what kind of mood I should be in every day. I let it control me. I let it.

I remember trying to camouflage my perceived fatness. I would use patterns that made me appear less fat. You know, the vertical stripes, never horizontal stripes. Black, because slimming. Baggy clothes because I thought they would make it look like I was losing weight or that I had lost weight. If the jeans felt big, I felt small. Hoodies, because they hid a lot. Ummmm, okay.

I never wanted to undress in front of anyone in gym class. Never. I always admired the ones who could just throw it off and not give a shit. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to feel okay about it. I wanted to feel comfortable. I wanted to.

Body image issues were pretty prevalent when I was in junior high and high school. I remember a friend in gymnastics who was anorexic. Her knees practically knocked together and the hair on her arms stood straight up. I bet she weighed 80 pounds and she still saw herself as fat. Another girl sat in class and would feel the side of her butt and thigh, feeling for the fat because she thought she was fat. So many others struggled with feeling like a fat ass. The pain of the fat ass syndrome – like stepping on legos.

Obviously, something triggered this blog post. I have been thinking about it and trying to figure out what it was. I have been struggling with pull-ups lately and have been working hard for the past 7 weeks and still haven’t gotten one. It has been extremely frustrating. I think the in-my-own-head voice is trying to convince me that it’s because I’m a fat ass. I broke my golden rule and have been weighing myself. That’s the first problem. The scale is a bitch and I’m not liking what she is saying. I’m not liking that number. My in-my-own-head voice is trying to creep back in and tell me how I should be thinking and feeling. It’s trying to.

I have been extremely frustrated with my progress. I have been extremely frustrated with my workouts. I need to pull myself up out of this hole (get it, pull up) and keep fighting. Not even the in-my-own-head-voice gets to tell me what I should weigh or how I should look. It does not get permission to do that. The inside-my-own-head voice is being a bully right now and I’m not going to continue to listen to it. I won’t.

The negative energy is being cleansed. I know when those negative thoughts start creeping back in to the in-my-own-head voice, it’s time to change my attitude and quit being so hard on myself. We all struggle. We all have things that are hard for us. I know when I finally get that pull-up, I will be grateful for the struggle. It has definitely made me stronger and more grateful.

Looking back at that those chapters of junior high and high school, I am grateful I had those struggles. The struggles and the inside-my-own-head voice have given me a unique perspective of which to get inside other people’s heads and try to change their in-my-own-head voices, so they can stop saying to themselves, “Hey fat ass!”