Heath
Why being fat does not mean being sick?
Being Fat Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Being Unhealthy
Just as obesity is a disease, overweight is not, just as it is not an option or a personal choice. The prejudice that it depends on the overweight person’s will to lose weight, through diets and exercises, as well as the culpability of him when he regains weight after a period of weight loss is an effect of some errors of thinking, a common assumption that between eating and the disease lies the mechanism of fattening, chained in an undoubted causal sequence.
Those who passionately embrace the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” sophistry (after this, therefore because of this), but declare themselves ardent followers of evidence-based science, omit that a positive correlation between overweight and disease does not indicate a relationship of causality between body mass and disease.
So it is not surprising that, naive or not, we allow ourselves to be seduced by the convenience of the myth that the overweight are sick and the underweight healthy, that the fat is lazy, frustrated and eat and the thin are more beautiful, active and prone to intelligent emaciation.
If we associate these parameters with the idea of health, disease, beauty, and social desirability in an indiscriminate and unstudied way, then, out of the desire to keep ourselves healthy and fit into these prejudices, we will want to remain as thin as possible and we declare an obsessive war on internal, external, saturated, unsaturated, polyunsaturated fats.
The stigma of excess weight or the unhappiness of being fat is thus outlined around the idea of illness, inadequacy and lack of value, of urinating and undesirability, and the internalization of these ideas generates depression, anxiety, lack of appetite for self-modeling and movement in those who have problems with its weight.
Perpetuated by bullying, the scientific rubbish for losing weight and healthy life, this stigma is an inducer of the phobia of being or becoming fat, it favors anorexia, bulimia, and other mental disorders related to eating disorders, especially for those who value themselves or feel validated by their figure and weight, usually women.
To understand how strong these prejudices are in our lives and how quickly and deeply we let ourselves be manipulated and devalued by internalizing these economically speculated errors of judgment, do the following.
Notice that, analyzing the language and logical verbal constructions of the people you come into contact with daily, you will find associations between the words fat, fat, chubby, fat, fat and feelings of embarrassment, inadequacy, rejection, fear of illness, emotions that lead to behaviors defense, social withdrawal, starvation, compulsive request for external validation.
Notice the emotions that the labels or remarks of those around you favor, and write them down. Find the triggers of these states of discomfort. Certain words that inadequately reflect our body image at the level of social perception, coming especially from significant people, also mobilize our self-image towards inner searches or validations, not just the body towards the mirror.
From this moment when you realize that you want to reconcile your image with the image perceived by others, notice if the way you feel, your doubts, and your values are meant to remove the conflict between what you think about yourself and the dissonant social ego aside, or maybe they have the role of preventing the conflict from the outside, that of the anticipated disagreement and rejection on the part of significant people who reflect you.
Because if by introjecting (swallowing what others say) to the dissonant social ego you adopt a self-image distorted by prejudices and sophistry, then, although this swallowing seems intended to extinguish the external conflict, you see that this decision of yours is not of self-abandonment not to accentuate emotional dissociation and not to create a major personal trauma; “I perceive myself the way you want, I hate myself too, just so you don’t reject me, just so we can remain friends” leads to greater emotional discomfort than the eventuality of the conflict itself, consumed directly externally, assumed through confrontation.
The concern produced by undesirability and the activation of the social ego to conform to group values and perception is an adaptation mechanism practiced and automated for millennia, which maintains homeostasis and consonance of the group but comes with major costs for individuals. A simple “even if they don’t accept me, I accept and love me”, “or whoever loves me accepts me as I am” hides behind years of work and personal development because nothing that seems simple comes easily.
