Recovering While Fat

Recovering into a larger body is NO JOKE.

It seems like everywhere you turn, people are just encouraging you to double-back and return to your eating disorder. Doctors. Family members. Friends. Other care providers. Internet trolls.

Just eat less and move more.

But what if you need to lose weight for your health?

Maybe not all of your eating disorder behaviors were bad for you…Maybe you just took them too far.

When my clients tell me these stories, I feel so protective of them. Sometimes I just wish I could create a perfect, little, liberatory bubble where my clients could safely recover, and let their bodies do whatever they need to do along the way.

But “liberatory bubble” is an oxymoron. There’s no freedom in that.

So I’ll tell you the same thing I tell my clients, which is the same thing I tell myself on the days when it’s hard to be a fat person in recovery, myself:

No matter what is happening around me, my body will be safe with me.

No matter what pressure or sh*tty advice we’re getting, and no matter who those messages are coming from, we can create a relationship with our own bodies that is gentle, nurturing, and compassionate. Even when no one else is, we can be safe for our bodies.

We can become a reliable caregiver for our own bodies - our own selves.

And no one can walk this road alone. So a the same time, we have to get serious and intentional about building community that accepts and celebrates all bodies, no matter their shape, size, color, ability, gender, etc. We all need a place to retreat to, when we’re exhausted from the toll that navigating a fatphobic society takes on us. And it’s ok if the only retreat you have right now is your own therapy. We can build it, with time.

One thing you’ll never hear me do is downplay how hard this is. The struggle is so real and sometimes excruciatingly hard. I’m sorry you’ve had to be so resilient. It shouldn’t be this way.

I want to leave you with this: it’s not being fat that exhausts us, marginalizes us, isolates us, and harms us. It’s the STIGMA around fatness that does.