I want to talk to you this week, my dear readers, about a condition my clients suffer with extensively which I have labelled, “fat head”. I talk extensively about this condition in my book, “It’s Not About the Food: A Woman’s Guide to Making Peace with Food and Our Bodies”, but for the purposes of this brief article, I shall give you the quick version of this fascinating phenomenon. Here’s how the conversation with a sufferer of “fat head” usually goes:
Client: “I feel fat today and I hate my body.”
Me: “I must point out here that “fat” is technically not a feeling. You may feel sad, angry, joyous, etc., but “fat” most definitely is not one of the common feelings on the list…”
Client: “Okay. I get what you’re saying. I’m probably feeling something else on that list, but instead of focusing on what I’m actually feeling, I just say, “I feel fat.”
A wonderful colleague and friend of mine, Sandra Friedman, who has written extensively about girls in the tween/teen years points out that when girls feel anything, they usually use one or more of the following words to describe how they are “feeling”: FAT, UGLY OR STUPID.
Sound familiar? Unfortunately, many women continue this false labeling of feelings well on into their adult years and rarely question the reasons behind it or whether it is serving or harming them.
In short, the remedy for curing “fat head” (or “ugly head” or “stupid head”) is to dig beneath the surface and ask yourself (or a loved one struggling with this affliction) what FEELING is hiding out under this false label. You’ll probably discover that a particular event or situation in your life triggered the “fat head” thinking and that you can work through it by asking yourself the following questions (found in the “food-mood” chapter of my book).
What just happened?
What was I feeling at the time?
What did I need to feel better?
Let’s go back to the client example I gave at the beginning. Here are her answers to the questions that underlay her “fat head” attack:
What just happened?
A customer of mine yelled at me for some new changes I had to implement in the business that she didn’t like.
What was I feeling at the time?
I felt helpless and attacked. I felt like no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t please her. Then I turned in on myself and “felt fat”.
What did I need to feel better?
In retrospect, I think I needed to do some self-talk after this event and tell myself that it wasn’t my fault she wasn’t happy and that it was rude of her to verbally attack me like that. I would have reminded myself that I can’t make everybody happy all the time, and that’s okay. I’m still a good person and I don’t have to call myself mean names when someone else attacks me. I can choose instead to be kind and loving towards myself by being self-loving and saying positive things to myself.
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