When you are overweight, it is an unspoken rule that you must be larger than life—no pun intended. What I mean is the driving need to try harder, to be “more” than you are in order to be accepted. You have got to be big and boisterous and jolly to make up for the fact that you are big. You must give others a reason to like you besides your uniqueness. You must bribe them into friendship.Â
Question: why this façade in the first place? Answer: because fat people aren’t viewed as real people. They are second-class citizens, without feeling, unworthy of advantages, and unforgivable—all because of their weight. If they had more self-control, they wouldn’t be overweight, so because of this fault, they are undeserving. They must know their place.
No one wants to see the real you when you’re fat. They just want to be comfortable about your thunder thighs, your jiggly jowls, your badonkadonk butt, and your formidable flabby forearms. They want reassurance that no one is looking at them when you nearly tip over the picnic table, or struggle to get the safety bar down on your belly on a roller coaster, or squeeze into elevators.
As hard as most people find it to live with the obese, we obese find it hard to live with ourselves. We cover up our obesity with clothes, congenial behavior, and by making ourselves indispensable. We look after others; we volunteer for committees and projects so we will be relied upon. If we make ourselves needed, then we won’t be rejected. Right?
In making ourselves necessary, we often lose ourselves. Even after we establish solid relationships with others, we forget to be honest. We are so used to striving to be “enough” that we no longer know when it is enough.
When you are honest with yourself and recognize this destructive, enabling pattern running your life, it is then you can stop the insanity, break the habit and accept yourself for who you are and what you can become. You can just be yourself.