Heather wrote:Hey there, belled. Good to see you again.
I see two prongs to this conversation: 1) making sure that you're not engaging in thinking or behavior that endangers your health in some way, that isn't in some way disordered (and I don't mean because you think it's sexy to be fat -- there's nothing the matter with thinking or feeling fat is sexy!), and 2) working out how you can engage in things to basically take care of your body that feel like a fit for you being comfortable in your body.
I'm going to start with the second, because it's a bit easier, and it kind of takes care of a lot of the first, too.
You know, there are plenty of fat, fit people. I have a lot of them in my life and my world. Just for some examples, do you know about Jessamyn Stanley? What about Louise Green? Or Ragen Chastain? Or Bevin Branlandingham? Jessica Rihal? Meg Boggs? If not, it's going to be a fun day, I think, for you and your search function of choice. You can be active and still have a fat body.
Ultimately, you can exercise and still have the body that's right for your body to have, and this is where we get into that part where the answer to the second bit weaves into the first. Ultimately, the best way to live as healthfully as we can with our bodies is for us to not try and make them ANY size at all, but for us to try and let them be the size THEY want to be, just by living in them and taking care of them as best we can: feeding them, moving them, watering them, resting and relaxing them. And we need to do all of those things for them, not just some. Skipping all movement or doing too much movement, or eating too little or too much to try and *make* a body be a given size just isn't a healthy thing to do to ourselves physically or psychologically no matter WHAT size that size is. Get what I'm saying?
I do want to also interject with some of the things you're saying here. A 20-year-old, or 40-year-old woman who is thin and small and not curvy doesn't look like a 12 year old. Rather, she will look like someone exactly the age she is who is the size she is. Womanhood, femininity or age is not determined by what our bodies look like, and frameworks that have made that so in the past or do still are really oppressive and very painful for a lot of people (yourself obviously included!). I'd encourage you to do all you can to try and work to dump these ways of thinking rather than to lean into them, or to think that the correction is to change your body rather than these mindsets.
How does that all feel? What might you think about the idea of rejecting some of these oppressive ways of thinking, loving whatever body types you do, loving your body as you do now -- again, there's nothing wrong with having fat and being into it! -- but maybe also finding some ways to still take care of yourself in basic ways instead of setting something up where you're telling yourself you can't engage in really basic self-care without losing your body, your body that actually really needs that basic care. <3
Hi Heather,
Thank you for your help! I actually didn’t know about the fitness gurus you mentioned, so I looked them up and I was quite surprised by what I found! All of those women seem really cool and I’d be happy to live a healthy life like that.
However, I’ve found that my body naturally starts to lose weight whenever I exercise lately, even if it’s just a few times a week. A couple years ago, it took forever just to lose a few pounds because I had very little fat. But now that I’ve filled out a little, my weight starts to instantly drop if I work out. My mom is naturally slim, so I think it might just run in the family. I’d like to just roll with the body that I’ve been given like you said, but I’m afraid I’d be back to skinny old me in a few months.
I get what you’re saying about how body shape and age aren’t actually connected, and I think you’re right. However, I always struggled with puberty because my body didn’t really change much. My hips spread out a bit, but I never felt like “Wow, now I’m a woman!”. People have always mistaken me for being younger than I am because I have a young-looking face, so I guess I was hoping that puberty would make me feel more mature. When I started gaining weight last year, I felt like I was finally growing into the adult body that I had pictured I would have. So I think my issue is tied up in that. I’d really like to grow out of this mentality, but I’m not quite sure how to do that.
I think the most intrusive part of it is the sexual aspect. I have a lot of weird kinks to be honest (I’ve never acted on any of them, but I have a lot of thoughts and dreams about them). I don’t really feel embarrassed or uncomfortable with them, but it’s frustrating because I think about them all the time. I have an obsessive personality, so it just gets stuck in my head and distracts me from important stuff like school and hobbies. For me, this weight gain thing is just one more of my kinks. However, I think it’s bothering me because it’s one of the only fantasies I can act on. For example, there’s no safe way I could have sex with six people at once, so that fantasy just stays in my head. But my weight is something that depends only on me. I guess I’m just obsessed with it because this is the first time that something has given me true sexual pleasure. After I started gaining weight, my fat fantasy started getting really out of control and now it’s basically all I can think about. It has even started to overtake the other fantasies that I used to have all the time.
That’s why I’m concerned that I might be developing a full-blown fat fetish. This doesn’t just feel like “being into bigger girls” or “loving my curves”. It’s so intensely connected with sex for me that all I can think about is sex, sex, and more sex. For example, I was eating dinner a couple days ago with my mom and I ate a little too much. My stomach got so full and round that I had to unbutton my pants, and I had to literally leave the table because I started getting so horny. I’m almost embarrassed to eat in front of people because I swear one of these times, I’m gonna start screaming at the dinner table.
Also, I don’t know how long I can keep this from my mom. I’ve been trying to squeeze into my old clothes for the past few months but I finally broke down and told her that I needed new pants because I gained a couple pounds. She isn’t too suspicious yet, but I know she’s going to say something if I keep putting on weight and don’t seem bothered by it. I’ve been blaming it on the pandemic because I don’t want her to know about the sexual aspect of it. We’ve talked openly about sex before and she knows that I’ve had some bizarre fantasies, but this feels different because it’s actually happening in real life and not just in my head.
I’ve tried relieving it with a bunch of different things, but none of it is working. Regular vaginal masturbation isn’t my thing. Porn actually makes me laugh because it looks and sounds so fake. I found some smutty fanfiction online and it sometimes takes the edge off, but it never lasts long. I used to look at pictures of hot women on Instagram, but now they look kind of boring compared to my own body. I can almost get up to an orgasm from rubbing my stomach and mentally fantasizing, but it always stops just short and then I’m stuck in this heightened state of desperately wanting sex for like an hour.
I’m scared because I don’t want this to become an unhealthy fetish. I’ve had unusual sex fantasies since I was 14 and I’m 18 now, but this is the first time when one has truly become intrusive. It’s been interfering with my sleep schedule, my relationship with my mom, and my schoolwork. So I’d really appreciate some tips on how to manage intrusive sexual fantasies. Thanks!