[Tw: eating disorder, abuse, weight loss]

First of all, thank you for this blog. I love it, and the only reason I have never submitted anything here is that I thought I had nothing to say. Now I have, and forgive me for the bitterness, the sarcasm and the length of this post.

In this fucked-up fat-shaming society, I have been in real danger and I didn’t even know that until a month ago.

I’m almost 20 years old and I’m a “small” fat. I’m a U.S. size 10, but since I’m short (5'2") I clearly do not appear as a thin, tiny girl. Probably if I lived in the U.S. I would be considered as average and I would maybe have thin privilege, but in my country it’s not like that (my size is the largest avilable in stores) so I have been fat-shamed for almost all my life.

My late childhood and early teenage years, though, were the worst.

I never really cared that much about fat-shaming from strangers or schoolmates, so I won’t talk about that. The most dangerous and hurtful fat-shaming comes from your own relatives, beacause you can’t just tell them to fuck off and go on with your life.

During every meal with my family, my mum had to criticize every single thing I ate. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. No matter if it was a piece of cheese or a salad, for her it was always too much. My aunts and cousins did more or less the same, saying that all I ate would make me fat, that I had to be really lazy and they called me names that I won’t write down here. Very often my mum used to tell me to control myself.

Obviously, for them I was eating for fun, not beacause I was hungry (“How can you be so hungry when you’re fat?”). On the contrary, my skinny sister could eat all sorts of junk food and almost no fruits at all, beacause “hey, she’s skinny, so she needs to eat more!”.

Of course they justified all the restrictions they made to me with the “fact” that they were concerned about my health. I din’t feel healthy at all, but since they are my family I thought they were right and I felt guilty for eating more than usual when I ate alone, without them “lecturing” me on my “healthy” food intake.

In my highschool years, anyway, I heavily felt that something was not right with my body, so at 17 years old I stopped following any advice from others and I started to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted without all my usual overthinking about it. Right now I consider myself very lucky to have had enough strength to do that. I did not even suspect that for the largest part of my life I was mistreating my body! Almost three years have passed, and guess what? In the first months I gained around 30 pounds, but since then I have been more or less the same weight (probably my REAL healthy weight!). I’m much more active now, and I’m stronger. My realtives are still fat-shaming me, but they noticed that I don’t care and they do it less than before. Did they ever suspect that I was most likely going to have an eating disorder? I don’t think so, since they encouraged it. (I’m too fat to become anorexic, right?)

A month ago I thought about the whole eating thing and how it affected my life and I realized a lot of things that were normal for me were not anymore:

It’s been almost three years since the last time I felt my stomach grumbling all night.

It’s been two years and seven months since the last time I threw up blood.

It’s been two years and half since the last time I binged.

It’s been two years and half since the last time I was ashamed to be myself in front of others.

It’s been two years since the last time I thought being sick was a lucky event for my weight.

It’s been two years since the last time I passed out.

It’s been two years since the last time I felt weak and unable to do a phisical thing.

It’s been a year and half since the last time I skipped a meal.

It’s been a year and a month since the first time I felt beautiful, and happy, and okay with myself.

I guess that thin privilege is not having to ignore your own family in order to keep living.

So, for all the fat people in the world who has been said that “you have to eat less beacause this way you will lose weight and will be healthier and happier…”

Don’t be happy for that.

Don’t be upset for that.

Just be indifferent.