I understand 100%. I’ve been in your exact position, and to this day I’ll still have a few days here and there when I feel like this. Those days usually coincide with about the time of the month that I used to get my period (I don’t anymore). Knowing that makes it easier to get out of my head and fix the issue.
I’m going to start this by saying that it’s going to keep being hard. There’s no magic pill that fixes everything and gives you self-love. It’s so difficult to achieve, and it’s really difficult to maintain because you’re battling against a society that’s telling you, you don’t deserve to be happy if you’re fat.
As I’ve said also, many times in the past, what works for me may not work for you, but for the most part, the information I’m about to give you can be used and tweaked to fit your lifestyle.
Personally, I’m a big promoter of healthy eating, exercise and an all-around positive lifestyle. It took me a long time to get to this point and I had to change my entire lifestyle to do it. So if you’re really serious about going on this journey to self-love and acceptance, you need to be prepared for it to be a long journey, and you will have to change parts - if not all - of your lifestyle.
Now, not loving the way you look isn’t always an issue of its own. By that, I mean that it’s often a byproduct or the cause of other symptoms - usually involving mental health.
For me, my self-hatred was heavily linked with my depression and anxiety. I wasn’t living a very healthy lifestyle, which caused depression and anxiety, which caused self-image issues, which caused me to live an unhealthy lifestyle. Around it went in a huge circle.
In order to love yourself, you have to break that cycle. The way to do that is to change your lifestyle. Now, how you change it is wholly dependant on you and the kind of life you live now. For me, the first step I took was quitting my job (which made me miserable) and going to university to study for a career that I love.
University was a fantastic environment for me because suddenly I was surrounded by very kind, open-minded people who valued me for my intelligence and skill-set rather than my looks and what I could do for them.
As I began to come out of my shell and become happier with my life, I realised how badly I was treating myself, both mentally and physically. I knew I couldn’t be truly happy if I was harming myself. I still had body-image issues, but I no longer loathed who I was as a person. I began to see my own value and realised it wasn’t linked to the way my body looked. That prompted me to take better care of myself.
I began eating really well. That boosted my mood even more because I was finally providing my body with the nutrients it needed, as opposed to starving myself and beating myself up because I finally caved and ate something. It was hard at first to eat well, but, believe it or not, if you eat something enough times, you actually start to like it. I used to hate spinach - now I can’t get enough of it. I put it in everything. It’s also a very iron-rich food. High iron intake boosts your mood. So, I was entering another cycle, except this one was much healthier and much more positive.
From there, I decided that I didn’t really like the way I dressed. I was so happy with my life, that it just didn’t make sense for me to dress in these frumpy, colourless clothes. I wanted to wear colourful, bright things. Something that stood out and showed on the outside how happy I was on the inside. Unfortunately, I was hopeless with fashion because I’d never worn anything that actually complimented my body. So, I started watching fashion videos on Youtube. Mostly fashion hauls and makeup tutorials (I don’t wear much makeup but it’s oddly soothing watching makeup tutorials XD).
When I started doing that, I went through a few weeks of negativity. I went downhill for a bit because all the fashion hauls were of these skinny, beautiful women. And I just kept thinking to myself “your body isn’t going to look good in this”. Just as I was about to go back down that spiral, I stumbled upon Sarah Rae Vargas. A fat fashion Youtuber. She was honestly my saving grace.
Sarah does fashion hauls and a lot of advice videos. She has a Dear Fat Girl series, which focuses on issues specific to fat women. She talks about self-worth and how to overcome negativity and find self-love and value. She also has a Lets Talk Sex series that specifically focuses on fat women having sex. And an Ask Sarah series where you literally just ask her anything and she gives her advice. She’s answered questions from dating guys as a fat woman to more general issues that fat women experience. She’s very open about her life as a fat woman and the struggles she’s faced and overcome.
She gives advice on sizing and goes into detail about the clothes she buys and the stores she brought them from. She covers everything. And she will help you love yourself. She’s incredible at that. If you only take one piece of advice from this, it would be to go and subscribe to Sarah Rae Vargas on Youtube.
From there I found other fat fashion Youtubers that did try-on hauls and all sorts. They showed me how beautiful a fat body can look in clothes that I had never believed I could wear myself. They gave me the courage to wear things I never even looked twice at in the store.
I went from wearing oversized shirts to wearing small crop tops with high-waisted shorts. I went from hating the beach and the pool to trying to go every week to show off my two-piece bathing suit. And fuck if I don’t rock my new clothes. It was so daunting at first because much like you I thought “fuck I look hideous, everyone must be judging me right now”. You know what happened? The opposite. Maybe there were people silently judging me, but you know what? It didn’t even matter because I’ve gotten more compliments on the way I look in the last three years, then I’ve had my entire life. And not one person has actually come up to me and said: “you look hideous, you shouldn’t wear this”. Nor have they spat in the face. Nor has the world ended. At the end of the day, people just don’t care. If they have a problem, they don’t care enough to actually say or do anything. And in my experience, the people who care about what fat women wear, generally have their own body-image issues to deal with.
Of course, when you’re going out and getting compliments on that crop top you feel hella insecure in, all of a sudden that insecurity falls away. You grow so confident in yourself. You learn that, yeah, your value isn’t linked to your body, but damn is your body fine as fuck. You stop caring about the size number on your clothing tags. You stop crying in dressing rooms when straight size clothes don’t fit you (legitimately something I’ve done). Instead, you just size-up with no fuss.
Once you reach this point, just keep surrounding yourself with positivity. Get rid of negative friends. Shut down negative family members. Follow body-positive blogs. Self-love blogs. Watch plus-size fashion try-on’s and hauls. Read plus-size!reader fan fiction. Avoid all negative propaganda. The moment you see anything fat-negative, delete it, block it, scroll past it. Don’t engage with that kind of crap.
You’re gonna get bad days here and there, but you know what? Everyone gets bad days, and most of the time they’re linked to your health, and you can fix it with a good walk, a few comedy shows and some positivity.
This is how I turned my life around at least. It might not all fit in with your life, but hopefully, you can take at least a few things from this and tailor them to fit you. It’s a long and hard journey, and you have to make a lot of changes to your life, but it is so worth it. And one day you’ll wake up, stand in front of the mirror naked and think - damn, I look fine today. And you’ll realise that you’ve finally made it through all the shit. You’ve finally beaten society. You’ve finally learnt to love yourself.
And that’s something not a lot of people achieve in their life - fat or skinny. It’s an accomplishment to be proud of.
Just remember that I’m always going to be here to help you along the way. Supportive friends are going to help you through the tough times. So whenever you feel like it’s pointless to love yourself, swing me a message and I’ll be happy to give you a kick in the ass and remind you why you’re doing this, and who you’re doing it for.
Hope everything works out for you, Nonnie :) And I hope one day you’ll look back on this and see it as the first stepping stone that it is, and you’ll know that you’re worth something and that you deserve to love yourself. Trust me, no one can ever love you as much as you love yourself. You set the standard for how you’re treated and valued - not everyone else :)
P.S. I almost forgot to put in - be kind to others! It sounds stupid, but being kind to others makes you feel so good about yourself. If you see a fat girl rocking a hella cute top, or if you see a fat girl looking a bit insecure and tugging at her clothes, go up to that fine-ass bitch and compliment her! Tell her she looks beautiful in the clothes she’s wearing. Tell her they suit her so well. Ask her where she got them. Trust me, you’ll feel so good about yourself, and she’s going to be feeling herself all day after that. Supporting other fat girls helps you support yourself :)