Fat Phobia

This happened to me at work. Seriously unprofessional. I didn't know what to say. I was wear a spaghetti strap top and apparently I 'shouldn't wear strapless with my arms'....

Hear me out. My whole life I've felt like i've been invisible to people because i'm not conventionally attractive. I don't have a pretty face and i'm big, so most of the time I'm overlooked.

I feel I would have done better in my career if I was slimmer. I also noticed after recent weight loss that people smile at me more, whereas before I would have people give me a wide bearth like fatness is contagious.

I want to accept my body and myself, but does that also mean I need to accept being invisble in society?

Can anyone relate?

After almost 2 years of homeoffice, the company I work for are starting to asking for people to come back into the office at least 3 days a week. I don't mind this balance, as we'll be working the remaining days at home and I think this is good for motivation.

The thing is... I have always been plus size and my whole life I've been the biggest person in the room. At work, I'm the biggest on my team. Although it used to bother me at high school, i've worked on my own body acceptance and self love to the point where I do feel fine with this and it doesn't bother me.

But here's the thing. Because of self isolating for so long and not moving much I have gained a lot of weight. I'm not putting pressure on myself about this and when I am ready I'll work on it but there is something stressing me now... my coworkers.

Don't get me wrong, my coworkers are nice and all, but they tend to talk A LOT about diets, gym, exercise, etc... diet culture overall. I am not a fan of diet culture but I tolerate such topics at work as long as no one attacks me or body shames me. The thing is they keep talking about how much weight they gained with covid on Slack and are already comparing a lot between each other about who got fatter, etc... No one has asked me or directly body shamed me. They also don't force me into the conversation, but they are really talking about it a lot.

I know very well I shouldn't care about what others think but I have a feeling everyone is gonna notice my weight gain and increase the diet/gym talk around me or stare and gossip about my size when we go back to the office next week ... it's silly because I've been working so hard on my confidence and self-love and usually such things don't get to me but suddenly this thought ocurred to me... Maybe I am a bit more sensitive.

I'm just not in the mood to come back to the office and listen to skinny and "average size" people complain all the time about how fat they are now while I stand there awkwardly... makes me feel weird.

It's also made me realize how much I don't miss watercooler diet culture talk. How do I handle this?

The other day I was at my friend's house and her brother who hasn't seen me in 10 years came over. He kept saying how beautiful I was, but that I'm fat and that I should lose weight. I know he wasn't trying to be malicious or anything, but this is not the first time I got this type of a compliment paired with an insult (in fact, I hear it quite often from people) so I wasn't sure how to react. I mean, it sounds like he's trying to give me a compliment, but points out my flaws. I always shrug or laugh it off, but I don't know how I should react really. How do you cope with that kind of stuff?