I feel fat!” is a very frequent expression especially among women, but what does feeling fat really mean?
Although it is an experience reported by many, there is very little research on this topic.
The intensity and frequency of “feeling fat” appears to be much greater in people with Eating Disorders .
As we all know, our physical appearance does not correspond to the image we have of our body. To be fully defined, the concept of body image requires the cognitive and affective dimension.
The representation we have of our body, in fact, does not coincide with our external appearance, but is also mediated by the emotional aspect.
Based on this, it is hypothesized that the feeling of being fat may also be an experience caused by:
- certain negative emotional states such as sadness, depression , boredom.
- physical sensations that increase body awareness (for example, feeling hot, sweaty, feeling your thighs rub against each other while walking …)
- body check (look repeatedly in the mirror, weigh yourself countless times …) and comparison with others.
Comparison with others
The comparison with others is an important factor involved in the general sense of body dissatisfaction. This in some cases can reach levels so high that people are overly concerned about their body shape and weight and develop a disorder such as anorexia or bulimia .
Festinger (1954), in his theory of social confrontation, identified two types of social confrontation :
- Downward, which generally favors good humor and feelings of value as the comparison is made with people perceived to be less fortunate than us;
- Upward, which unlike the first, by providing for a confrontation with people considered better than us, puts us in a bad mood and threatens our self-assessment.
We can easily understand how the social confrontation on the physical aspect is the mechanism through which the mass media and the various social networks influence the body image. the upward-type comparison leads to a negative idea of one’s physical appearance. The result is a body representation characterized by a general dissatisfaction.
Research has shown that less self-confident individuals tend to lean towards confrontation with others. The result is an increase in bodily dissatisfaction and specifically, the sensation of being fat .
How can “feeling fat” be treated?
As we have already said, the feeling of being fat , despite being a very common experience, is more frequent in Eating Disorders.
Within the CBT-E protocol (Fairburn, 2008), an enhanced cognitive behavioral treatment for Eating Disorders, addressing feeling fat is included within Phase 3 in the body image module .
Patients are taught that the “feeling of being fat” is different from “being fat”. It fluctuates from day to day, but also within the same day, and which can often mask other types of emotions.
Research on the feeling of being fat
Calugi and Dalle Grave (2019) recently conducted a research on 62 patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa admitted to the Villa Garda Nursing Home, aged between 13 and 18 years. They sought to investigate how “Concern about body weight and shape”, “Fear of gaining weight” and “Feeling fat” can predict the outcomes of cognitive behavioral therapy.
The results show that higher scores on “Fear of gaining weight” and “Feeling fat” predicted a slower improvement over time in the centile of BMI (body mass index). This indicates that the component of “feeling fat” is also a clinically relevant variable. It would deserve a clinical study and a greater scientific interest.
In line with these findings, another recent research (Linardon, 2018) argues that the feeling of being fat is a distinct and important component of the body image concerns typical of eating disorders . For this reason, the author argues that further studies are needed to develop a test that can measure, in a standardized way, the feeling of being fat. In this way, further research will be able to verify whether and how feeling fat represents an important mechanism in eating disorders.
