I don’t talk about it much, but I have a hard time eating in public. Due to my pituitary disorder, I deal with a lot of metabolic issues which make gaining weight effortless and losing weight extremely difficult. As an added bonus, the corticosteroids I have to take three times a day in order to live (I have secondary adrenal insufficiency) are an appetite stimulant, so I’m always, always hungry. I genuinely do my best. I work with a care team consisting of multiple specialists, and I am so grateful for their assistance and guidance. If it weren’t for them and my own hard work, I would not be doing as well as I am now. I’m still classified as morbidly obese, but I am doing a great job of addressing my body’s needs and slow progress is being made for my body’s health thanks to my efforts and that of my care team.

Despite knowing that I take good care of my body and try very hard to stay healthy, my inner voice is still very negative when I am eating in public. I really don’t eat a lot of fast food, but once a week on Friday mornings, I walk to McDonald’s for a breakfast treat. I love sausage egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches- they are one of my weaknesses. Normally, I have an Orgain protein shake for breakfast every morning, but on Fridays, I treat myself to a delicious McMuffin, a serving of oatmeal with fruit, and a black coffee as a reward for all the other times I make healthy choices throughout the week. If the weather permits, I walk to McDonald’s and eat inside and play a little MTG Arena on my iPad while I finish my coffee. It’s nice to get out of the house, and since I am aware that I have anxiety about eating in public, I also do this as a little bit of exposure therapy to hopefully work through some of that anxiety over time.

Without fail, whenever I unwrap my breakfast sandwich and take that first bite, I suddenly feel very self-conscious. Several years ago, I was publicly harassed because of my weight, and that painful memory always likes to resurface in these moments. I also think about all of the videos of harassment I’ve seen online, all the horrific fatphobic memes and jokes, and I worry about what others in the dining area must think about me. And then, of course, I feel guilty about having internalized fatphobia. I work through it, but it always feels so bad, and of course the food never tastes quite as good when this happens.

This morning, I was having those thoughts and struggling with my negative inner voice quite a bit. I’m a bit hormonal thanks to my cycle starting yesterday, so maybe that contributed to how strongly I was feeling those negative emotions, but regardless of the cause, I was really feeling down and much more self-conscious than usual. I kept feeling really bad about myself, ruminating over the judgements that others must be making about the fat girl sitting at McDonalds playing Magic: The Gathering by herself.

Thanks to some coaching I received in Innerworld, a social VR mental health app, I was able to identify these negative thoughts as a cognitive distortion known as “mind reading”, and that did help ease their potency a bit. Despite being aware of this, they still remained… and I was struggling.

Then, something unexpected happened.

A lady with two little girls walked up to me and very politely got my attention. She gestured to the older of the two girls who appeared to be maybe four or five years old and said, “She just wanted to let you know that she thinks you are beautiful, and your dress is very pretty.”

I turned to the shy looking little girl, smiled, and told her how sweet that was and that she had really made my day. Her shy expression broke into a bright-eyed smile, I said thank you, and they left.

That little girl put a spotlight on just how inaccurate my mind reading was. There I was deep in my cognitive distortion certain that people in the room were making such negative judgements about me, when in reality while I was struggling with those thoughts, there was a very sweet little girl telling her mom that she thought I was beautiful.

There are enough adages about the honesty of children that I don’t have to tell you how much more weight that gave her compliment.

So here I am now, sitting at McDonald’s, and smiling to myself, knowing that when I come back next week, I’ll be able to fully enjoy my breakfast without feeling so self-conscious. I am so grateful to that little girl for reminding me that no matter how true negative self-talk might seem, you can never really know what other people are thinking about you.

Besides all that, people who spend their days negatively judging others don’t have opinions worth caring about in the first place. 💯

Thank you, random child, for that important reminder. ❤️

If you also struggle with negative self-talk, it might help you as well to learn about cognitive distortions and practice mindfulness to identify these thoughts when they happen. I know I benefit a lot from attending peer support group meetups online as well. There are a lot of great peer support communities out there across many different platforms. I would really encourage you to look around and see which ones seem like a good fit for you.

Innerworld is a great cross-platform peer support app that I highly recommend for this. They are not paying me to mention them (they don’t even know I’m writing this article), I just personally love that community and wanted to share it with others who may be struggling. Innerworld is available on most devices, including VR headsets, PCs, smartphones, and tablets. There are features you can pay for in the app, but creating an account and joining the community is totally free, and you get access to a ton of great CBT and DBT tools and group meetups that teach you about them. That’s how I found out about the cognitive distortions I was having. I hope this helps. ❤️