Everyone has those moments
Photo: Lambert/Getty Images It is an incontrovertible law of the universe that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What goes up must come down. What goes around comes around. And so this Friday, one day after millions of people around the country stuff themselves full of turkey and potatoes and squash, they will wake up from their food comas, roll over, and think some version of, Ugh, I feel fat.
It may be a symptom of a Thanksgiving Day done right, but as many of us know well, it’s not limited to the holiday itself: A sudden dissatisfaction with your own physique can strike after any big meal, or in the dressing room, or on the beach, or for reasons unknown.
And sometimes, yes, that trigger is just your body. Maybe something weird is going on with your gut bacteria that’s making you a little gassy. Maybe you’re puffed up from sodium after a salty snack. Even drinking a ton of water can make you more bloated than usual. All are purely physical phenomena that can cause that “I’m feeling fat” funk.But sometimes, the trigger is purely psychological.
And that expectation is kind of baked into the DNA of Thanksgiving itself, says Charlotte Markey, a psychology professor at Rutgers University and the author of Smart People Don’t Diet. “It’s such a part of our culture to be sort of disparaging about our own bodies,” she says. “This sense of ‘Oh, I’m so fat,’ or ‘Oh, I just ate so much’ — it’s culturally sanctioned. It’s a lot of people’s knee-jerk response to eating Thanksgiving dinner.
Which, fine! Look at it another way, and that just means you have permission to own that feeling around this time of year: “I think it’s valuable to emphasize that it’s okay to enjoy food across the holidays and to indulge a little bit,” Markey says. “And not feel like you have to worry about it, like you have to embody this sort of backlash the next day.
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