The experience of feeling fat for women diagnosed with anorexia nervosa

The experience of feeling fat is common among both genders regardless of weight or shape. However, its intensity and frequency appear to be exacerbated for people with an eating disorder diagnosis (Fairburn, 2008). Research has indicated that feeling fat varies across time and situations (Roth & Armstrong, 1993), which suggests that feeling fat is not only about one’s body size, shape or levels of body satisfaction (Simlett, 2004). Feeling fat is comprised of cognitive (Striegel-Moore et  al., 1986; Fairburn, 2008), affective (McFarlane et al. 2011), behavioural (Striegel-Moore et al., 1986) and situational components (Roth & Armstrong, 1993). However, the majority of these studies have used sub-clinical samples, and the subjective experience of feeling fat for individuals with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is not well understood (Cooper et al., 2007).