Attention! This post will discuss my personal experiences with disordered eating and yo-yo dieting, and if you would prefer not to read about that, I fully understand. Click here to check out my introduction to Fat Tuesdays instead.
I was a pretty average kid, but I convinced myself I wasn’t skinny because my belly wasn’t flat. I hated the idea of taking off my shirt at the beach or near a pool, and I also hated the way shirts floated around me in the water and clung to my skin when I got out. I envied boys who had no problem going around shirtless, and I wondered if I could do something about my curved stomach.
In high school, I told myself that I was skipping lunch every day because I was a picky eater, which was certainly true, but not the most honest I could have been with myself. I was pulling in my stomach and enduring intense back pain to make it look like I fit into smaller t-shirts while out with friends. And later, after I gained weight freshman year of university and entered my Small Fat Era, I started actual diets.
The pounds would drop off at first. Then it would get harder, and I would bolster my willpower with imaginings of how much easier life would be when I dropped a pant size or two. Then it got scary: I would obsess about cheating on my diet, to the point that I couldn’t focus on work or my studies, I could only think about a Tim Hortons sour cream glazed donut. I would eventually cave, and feel sweet relief and a simultaneous torrent of guilt at my supposed transgression.
As I dieted once, twice, more times; this feeling grew until I started to wonder if the bigger transgression might be trying to force my body into something it clearly didn’t want. In the years since, I have learned about physiological mechanisms that make our bodies hold onto weight once we enter starvation mode; that encourage us to put on more weight after a period of scarcity. The body doesn’t know the difference between famine and intentional restriction, and so it acts in a way that ensures our survival.
Over the course of years, I was able to shift my perspective from feeling like a person who fails at diets to someone who has been failed by a society that never taught me to accept and appreciate my body. Acceptance is hard work and I live with a voice that likes to tell me I’m worthless (for various reasons!), so it’s a continuous practice. I help myself with positive self-talk, and I haven’t lived with a scale in years because I don’t trust myself to be normal about it.
It’s part of why I am working in therapy to better understand what my body wants and needs, and to honour and respect that. I want to encourage everyone to do the same: turn down the noise of a world trying to sell you things, and get in tune with what your unique body needs.
(Side note: I just saw an ad for a weight loss drug whose text heavily implied that you’re not a real person if you don’t lose weight? What the actual fuck??)
As a massage therapist, I operate under the assumption that your body is the weight it needs to be, and that you absolutely deserve to take up the space you occupy. When I ask how you move or what activities you enjoy, I am not talking about changing your body; I want to know how you use it and what you notice as you move through your life. There’s no magic solution for self acceptance, and the world can be downright nasty about it, but connecting with your body and being present with it are excellent practices to cultivate.
Just remember: my weight and your weight are not problems to be fixed. We have enough of those without buying into a multibillion dollar industry trying to sell us shame. (Because if the weight loss they claim to sell worked as a product, they would see fewer and fewer customers every year, right?)
There are a few days left to take advantage of my holiday promo, just schedule your booking before end of day January 31st! Check out the original post for full details, and check out my availability below. Stay warm, folks!
Oh, and! I’ll be pet sitting again in February, and unavailable the following dates (inclusive):
- February 19th to 24th