Surrendering to doctor-approved weight gain after years of a strained relationship with food
**Note: this post is about my struggles with weight fluctuation and body image. Of all the things I've written so far, this is the vulnerable I've felt.
These two posts include experiences from other chronic illness warriors, and focus more on our relationship with food itself than body image or weight.
Growing up, girls worried about their weight, hair, skin; they started experimenting with makeup and hair products. In sixth grade, some of my friends started dieting.
I, on the other hand, felt weirdly proud of how little I cared about my appearance. It was similar to the pride I felt at being a tom boy and being accepted in largely male friend groups. I think I had internalized a lot of messaging around the association of male attributes with strength and confidence. I saw how the media portrayed insecure young women, and I knew that wasn't who I wanted to be.
All the while, I was unknowingly picking up on messages about weight. I may not have been concerned with it, but almost all the women around me were. They constantly dieted, or daily talked about starting a diet "tomorrow." At home I was told to eat healthy food and exercise often -- important advice, but it was also coupled with friends at school talking about the coveted leg gap and washboard abs. I think the messaging that affected me the worst was hearing women make comments like "no, I should be good" when asked if they'd like dessert, or "all I had was a salad today, so I deserve this." Desserts were often treated as a reward you only got if you first starved yourself or dropped back to your pre-pregnancy-college weight. There was often a lack of control involved -- "I really shouldn't," followed by eating the whole bowl of ice cream.
The thing is, despite my confidence in my body, I was quite insecure. I was shy, socially awkward, and clumsy. I was ashamed of the inner workings of my body. Sure, I didn't care how I looked, but I cared deeply that I had diarrhea at school every day, especially after hearing a popular girl with a disgusted look on her face say to a friend "I mean, it's not that hard. Just poop at home. Why do people think it's ok to poop at school? Gross." There were so many things I couldn't control about my body. And slowly, food became something that I could control. Sometimes obsessively.
The more I heard the women and girls around me trying and failing to control what they ate, the more it fueled my need for control. I was used to pain and discomfort, and I really genuinely enjoyed vegetables. On top of that, I developed severe lactose intolerance in sixth grade (the nurse who tested me thought the machine was broken because she'd never seen such extreme results -- more on that in a future post!), so I could no longer eat most of my favorite desserts. So dieting actually was something I could excel at. I never talked about it like the other girls did. I didn't feel guilty when I chose to eat something fattening. I simply liked the feeling of control when I could restrict myself to something healthy and then follow through.
This may seem like a positive thing, and I think I wouldn't be where I am today with my elimination diet if I didn't have that degree of self control. But it started to feel a little creepy. I wouldn't restrict myself after eating something unhealthy, as a way of balancing. I would do it when I felt a lack of control over my social life, school, health problems, etc. I had difficulty controlling my anger, and would do it when I started to feel rage coming. I would get spooked by how out of control I felt, identify a food I really wanted to eat, and then deny myself that item, to hold onto a feeling of control.
My gut continued to not absorb nutrients in high school, and I had been working out for a few years and starting to really actively like how I looked. My arms, abs, and thighs were super toned. I started to receive positive reinforcement from peers. This was a time when I felt especially insecure about my ability to form positive relationships with females, so any praise I received felt extra important. My guy friends didn't seem to care one way or the other, but I already knew that I had some standing, control, even power in relationships with males. It still wasn't about how I looked (I was confident there), but became about the number of pounds I weighed when I received praise. I would find myself sneaking into my parents' bathroom to use their scale, several times a day. I'd need to know how much I weighed before and after every meal, every bowel movement. I would fixate on certain numbers and feel antsy if it got above that number, but also feel spooked if I got too far below it, since I knew in the back of my head that I was underweight. For awhile, the obsession was 110 pounds, which I've been told recently by my doctor is not a healthy weight for me, especially considering how ripped I was at the time, so that much muscle would've taken up a lot of the pounds.
To make matters weirder, the sicker I was, the lower that number would get. I'd get positive reinforcement every time I got sick. When I'd have a healthier week or month, the number would start to go up and I'd restrict my foods to bring it back down. Even more messed up, I've actually been told multiple times by women trying to diet, "I wish I got sick like you, because then I could finally lose weight."
I still had never looked in the mirror and been uncomfortable with what I saw. In fact, I rarely looked in the mirror at all. I did care about peer feedback, but I thought I looked fine even when the number went up. It was just comforting, in a sick way, to have a tangible number that I could force myself to fit into to get a shot of control.
In college, I didn't have a scale. It was so strange -- as soon as the numbers went away, I stopped caring, almost immediately. I ate whatever I wanted, and in a college dining hall, that meant desserts pretty much every meal. Because I was no longer eating the fresh, organic food my mom cooked for us, and because of the stresses and social interactions in college, I was constantly sick. I was also eating a lot of junk food, though, which my body had never seen before. The result was that my weight would bounce back and forth -- I'd have a rough month and lose a bunch of weight, but then feel better for a bit and gain it all back. I always joked that while my friends were gaining their freshman 15, I lost my freshman 10.
As soon as I got home for vacations, though, I'd step on the scale and feel cognitive dissonance. I didn't want to be that person anymore, obsessed with a digital number. Slowly, over time, the obsession went away. But my weight continued to fluctuate. As I gradually increased weight, I started to feel less happy with how I looked. It turned out that the only reason that I hadn't been self-conscious about my looks in middle school and high school was because I'd been a tiny, malnourished, ball of muscle. With my new (healthier) weight, I started to look in the mirror more and feel unhappy with what I saw. I began to learn the guilt I'd heard in so many women, when I'd eat something with fat or sugar.
Junior year of college, I lived in Ireland for a semester and was magically healthy for 4 entire months! My gut started to heal, my skin stopped flaking off, my energy came back, and my migraines went away. We're still not entirely sure what happened there, but I think it had something to do with the fact that many preservatives/dyes used in America are illegal or simply not used in Ireland, the food was organic and grown locally in my community, and I wasn't tied down to other people -- I went into that semester deciding that I was going to listen to my body/psyche and do what I needed in each moment, regardless of the social or academic consequences. I hurt some feelings and got some not-so-great grades, but I felt good for the first time in a decade.
....aaaand I gained a ton of weight. Well, slightly more than ten pounds, but I lost a lot of muscle and looked quite different. It didn't help that the Irish diet includes so much butter, bread, and red meat. And that I felt obligated, as a representative of VT in a foreign land, to eat Ben & Jerry's whenever it was offered.
But the result was I gained so much weight that people back home noticed and started making comments. It was annoying, but I was in my "I don't care about nobody but me" state of mind, so it didn't go too far. When I came home, though, it was harder to ignore, and I simultaneously became sick again and concerned about my weight again. I was determined not to obsess over the numbers, though. Instead I generally ate well and continued to exercise and began losing the extra fat and turning it back to muscle.
The last few years have been a roller coaster of weight fluctuations, both in fat and muscle. I stopped exercising as regularly when I no longer had a free college gym in walking distance. I'd then work myself really hard during rugby season. I started taking yoga classes. I eventually wore down my ligaments, became diagnosed with EDS, and had to stop exercising completely. I tried various diets in my quest for a healthy gut, some that caused weight gain, some that caused weight loss. I went off the pill, which caused weird changes in my body, including dropping down a full bra size, which did not help my body image.
The year before my wedding, I fluctuated so much that every time I tried on my wedding dress (the day I went shopping for it, the day it came home, two fittings, a random day a few weeks before, and then my wedding day), it would fit completely differently. It fit like a glove when I chose it, but then I lost so much weight from the stress of traveling to find doctors who knew anything, that the seamstress suggested we take it in a few sizes. I couldn't believe how much smaller I'd become, so I told her not to take it in. I then self-diagnosed my MCAS, researched MCAS diets, and ultimately began my custom low-histamine+Ireland diet (foods that I knew went well in Ireland and were also on the low-histamine list, aka just oats, chicken, and potatoes). My gut improved drastically and within a month or two I'd gained all the weight back. At my second fitting, I could barely zip the dress. By that time I had been doing my EDS exercises long enough to be getting some tone back. I then was able to add in some greens and fruits to my diet. When it was finally the day of my wedding, the dress was falling off again, although not nearly as badly as my first fitting. I had to do emergency alterations myself, including straps (which I didn't have time to sew, so the safety pins popped off mid-dance) and an elastic waist band covered in a sash that looked cute and kept the dress from falling off. I also had to buy fake silicone boobs to stuff my bra, because my boobs had become so much smaller. (As a side note, why does weight loss always have to come from the boobs? There was plenty of fat in my thighs and stomach that was readily available...).
This last year has been tough on my self-image. I've had to reevaluate who I am, what I value, how much time I spend on things, what I'm capable of, what I eat, how often I can exercise and what types of exercise I can do... It has been pretty all-encompassing. My body now looks and feels quite different than it did for the majority of my life, and sometimes it doesn't quite feel like it's mine. Even my face is rounder, and looks less like me. I finally became so frustrated with how I felt every time I looked in the mirror, that I literally put my mirror in the closet. I no longer have to see myself through distorted expectations. I have so little control over how I exercise (because of EDS), and so little control over what I eat (because of MCAS) that I've had to let go. Before starting this diet, my mom sat me down and said "give this diet everything you've got. Don't worry about eating 'well.' Don't worry about nutrition. Don't worry about your weight. I just want you to feel healthy." I can't express how important it was to hear those words from a woman whom I looked up to and, like all other women in my life, who had a complicated relationship with food. I needed that approval, to know that eating potatoes and chicken cooked in oil all day wasn't something shameful, and the weight gain that comes with health is nothing to shy away from.
It has not been easy. I do care about how I look, and the younger Ari in me is ashamed of that in itself. I tried at first to just ignore my body image issues, but that made them feel more shameful. So, I acted the way I've been taught through extensive therapy to act when I feel shame -- open it up. Process it in therapy, admit it to my healthcare providers, and tell the people who've affected it. My therapist was shocked at how much I had hidden, despite being so candid about everything else we've discussed. My nutritionist was taken aback when I cried after she told me to start eating more cheese. She looked up my BMI, told me I was right on target, and that I should avoid making food choices based on weight (especially since I eat so little sugar and can't eat red meat), but if I really wanted to look more toned, to let that motivate my EDS exercises. My doctor was adamant that she would actually prefer I gain a "cushion" so that if I have another rough year, I don't get into dangerously thin territory again.
And now, I'm writing about it, to fully own it; but also because I know how many people this post will resonate with, especially in the chronic illness crowd. We're constantly told that if we eat better or exercise more, it will fix our health. When this fails, or likely backfires, it creates a weird relationship with food and exercise. So here's to all my fellow warriors -- let's be real about how much it sucks sometimes, and support one another! Let's bring our discomfort out of the closet and let the light burn away our shame!