What If I'm Just *Uncomfortable* At This Weight?

This week’s Q&A is a guest post by Savala Nolan. It previously appeared in my Food Psych Weekly newsletter. This answer is for informational and educational purposes only, isn't a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice, and doesn’t constitute a provider-patient relationship.

Question:

I gave up dieting 18 months ago and I am glad I did! I was so tired of how food and thoughts of food were overtaking my life. Due to all the restriction, once I started eating again my weight went up and up; however, it has been stable, something I haven’t experienced since I started dieting at 13, now for about 8 months.

Here’s the thing...life is uncomfortable in a larger body. Clothes are no fun. Traveling in airplanes is awful! My feet hurt. I don’t recognize the person in pictures. Oh how I want to be able to cross my legs again! I can’t jog or even do much yard work due to getting so worn out. Even shoe choices are stressful, let alone bending over to try them on in the store!

So my question is...what is the next step? I find myself in weak moments of wanting a quick fix thinking about diets and weight loss surgery, but I know that isn’t the answer. But I don’t want to be in this body forever! I am learning about intuitive eating but I find myself thinking of it as a weight loss solution and I know that’s not a healthy mindset. I am beginning to feel stuck—can’t go back to restricting and can’t see intuitive eating as a way to fit more comfortably in an airplane seat or be able to cross my legs again!

So what do I do? How do I have freedom from the bondage of disordered eating, but still be physically comfortable in my body, which reality dictates needs to be a touch smaller? Thoughts? Suggestions? Encouragement? These are the realities of life in a [plus-size] body, and it’s not a good time.

—Rachel D.

Answer:

Dear Rachel,

Congratulations on building a life without dieting! This is major! It’s also, as you say, complicated.

You ask what to do when you can no longer diet but are uncomfortable in your no-more-diets body. I relate! I relate to the stress of small chairs, to more limited in-store shopping, and to your general awareness that our spaces were designed from a thin-centric perspective. But I’m also farther on my journey—I’ve been at this for six years. Based on what I’ve learned, here are five action items that can help you hold the blessings of your diet-free life and the challenges of your current experience in a larger body.

One: Know your bottom line.

One of my personal aha moments—and one I come back to often—was realizing that protecting my mental and emotional health was more important than being thin. I know in my bones that what it takes for me to be thin simply costs too much of my soul, and there’s no negotiating with that (even when I wish I could). What’s your bottom line, Rachel? You may have stated it in your question when you wrote about being free from the bondage of disordered eating. Bondage is a profound word! Maybe, for you, nothing is worth returning to bondage. Or, to put it another way, your liberation from that bondage is the foundation of everything else. Or maybe you’d phrase it differently. But find that bottom line and use it like a mantra. It can bring you clarity and focus when you feel the storms of diet culture starting to brew.

Two: Accept (and grieve) your losses.

You may never be able to easily cross your legs again, Rachel. You may never shop at certain stores again. It’s okay to admit that there is loss in this process. Even positive changes come with loss—that’s unavoidable. Every beginning is also an ending, right? We gain so much when we divest from diet culture—but we may lose the privileges of thinness. Ignoring the loss won’t make it easier to bear—it will just make you confused and frustrated and more likely to give up. Because, in my experience, it’s only after we grieve a loss that the loss no longer looms so large. I don’t shop at certain stores anymore; for a while this made me incredibly sad; I felt my sadness; the sadness ebbed; and now I shop at other stores! Life goes on, and it goes on faster when we are allowed to own both the highs and lows of the process.

Three: Articulate the gains!

What’s life like for you without that bondage, Rachel? I’m not talking about the airplane seats here. I’m talking about the freedom, the riches, the joys. Do you have a stronger flow of creative energy now that you aren’t dieting? Do you have a deeper understanding of beauty and diversity? Are you wearing a bathing suit in public for the first time in years, and feeling sunlight and water on your skin? Are you eating ice cream and really enjoying it? Have you created unexpected and rich relationships (or said goodbye to less-than-functional relationships) based on shared (or unshared) liberatory values? Yes, there are losses—but the gains outnumber them. Get clear about your gains. Speak about them. Write them down. Notice them. Share them. They will help you resist the siren song.

Four: Interrogate yourself (with kindness).

Are you sure your more difficult thoughts about your body are true? Let me use your thoughts about physical discomfort as an example. I spent months believing certain yoga poses were physically uncomfortable for me because I could feel my stomach in them when, in my thinner body, I never did. But the truth was that I was psychologically uncomfortable with being able to feel my stomach. That’s not the same as physical pain. So I invite you to ask yourself: Are you in physical pain when you sit in a seat and feel the arm rest on your hips, for example? Or are you experiencing the psychological discomfort of feeling “too big” for the seat? If what you’re actually experiencing is resistance to feeling your own body, all manner of embodiment practices, from journaling to guided meditation to walkin’ around naked (at home!), can help you get emotionally comfortable with feeling your larger body in space. You may also find that movement helps, too, with your emotional comfort and your physical strength—but only when you’re ready. If you’re traumatized by moving for weight loss, as I was, take your time with movement. What enables me to move regularly is cultivating neutrality around both fatness and thinness. When I truly don’t care what my body does cosmetically, I can actually move it regularly for metabolic/mental health.

You also say “reality dictates” that your body should be smaller. Really? Is that true? Because (according to your original, unedited question, which listed your clothing size) I’m bigger than you are, and I don’t think reality tells me I should be smaller. Fatphobia tells me that. The only reality I’m sure of is that my body is what it is, and my brain doesn’t have the power to control my body’s size and shape. I want to push you to locate the problem in the right place, Rachel. The problem isn’t that your body is too big—the problem is that our culture can be inhospitable to larger bodies, and it teaches us to view them with disdain. That disdain masquerades as reality when, in fact, it is bias. You don’t have to keep looking at yourself through that lens.

Five: Keep going!

Eighteen months is early days. You have so much more to experience on this journey, Rachel—epiphany, expansion, growth, peace, and energy you can’t even imagine. You’re doing great. Your body is doing great. Keep going.

Love,

Savala

Savala Nolan - photo by Andria Lo

Savala Nolan is a writer, speaker, and lawyer. She is executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

She and her writing have been featured in Vogue, Time, NPR, Forbes, Huffington Post, Health, Shape, and more. She served as an advisor on the Peabody–winning podcast, The Promise.

She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. Find her on Instagram @notquitebeyonce, and get her book (out tomorrow, July 13!) wherever books are sold.