From Body Shame to Radical Body Acceptance

My story of resilience, joy, and freedom.

This post talks about eating disorders, dieting, suicidal ideation, and childhood trauma.  If you are suffering from an eating disorder and need to talk to someone, contact the NEDA Helpline here, and if you are struggling with suicidal thoughts and need someone to talk to, dial 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.  

About six months ago, I was on the keto diet (again).  I have always been very good at keeping to diets. Sometimes, I would reserve my minuscule carbohydrate allowance for a treat-- one Hershey's kiss, a cracker, even a fruit (how I missed apples!).  Other times, I would be measuring out sour cream, choking down dry keto "bread", and eating spoonfuls of sugar-free peanut butter because I craved sugar and carbs so much. ​

In the back of my mind, I was aware of the
fact that the keto diet wasn't advisable. However, if you look up "ketosis" on Google, the first thing you come across is how ketosis supposedly increases energy, treats chronic diseases, and, most importantly for me, promotes weight loss. I didn't care if those health benefit claims were actually true. I didn't care how else it might have affected my body, if only my body was smaller. ​ But after the first ten pounds, I didn't see any difference.  In the meanwhile, I was constantly limiting myself as to what I could eat, and if I messed up I would feel the familiar sting of guilt and shame.  ​I felt like I was betraying the person that I wanted to be: model-thin, beautiful, happy, finally.  I'd always struggled with how I looked, but I thought if I could just be skinny, I would finally be beautiful.

"I didn't care how else it might have affected my body, if only my body was smaller."

At the same time, I was looking into fillers for my ever-present under eye hollows.  I could finally afford it-- I had saved my tax return, more hefty than usual from being enrolled in grad school (thank you, Lifetime Learning Credit).  This was something I'd only dreamed of as a teenager, the daughter of a single mother, always adorned as I was in secondhand clothing and cheap makeup.  Breathlessly, I made the appointment.  On the day of, I wore huge, dark sunglasses.  I strolled into the glitzy waiting room, and waited. When I finally got into the chair, my heart was hammering.  Then came the needles in my face... it wasn't a fun experience, to say the least.  And afterwards, when I finally looked into the mirror-- I saw no difference. I still looked just as tired, just as "ugly".  As I left, I heard someone at the front desk ask what I was in for, like we were in a women's prison.  And my injector (the traitor,​ I thought): "Oh, an eye thing."  I walked through the pretentious front lobby and pushed through the double doors, tears stinging my eyes and blood rising in my cheeks.  I felt ashamed, disappointed, and hopeless.  If I couldn't be cured by fillers, what hope was there for me?  When would I be beautiful?  I remember sobbing into my mother's shoulder: "it wasn't enough. Nothing changed. Nothing changed." I didn't know it yet, but this was an extremely significant moment.  Because, as I realized later on, nothing would ever have changed; the problem wasn't me.  ​There was never anything wrong with me.  ​

The real root of the problem started much, much earlier-- all the way back when I was five years old.  Before then, I was your average, if not exceptionally bright little girl.  I spoke in full, articulated sentences at three years old (I would often proclaim to strangers that I wanted to be a cardiologist when I grew up), learned to read early, loved painting and singing and running around in the incredible variety of flower girl dresses my mom got when her friend's bridal shop went out of business.  I remember feeling like a fairy princess in them-- absolutely beautiful, special, and magical.  I would run through the sunlight, my skin turning caramel under the warm sun. I would play in the mud, walk barefoot through the trees. 

I felt as thought nothing could touch me, as if it were only a force of will that kept my feet from lifting from the ground. But somewhere along the line, that feeling disappeared.  At some point, my body and everything about it became the enemy. ​

At just five years old, I experienced a traumatic event, or, rather, series of events.  Suddenly, my body wasn't safe.  I couldn't trust those close to me.  I couldn't even trust myself.  Somehow, I learned that what happened was shameful, and that I could never, ever speak of it.  And, whether out of a need to soothe myself or a need to protect myself, I began to gain weight.  To be quite honest, my memories of my childhood are hazy and difficult to retrieve.  This isn't uncommon amongst trauma survivors-- memories can cause pain, so the brain protects itself by forgetting.  I disconnected myself from the experiences of my body to survive; thus began my feelings of body dysmorphia. ​

I felt as though I had caused the trauma, simply by having a body; therefore, my body was wrong, and I was ashamed of it.  At the same time, I began to form the rather conflicting idea that my body was only worthy if it was desirable to others.  Altogether, it was a recipe for disaster.​

It didn't help that I was short, and plump, and mixed-race, and stood out no matter what I tried to do, as smart and artistic as I was.  At eleven years old, I started wearing makeup to conceal my "dark circles"-- common amongst those with olive skin tones and passed down by my Mexican grandmother.  And at twelve years old, after a particularly brutal Health class where we were all forced to stand on a scale in front of all of our classmates, I decided I needed to lose weight.  Luckily (or unluckily) for me, that very same Health class equipped me with calorie counting, BMIs, and nutrition facts: a host of weapons far too dangerous for a twelve year old to be armed with. 
​
​Every day I would keep track of what I ate.  I could probably still tell you how many calories are in half a cup of cottage cheese, a slice of pizza, a serving size of cereal, you name it.  I would have a liquid breakfast of SlimFast, half a turkey sandwich for lunch, and as little dinner as I could get away with.

I started skipping meals, relishing the weakness and the strung-out feeling-- evidence that I was, in fact, wasting away. And, as starving yourself sometimes does, it worked.  I lost almost forty pounds in a few months. ​​

If I was already thin, I would've been given a diagnosis: anorexia nervosa.  Because I was fat, all I was given was a "congratulations". By the time people noticed how skinny I was, the damage was already done.  I had more friends, more attention, and more unwelcome (but flattering) crushes than I'd ever had before (that was, if I even realized that someone could possibly have a crush on me).  But I wasn't happier-- once I became aware of how my body could be considered "wrong", I felt as though I were constantly under a magnifying glass. 

If I was already thin, I would've been given a diagnosis: anorexia nervosa.  Because I was fat, all I was given was a "congratulations".

I battled every day to appear perfect.  I spent every hour hating myself, and every break between classes fixing my makeup in the mirror and pinching what little fat was left on my body.  I tried to look the way that society told me would make me happy, and it didn't work.

This exhausting battle continued-- through high school, through college.  I went on different diets, continued to be wary of calories, snacked on cucumbers instead of potato chips.  But nothing worked like that first time.  I'd lose weight, gain it back, plus some.  I couldn't even accurately tell how I looked; my body image was so warped.  Looking back on the many times that I thought I needed to lose weight, it seems almost insane to me.  Whether I really had gained some weight, or had lost it, it didn't matter-- I was never satisfied. I was as unhappy with my body when walking ten miles a day across Spain as I was when I was emotionally eating and dealing with PTSD from yet more trauma that I experienced during college.

I tried to process my trauma, to heal, but there was always something that held me back, something that kept me from fully absorbing the lessons I learned from school or from my therapists. That something was my complete refusal to accept my body, the one thing I relied on completely to survive.  ​​

It got to the point where I was at my lowest weight in years. It was after I had graduated from college and was working at an acute treatment center.  I had decided to try "intermittent fasting" (for someone with an eating disorder, an excuse to not eat for as long as humanly possible).  I was 117 pounds, but I wanted more. I wanted to be 110 pounds, 100 pounds, 90 pounds.  Nothing was ever enough.  Honestly, I was a hypocrite-- trying to get anorexic youth at the treatment center to drink another Ensure to get their calorie count up, while I drank black coffee with Splenda.  It was at that time that I ended up in the hospital for severe suicidal ideation.  I cannot adequately explain the fear I felt that I was going to get admitted to the very treatment center that I worked at.  They took everything I had, put me in a hospital gown, and knocked me out with medication.  

In the morning, the psychiatrist subtly blamed me for being honest about my suicidal thoughts, diagnosed me with adjustment disorder, and sent me back out into the world.  I moved towns to be closer to my family, and my eating disorder got under control, but only just.  I went to a few different therapists, but nothing really fit.  I talked about my trauma, worked out a million ways to interpret it, and tried not to blame myself for what had happened to me.  I got better, but I was still just existing; I wasn't really living​.  And I was still dieting.​​

This continued until I got an assignment from my job at Healing Mountain Mental Health to create a group therapy curriculum for people living in larger bodies that struggled with childhood trauma.  I tasked myself with the question: why do people with childhood trauma gain weight?  Well, weight gain extremely common amongst survivors.  They are much more likely to become "obese", as well as suffer from many other related mental and physical illnesses.  Survivors of childhood sexual trauma often gain the weight as a survival instinct, to protect themselves from further abuse by becoming what they consider "undesirable".  Food is also a source of comfort and distraction from unwelcome thoughts and emotions, and can fill gaps caused by loneliness, identity confusion, and depression. But how could we guide individuals in building healthy habits and possibly losing weight in a healthy way? Well, I had absolutely no idea.  I'd never lost weight in a healthy way.   So, I started doing some research. 

The results were earth-shattering: there is no true "healthy" diet, because, around 97% of the time, diets don't work.  They might work in the short term, but in the long run-- the thing that actually matters-- the weight doesn't usually stay off.  More often than not, more weight gain is the likeliest scenario. The cause for this is rooted in our basic biological functions: the ones that have kept humans alive for thousands of years.  When we try and cut calories to lose weight, it signals to our body that we are in a period of famine.  Our metabolism slows, along with our bodily functions, in order to preserve energy.  If the calorie deficit is enough, fat and water weight loss (and sometimes muscle loss) may ensue.  However, the more we restrict, the more our body craves high carbohydrate and fatty foods.  As a result, most people stop dieting, and, of course, gain the weight back, sometimes plus some as their bodies get ready for the next bout of "famine".  Our bodies don't know that there's an abundance of food, or that McDonald's is just a couple blocks away; it just knows that it needs to send signals for us to store as much energy as it can before the food goes away again.  (For reference, watch this TED Talk from neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt).
​
​The more I read, the more baffled I became.  I read about how the diet industry is fueled by the constant rebounding and desperation of the general population.  I read about the distribution of deliberate misinformation on diets like the keto diet and other fad diets. 

​I watched news clips about a study on the Biggest Loser and how the show's claim to fame-- extreme weight loss-- was a lie.  The show itself was stigmatizing, emotionally abusive, and physically damaging, causing people to pass out, vomit, and become severely dehydrated.  Once they left, contestants struggled to keep the weight off, to the point that they had to exercise 2 hours a day and eat less than 1200 calories just to slow the weight gain down.  

I read about weight discrimination, and how individuals in larger bodies are paid less, more likely to be convicted in a court of law, and suffer a host of other horrible injustices.  I started hearing microaggressions and microinsults being thrown out towards people in larger bodies as casually as saying "bless you" when someone sneezes.  

A 2012 study also showed that obesity and weight gain aren't necessarily predictors of mortality.  In the study, by adding only four healthy habits-- drinking in moderation, not smoking, eating healthy, and exercising-- the risk of death of an "obese" person became almost exactly the same as someone who is considered to have a "normal" BMI.  
​
All of this made me, for lack of a better word, angry.  I was angry at myself. I was angry because I realized that I was never going to look like a model; I would never be as petite as Zoe Kravitz.  I was never going to meet my own standards for how I thought I should look.  And I was angry because I was so blinded by society's standards that I thought that that was the only acceptable way to look.  That I had to be at a weight that is only achievable if I'm weak, tired, and starving.  And that so many people, especially women but also people of all genders, are expected to starve themselves to be acceptable, lovable, and worthy.  Angry isn't really the right word.  I was livid.  ​

After I calmed down a bit, I started discovering amazing things: Intuitive Eating, Health At Every Size, the body positivity and fat acceptance movements.  I discovered the ideas I was indoctrinated with at such a young age had a name: fatphobia.  I was hugely prejudiced, which came as a shock, as I'd always considered myself to be open-minded. I knew I struggled from body dysmorphia, but until then I thought it was justified.  But I finally realized: my body is just a body. It had always deserved safety, protection, love, and care. 
The thing was, once I realized this, it became much easier to take care of my body, to feed it healthy foods, to engage in movement.  I signed up for a karate class, hiked with my dogs, actually enjoyed doing push-ups and crunches. Everything was easier because I could finally enjoy feeling stronger and healthier without the guilt of whatever number I saw on the scale. I could listen to my body when it craved vegetables and fruits, and not feel bad if sometimes it craved Ruffles or cookies. I was finally ditching shame: even better, I was kicking shame's a**.

But I finally realized: my body is just a body. It had always deserved safety, protection, love, and care.

That brings us to that elusive ~3% of people who actually lose weight and keep it off.  It turns out, those people are the ones who do just that-- they find joy in healthy eating and movement.  They also score high on measures of "intuitive eating"-- essentially, eating when they are hungry and stopping when they are full, and eating a wide variety of foods and nutrients.  I had lost touch with my body in the pursuit of weight loss, in the pursuit of what I thought would make me happy and worthy; in the process, I was actively working against what I wanted.  And I was so sorry.

​I was sorry to the five-year old girl whose bodily rights had been violated, and to the twelve year old who was starving herself, and the high school girl who felt pressured and the 18-year old college student who should have found her voice living in the big city but couldn't.  ​ I felt the need to apologize to all the versions of myself I'd been before that still wept and cowered in my heart.  But the only way I could do that would be to break free of the the vice grip of diet culture, to relinquish the image of a body that I would never and could never have, and to learn to love the body I did have.  

I felt most sorry for the three year old girl, the one that came before, the one that felt like she could fly to the moon and back on daydreams alone.  But she was still, and had always been, with me.  ​She was there every time I laughed with abandon, every time I sang from my chest, looked up at the stars in awe, put paint onto a canvas, danced just for the wonder of it.  The magic that I felt when I was a child was real, and it was joy.  I was always looking for happiness in being less that what I was, as if I could shed sorrow, despair, and pain along with the pounds.  But as long as I was trying to be someone that didn't exist, I would never be free. The pursuit of joy isn't about becoming the people we want to be, not really.  If you start going down that path, when will it end?  For me, the path was never-ending, and all-consuming.  

True joy, true freedom is about allowing ourselves to be the people we are, accepting ourselves at our core.  It is about being vulnerable, honest, and authentic. The more we strive to be ourselves, the higher we rise, and the more we realize that we were perfect, all along. 
​

Learn more 

Read
Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life by Kelsey Miller
Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight by Lindo Bacon
The Anti-Diet Project by Kelsey Miller (Refinery29)

Watch
Why Dieting Doesn't Usually Work - Sandra Aamodt (TEDx)
Behind the Before and After: Non Diet, Intuitive Eating and Body Image Documentary - The Body Love Society (YouTube)
Why Biggest Loser Winners Often Regain Weight - ABC News (YouTube)
The Exercise Happiness Project - Chris Wharton (TEDx)
How To Get Healthy Without Dieting - Darya Rose (TEDx)
Our Bodies are Not an Image | Mary Jelkovsky | TEDxCherryCreekWomen
Living without shame: How we can empower ourselves | Whitney Thore | TEDxGreensboro
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