How to not let poor body image moments take you or your life hostage

My family had a rough February. For those of you who don’t follow along with me on social media (I mostly “hang out” over on Instagram these days) on February 6^th we received a heartbreaking call at about 4 am that our beloved Pop (my husband’s father) had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack at the age of 67. Losing a father/grandparent is never easy but what made this loss particularly painful is that Pop played a very active, involved role in all of our lives. He was a big man, but that didn’t stop his 6’5” self from getting on all fours to act like a hungry dinosaur or a ferocious bear searching for grandchildren to faux-terrorize and delight. Just two days before he died, Madeline, my oldest, took a video clip of him chasing after Anna (my 3-year-old niece) and my Thomas. You hear his rumbling growl first and then the peals of kids’ laughter.

Pop was also very good to me. He treated me like a daughter, and he was always on deck to help out. After Mary Elizabeth was born, I was mired in a total fog (I’d later be diagnosed with postpartum depression), and I locked myself out of my car not once but three times in about a one-month-span. And whom did I call each and every time? Pop. He happily rescued me each time with nothing but concern and love and no hint of judgment. (He was a brilliant man, but he could definitely relate to absentmindedness and forgetfulness and was frequently misplacing his own keys.) Sometimes I cry now just because I feel more alone, knowing I don’t have him to swoop in when I’m sending out an SOS. He was always, always there for me and for our family.

Likewise, I have many fond memories of us spending time together with my kids. When my husband was still in residency, we’d frequently meet Pop, who secured an early retirement from the U.S. Forestry Service, at a nearby park for a picnic and playground time. Sometimes we’d walk over to the “lake” on the property of the townhome we were living in at the time, and Pop would take the girls fishing. The kids referred to the small body of water as a “lake” and delighted in catching “monstrous” fish. In reality, they cast their lines into a retaining pond, and they often didn’t hook anything other than pond weeds. Even when they were lucky enough to snag a fish, their prize catch was usually a sun fish no bigger than the palm of my hand (and I have freakishly small hands). However, they had many other fishing adventures in Maine and other perfect fishing holes where they caught some real beauties, and Pop took every moment of their adventures to gently teach the kids about how to attach a lure and cast a line, how to properly catch and release, and bigger lessons as well – that fishing is about so much more than CATCHING THE FISH – it’s about making memories, being patient and hopeful, and appreciating the wonder of nature. Pop once told me that Madeline had invited her little sister to touch a fresh catch and he saw a lesson in that as well. “Encouraging Rachel to touch a freshly caught sunfish with prickly fins and bulging eyes shows me that teacher Maddy wants her little sister to learn that fish are beautiful creatures that may look strange, but are to be appreciated and not feared.” he said.

In the wake of Pop’s death, I was overcome with grief, and I also had this intense longing to never ever take life or the people I loved for granted. Not long after we lost Pop, I made a promise to myself as well as to my husband to not waste another second of my life at war with my body.

Well, for a week and a half I was a near-perfect wife and mother – kind, patient, loving, putting others’ needs before my own. And for another week or two after that, I felt totally at peace with my body. It felt so good! During this body hatred respite, I discovered that while I might not always love what I saw in the mirror or (ever) feel like a super model, I wasn’t thinking about my flesh all that much and I was able to see my body for what it really was (and is and always will be): an instrument rather than an object to be picked apart that required kindness to be able to carry through my sometimes long days of serving the ones I hold dear. There were still days when I might eat too much or too little and ignore my body’s innate signals on a given day. Yet, overall I felt like I was more grateful than resentful of my shape and that food was to be enjoyed and seen as fuel rather than obsessed over or broken down into good and bad categories. I also felt a lot less anxiety around making constant, everyday food choices. I wasn’t thinking about food all that much. I was more focused on loving my family and supporting my husband in his grief.

But then one day I foolishly decided I’d step on the scale. Why, I don’t know. I suppose a part of me, a relic from my disordered eating past, wanted validation for my more positive feelings about food and my body – that I wasn’t simply shifting my perspective and reframing my thoughts. Instead, my body was, in fact, changing (changing = getting smaller), and that was why it was easier to love and to accept it. However, the scale didn’t affirm my more positive feelings. It obliterated them. The number was higher than I expected, higher than I’d ever seen when I haven’t been pregnant (and no, I’m not pregnant). I closed my eyes, wishing the number away. I stepped off the scale and calmly put it back to its hiding place (one day, I hope,  I will take a hammer to the damn thing and throw it out of my life for good, but right now it’s like a bad boyfriend that I just totally can’t get over despite how he makes me feel). Then I told myself not to cry, not to waste tears on something so superficial. I told myself to remember Pop, to remember that the ones I love don’t care about the number on the scale and that my husband is probably tired of me talking about my body and/or weight at all.

I took a deep breath. I told myself that at its most innocent, the number on the scale was just information. At its very worst, those digits on the scale were liars, deceptive to their very core. They could never measure my value or worth as a person

Walk away from the scale. Walk away from the bad emotions knowing your weight triggers.

But I couldn’t.

For the rest of the week I felt like I was wheeling for control. Just stop eating, a voice in my head hissed. I’d done it before. I could do it again. I was “strong” enough. The healing part of me tried to stop and counter these thoughts. Then the conflicted part of me would end up eating too much out of fear that the controlling one would come out ahead eventually and take sustenance away from me.

The inner battle raged on, and the more I winced when I saw a reflection of myself in the mirror or devoted scarce mental capital to thinking about food and how much or how little I should eat, the more shame, guilt, and regret I felt.

After a recent speech I gave, a woman approached me with tears in her eyes. She waited until the crowd nearby had dispersed and then she asked in a hushed, desperate tone if it ever stops. That is, if the body loathing ever completely and permanently goes away. There have been times when I would have emphatically said yes, but I’m not sure it ever completely goes away for good for some of us. I said this much to her. I also told her that some of us struggle more with our brokenness and our lack of control, and our bodies, appearance, and our weight are easy scapegoats for these unsettling feelings. But then I added that we can keep poor body image moments or even days and weeks from ruining our lives or taking over all the goodness life has to offer.

I shared this anecdote on Instagram recently and a brave woman revealed her vulnerability and asked, “How? How do we keep bad body image from ruining our lives? It is a daily struggle for me.”

I’ve been pondering her question ever since. I don’t have all the answers (um, obviously since I still clearly have my issues) and I realize that since I’m now grappling with grief that surely is contributing to my less-than-stellar body image lately and just my overall feelings of blah that this may not even the best time to attempt to answer this question. Yet, I’m going to share just a few things that have helped me in what I’ve now accepted will likely be a lifelong cross I’ll have to try shoulder with grace.

Refuse to give your poor body image thoughts meaning or power.

I just finished reading Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood, and there’s a section that points out that even loving, good teenage girls can be surprisingly mean to their mothers but that we, as moms, have to separate ourselves from the girls’ words and how we feel about ourselves, our daughters, and how we’re mothering them. When an angry child or a teenager seeking more autonomy yells, “I hate you!” it hurts. Yet, we know in our hearts that the child is in a passion and upset and doesn’t really mean what she’s saying. In a similar way, we can consider our inner monologues that dissect our bodies and berate whatever part of us is randomly chosen to place on the chopping block for the day and tell ourselves, “We don’t really mean this. There’s something else going on here.”

Maybe you lost your patience with a child. Perhaps a work project didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped. Maybe you’re grappling with big life stressors like moving, financial worries, caring for aging parent, or losing a loved one, and you have all these sad and angry emotions you don’t know how to express or you’re afraid of expressing because you feel the need to be strong for your children, your spouse, or just yourself (more on this below). How can you unload some of the emotional burden? By diverting your feelings toward your body or parts of your body or blaming your weight for your agitating emotion. Hating your body or controlling your weight are only vehicles for expressing these uncomfortable emotions.

The best way to evict your inner bully is to start recognizing that ticker tape of thoughts are not facts rooted in reality or a doctrine to adhere to but just words. You can choose to give those words power – or not.

Uncover the truth behind your body image angst.

If you find yourself thinking, “I’m fat” constantly, ask yourself why. Are you finding yourself drained of energy and unable to climb up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath? Or are you really just wishing you looked like the #fitspo star that showed up on your Instagram feed? Or maybe you are holding your natural design to completely unrealistic standards. A bull mastiff can’t starve itself into looking like a toy poodle. For the longest time I didn’t focus on what I loved about my body – like my strong, shapely legs – and I was always wishing I had smaller arms and a more defined waist. But I have a more athletic build; I am never going to have an itty-bitty waist because I just don’t have that hourglass shape. No amount of working out or dieting would change that.

Consider that your discomfort with your body could be completely immaterial and just the root of fat phobia. Why are you so afraid of occupying a larger body or gaining weight? Are you really afraid of being rejected and feeling unloved? Are you afraid of loneliness or sadness?

Scratch beneath the surface, and there’s likely even more truth behind your negative body image feelings than just your physical appearance. Maybe when you say, “I’m fat,” you’re really saying, I’m tired and overwhelmed, but I don’t know how to change that. I’m able to recognize that my own negative thought patterns about my weight and body are resurfacing because of sadness. I’m fat = I’m sad. I’m sad we lost Pop. I’m sad I can’t help my husband more as he continues to miss his father and my children as they grieve over losing their grandfather. I can’t bring Pop back, but I can lose weight. Controlling our weight (or trying to) gives us a sense of purpose and control in our lives when we feel like we are powerless to make other changes or when we have feelings that seem too big to conquer – like anxiety and grief. Compulsively exercising numbs the pain and can offer you a fleeting sense of being all-powerful. Cracking the whip on “bad” food makes you feel like you’re able to eliminate bad stuff from your life. But dieting, exercising for the wrong reasons, and hating your physical self does nothing to abate those less than desirable feelings in the long-run.

I have plenty more to write about how we can keep negative body image moments from taking us hostage, but this post is already growing lengthy. Thanks for reading, and please stay tuned…