How One Comment About My Weight Changed Everything
TW: Disordered behaviors around food and exercise.
My name is Maryann, I’m a personal trainer, and I struggled with disordered eating.
It all started when I stood next to my mom as she was talking to her father, AKA my grandfather, at a family gathering. I don’t remember what they were talking about except that one sentence that changed everything.
“Maryann has gained weight, hasn’t she?”
I don’t remember how my mom responded or how I felt about that statement at the moment. I simply remember going to the washroom later that evening and lifting my shirt in front of the mirror to check my stomach. This was my first time being hyperaware of my body and the start of many obsessive thoughts about my body, food and exercise.
Picture this, a 13-year-old girl, staying over at her grandparents for the summer, begging her grandfather and brother to go on walks with her just so that she could burn some calories. As if that wasn’t enough, said girl (me) would run for a couple of minutes and run back to her family members that were walking. She would do that over and over again until the walk was done.
That’s not all. Trips to the park weren’t about having fun anymore. They were about burning as many calories as possible on the swings.
Quickly after that comment was made, food rules started taking place. I was an avid milk drinker when I was younger. It was my beverage of choice. However, it quickly became a drink to avoid at all costs when I found out about the calorie content. Many other foods after that became foods to avoid in order to be “good” and “eat well”.
A few months after summer came to an end, I had a health class. In this class, the teacher talked about the Canadian Food Guide and shared a tool that allowed us to keep track of the portions we ate. This was my “calorie counting” of the time. I tracked my portions and made sure I ate what was recommended by the Canadian Food Guide. I thought that would make me healthy and lose weight. Instead, it created an obsession over what I ate.
Fast forward a few years, where keeping track of my portions became counting my calories. My parents started counting their calories in order to lose weight by using an app on their phone. When I found out, I was blown away. That was so much better than counting portions! I downloaded the app too and started tracking my food.
From there, the obsession I already had around food now also included amplified guilt. In addition to feeling guilty for eating foods that I deemed “bad” like I did before, I now also felt guilty if I ate over my calorie allowance. The guilt would eat me up and it would be at the forefront of my mind, causing so much unnecessary stress.
My exercise routine at that point was fairly rigid. I worked out every day after school following a schedule I created for myself and if I didn’t follow that schedule, guilt would follow — especially if I missed a workout.
I would often do calf raises when I brushed my teeth and did exercises like a wall sit while waiting for my breakfast to cook because the several fitness influencers that I followed on social media said that that’s what you had to do to lose weight and be active, in addition to your regular workouts. I also did obnoxiously ridiculous workouts from Pinterest that now, as a personal trainer, I would NEVER recommend or give to any of my clients.
In between spending several hours of my day to count my calories and do my daily exercises, I spent the rest of the time checking my “abs” in the mirror by lifting my shirt or checking my legs to make sure they were getting more muscular and smaller (I was aiming for legs that were less “jiggly” and didn’t “explode” when I sat down). I desperately wanted to look like the ideal body type of the moment. A body type, I genetically couldn’t and can’t achieve.
My body changed because of my (disordered) habits and I got several comments telling me I looked so good and that my butt looked amazing. I also had an app on my phone that was like Instagram but solely focused on fitness. I posted the food I ate, my workouts, pictures of my body, and my progress on the app. I received several positive and encouraging comments. Looking fit had become part of my identity and those comments perpetuated and encouraged my disordered behaviors.
The positive comments would make me feel great for a short while. That is until I went over my calories or missed a workout and the guilt took over.
Soon enough, I started to binge and overeat. My thoughts were consumed by food, exercise, and how my body looked. Almost everything I did or thought about had something to do with one of those things.
I remember starting every Christmas break with the thought that I would eat “clean” and eat “perfectly”, that I wasn’t going to eat any “bad” foods. During every family gathering, my thoughts were all about food. At first, it would be about avoiding the foods I told myself I would avoid. Then, it was finally giving in and having a little bit of that food. After that, it was feeling the urge to eat as much of that food as possible but trying so hard to control myself so that I didn’t look like a “pig” in front of my family. Then, the urge was so strong that I didn’t care what my family thought. I ate everything and anything until I was uncomfortably stuffed. Finally, I would spend the rest of the day feeling like a failure for not sticking to my plan. I felt horrendous.
I started binging regularly and every time I binged, it seemed like the next one came faster than the last. I felt out of control around food. My self-esteem was at its lowest. I felt disgusting. I felt like a failure.
I didn’t realize that the problem wasn’t me but the thoughts I had been fed about food, exercise and how my body was supposed to look. I didn’t realize that the binges were my body’s way of protecting me from restriction.
It finally registered that what I was doing wasn’t healthy when I went on a date with James (my now fiancé). We had gone to Burger King before going to see a movie. As I worked there, I knew what foods were lower in calories and “healthier”. I didn’t have to check online before eating there like I did when we ate at other restaurants because I knew the menu by heart. When I ate there, I normally picked one of those “healthier” foods but that day, I decided to have what I truly wanted (gasp!): an Original Chicken Sandwich and a poutine combo. I took a few bites of my chicken sandwich and I suddenly got intense stomach pain. I was bent in half in my booth, feeling scared because I didn’t understand what was happening.
That’s when James looked at me and said something along the lines of “Honey, that can’t be healthy”. I looked at him questioningly and that’s when I realized that he was talking about everything I was putting my physical and mental health through to achieve a body I would never be able to attain. No one, unless allergic, should have extreme stomach pain from a few bites of a chicken burger.
After that moment, It took several years of self-work, research, learning, unlearning and changing who I followed on social media to get to where I am now. I no longer count my calories and obsess about food. I am the heaviest I’ve ever been but the happiest I’ve also ever been. I exercise in a way that makes me happy and feel good and no longer to change my body.
I am learning to eat intuitively and by doing so my body has settled at its happy place. A place where I can live life, enjoy it and not overly focus on food, exercise or how my body looks. I can eat a cookie and a half and leave the rest for next time. A thing that would never have happened when I was counting calories and dieting because I didn’t know when I’d be allowed to have cookies next, so I’d eat as much as I could before I wasn’t allowed to eat them anymore.
All that to say that because of a single comment on my weight, I spent almost 10 years of my life in a disordered place. Sadly, many people spend their entire lives in a disordered place.
Moral of the story, don’t comment on anyone’s weight. Period. It doesn’t matter if they gained weight, lost weight, or if their body changed in any way. Don’t tell your friend that Suzanne seems to have gained weight either. Just don’t talk about weight.
As someone that was naturally born in a smaller body, I can only imagine how hard it is to feel comfortable with your body as a fat person in today’s society as it was hard for me, someone who was born in a socially accepted body.
I want to end this by saying that we are so much more than our bodies and focusing on habits that make us feel good is way more beneficial for our health than focusing on our weight. Avoid diet talk and commenting on weight regardless if it’s about weight loss or weight gain as it can be triggering for a lot of people, including yourself. And most importantly, be kind to yourself!
