Loving myself through grief and weight gain
After my mother died, I hit my lowest ever weight as an adult.
It wasn’t intentional, I was just consumed by grief and lost interest in food.
Before her death, I had been working out regularly and eating healthily for several years, and was pretty happy with where I’d got my body to.
After losing my mum, discipline and self-care were no longer a priority. I turned to food and alcohol for distraction, comfort, and perhaps in an unconscious attempt to fill the gaping void in my soul. I lost interest in cooking, which meant more frozen pizzas, more meals out, and more days when it was easier to just eat pasta and be done with it.
I knew I should be taking better care of myself and that if I did it would help me in my grief process. I sporadically worked out, practiced yoga, and meditated, but the discipline I had BG (Before Grief) seemed to be gone. My good intentions would last a few days before evaporating.
Still, for the first few months, it didn’t affect my weight. The weight gain began after I finally caught COVID the following June, eight months after losing my mum.
At first it was just a kilo, then two, which didn’t worry me too much. But my weight kept creeping up, in spite of my attempts to get back to a regular exercise routine and reign in my diet. Summer rolled around, it got too hot to work out, and in the second half of 2022, I gained 5 kilos.
People tell me I look “fine” and even “great” and that they can’t see the difference.
But I can.
My belly is rounder, my jeans tighter, and my collarbones don’t stick out quite as much as they did (which may be a good thing).
The rising number on the scale was matched by my rising panic about the situation. I grew anxious and suddenly was bombarded by obsessive-compulsive thoughts around food and my body – thoughts that had not filled my head for many years.
At first, I let my demons take hold of me and began slipping back into self-loathing. Then, I decided I wasn’t going to let myself get back into the torturous cycles of restriction and bingeing that had tormented me for years. Instead of channelling self-hatred towards my body, I’ve begun to rewrite the story.
💪 My body has carried me through a year of grief and she needed a little extra strength to be able to do so.
🥺 Grieving is hard and you need to let yourself do whatever you need to do to get through it.
💔 A loved one is dead, does it really matter how much I weigh?
I’ve also been using EFT (tapping) to transform my relationship with my body. Now, I can honestly look in the mirror and love what I see.
The slightly rounded belly, the thighs a little fuller than they used to be. I can appreciate the feminine softness of a few extra kilos without needing to compare myself to some unrealistic, unattainable ideal.
Do I still want to get back to my BG weight? Sure. Honestly, I enjoyed having visible muscles and now I know it’s possible, because I’ve done it before. But this time, I’m doing it from a place of love, acceptance, and gratitude towards my body.
No more punishing or forcing. Just nourishing food, soulful movement, and lots of love and acceptance.
This is a story for a Grief Playbook that doesn’t exist…because each story is different, as is every day that we who grieve navigate a sea of emotions and numbness that come at us in waves.
