Thank you for this piece , I loved it. I have found the POST menopausal weight gain to be the most difficult because all those cute little restricting tricks I’d done for years stopped working !
I am very slowly trying to figure all of this out (with a nutritionist) and it’s really hard. I am never again going to be at that magic number on the scale. I have blocked out what it took to maintain that number and instead just feel bad about my weight. There is a huge amount of shame . But what helps me is thinking about how I want to spend the last chapter of my life - do I want to embrace my creativity, my curiosity , my hard won female wisdom ? Or do I want to be scared to eat a fucking sandwich ?
Oh my gosh yes! All of this! It's like menopause stole my whole body and my metabolism left me for a younger woman and nothing works and I could literally exercise myself to death and not lose an ounce these days. It's like being in a car and the steering wheel and the brakes suddenly don't do anything.
I'm really trying to stick with the choice to just go with it. This is a new era of my life, and I get to live it a different way. In a society where women over a certain age are invisible anyway, why not use that as a super power? It's not giving up, it's accepting that this is my real body and my real life and that's more than okay, it's good. I still go to the gym, but I do it because it really does make me feel better. I still exercise because it helps with my anxiety. But I'm quitting with the obsession with every mouthful of food I eat. I can't do it anymore, and it doesn't matter anyway.
I threw out my scale, because the number on it just unhinges me. I bought new clothes. I'm trying to force myself to do a closet purge and just go with new things that make me happy. Also, I'm going to eat the fucking sandwich. And the cake. I've decided that on my deathbed, I'll be mad about every piece of cake I said no to.
I am struggling at times to dress this new body . Dressing for a new shape as an adolescent was scary but a little exciting. This is different .
I am struggling to set boundaries with my disordered - eating friends because the amount of food “noise”(restricting, ruminating, complex negotiations and decision making around a meal, etc.) is so anxiety producing for me . I wonder how other post menopausal women are coping socially- do you feel supported by each other ? Judged ? Then there are the women who are taking weight loss medications so that for now they don’t have to grapple with these issues! (No shade, but who made these rules that it’s not acceptable for our bodies to do its thing? ) Anyway, to everyone on here sharing their thoughts and experiences , I so appreciate you !
I'm lucky in that my best female friend is someone who also will absolutely eat the fucking cake. She feels like she needs to do something about her weight, but she's the least-disordered person I've ever met when it comes to food, and this is really helpful for me. As for everyone else? I don't really know. I'm really nerdy, and a bit neuro-spicy, so I don't have a lot of "normal" friends who are really hung up on fashion and that kind of thing, and that probably saves me from some really judgy stuff I'd get if I had normal friends. Also, I think whoever "made these rules" for body shapes was trying to sell us something, like weight loss medication or new clothes or whatever else preys on our self-esteem and tells us we're all hideous unless we use their product.
And I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like an adolescent again. Whole new body, new shape, lots of feelings, everything is weird and different.
Another angle: my doctor told me that people ADHD are more likely to struggle with intuitive eating because we don’t receive the same hunger cues. I thought that I’d healed my ED by eating when I’m hungry, but apparently my brain doesn’t know what hungry feels like.
loved this article! i always am on watch for media that is grosssss about how to feed ourselves. i rewatched crazy rich asians a few weeks ago and was like: this female rom com main character has the healthiest relationship with food i’ve seen on screen..maybe ever? i loved that about it. i’m reading Fat Talk right now and it’s soooo good!
This hit hard. I have a knee injury - it gets worse when I weigh over a certain amount. I got sick of tracking food so I just do intermittent fasting and clean eating but I’m tired, easily injured, and the weight won’t budge. I have zero mind body connection. Is this a thing my doctor will have heard of?
So sorry, Nicky. That sounds so tough. Recovering from injury really throws a wrench into everything. A sports medicine doc or physical therapist will probably have heard of RED-S. It was called “female athlete triad” in the 1990s but it’s not a new diagnosis
This is really bringing up a lot of questions for me. What if you know you aren’t feeding yourself well, but you also don’t have an appetite? What if food tastes bad? I feel like after having my son food doesnt taste the same. Anyway, maybe i should do some research before asking/sharing but maybe you have heard of this or have some tips.
Hey, Mar. How long ago did you give birth? After my first child was born, I didn't feel hunger reliably for many months - maybe up to half a year - but it did come back eventually, and I never experienced that again with subsequent babies. Those first months were really tough, and you have my sympathy. Does all food taste bad? I found (fortuitously) that I had largely lost my taste for processed foods; it was like I could taste the chemicals or something. Real whole foods, well-seasoned, were the best. Otherwise, my only tips are the obvious ones. Fill your kitchen with tasty foods you *should* eat and nothing you shouldn't. Feed yourself by the clock, not by appetite; standard mealtimes make a huge difference. Get advice about portion sizes - especially protein needs - or just fill your plate based on your memory of what used to be normal for you, then add another quarter- to half-serving if you're breastfeeding. I couldn't believe how much food I needed to feed myself and a four-month-old! Most of all, have a mindset of taking care of yourself right along with your son. And hang it there!
Been there - even when I was out of my super skinny phase, eating more than my friends and convinced I was ‘fuelling’, my body was still shutting down. Lesson: we need much more food than we’ve been told if we want to be able to do fun, active things 🍞 great piece!
Chloe, thank you for reading! I SO relate to the "eating more than my friends" and thinking I was "fueling." For some reason I got really stuck on the idea it was bad to eat as much as my husband.
Thank you for sharing! These words aren't easy to throw out onto the internet, but I'm grateful you did. I would classify myself as "kinda recovered" from my ED... I'd say I'm right there with you with about 60% of my thoughts every day being about food and/or my body. Newly pregnant and starting to see some changes in my body, this feels like a whole other beast that I wish I already defeated. But here's to hope and asking for help!
Congratulations on your pregnancy, Trinity! I’m so happy for you. The body changes with pregnancy, in my experience, were challenging, but there’s so much opportunity on the other side for healing as you talk to your kiddo about nutrition and food 🖤🖤
Thanks for posting this! There's so much recover from in terms of the way women perceive their bodies. Too much to really get into in a Substack comment, probably. But suffice it to say that I'm with you on the peril of millennial "body ideals," diet culture, and self-inflicted damage. Every essay that touches on acknowledgement, recovery, anger, and hope is vital. <3 So thank you again.
Can relate... intuitive eating is held up as such a standard in ED recovery but I definitely found I needed some more objective guidelines. After years of being so incredibly disconnected from my body, I need help in learning how to re-connect with what was actually needed to nourish myself.
YES YES YES! My dietitian started holding up pictures of meals and it finally helped show the discrepancy between what I needed and what I was eating 💀
Mine showed me a “plate by plate” example and I was like 😧. I still have issues with it. I go look at the plates from time to time, and notice I’m still not feeding myself enough food just on a day to day.
My daughter even said how I did this when they were growing up. Also that I rarely ate what I’d fixed for them. My mother did this also and is still a huge fan. She’s hard for me to interact with, because I’m fat now, and she has many diet “suggestions”.
Thank you for this piece , I loved it. I have found the POST menopausal weight gain to be the most difficult because all those cute little restricting tricks I’d done for years stopped working !
I am very slowly trying to figure all of this out (with a nutritionist) and it’s really hard. I am never again going to be at that magic number on the scale. I have blocked out what it took to maintain that number and instead just feel bad about my weight. There is a huge amount of shame . But what helps me is thinking about how I want to spend the last chapter of my life - do I want to embrace my creativity, my curiosity , my hard won female wisdom ? Or do I want to be scared to eat a fucking sandwich ?
Absolutely; post menopausal weight gain is a totally different beast. I hear you! Good for you for seeking out a nutritionist 🖤
Also: I hear you on the last line: SANDWICH 🥪
Oooh I hear this with all my heart. It’s me. I also MFP’ed. I also was cleaning out a drawer and found my old Fitbit. I threw it out immediately.
SANDWICH. Piece of cake, in my world. I’m “old”, do I want to waste whatever’s left, afraid to eat good things???
Oh my gosh yes! All of this! It's like menopause stole my whole body and my metabolism left me for a younger woman and nothing works and I could literally exercise myself to death and not lose an ounce these days. It's like being in a car and the steering wheel and the brakes suddenly don't do anything.
I'm really trying to stick with the choice to just go with it. This is a new era of my life, and I get to live it a different way. In a society where women over a certain age are invisible anyway, why not use that as a super power? It's not giving up, it's accepting that this is my real body and my real life and that's more than okay, it's good. I still go to the gym, but I do it because it really does make me feel better. I still exercise because it helps with my anxiety. But I'm quitting with the obsession with every mouthful of food I eat. I can't do it anymore, and it doesn't matter anyway.
I threw out my scale, because the number on it just unhinges me. I bought new clothes. I'm trying to force myself to do a closet purge and just go with new things that make me happy. Also, I'm going to eat the fucking sandwich. And the cake. I've decided that on my deathbed, I'll be mad about every piece of cake I said no to.
this is so WELL SAID, Nancy! Thank you for sharing this. You took the words out of my mouth!
So well said, Nancy, thank you.
I am struggling at times to dress this new body . Dressing for a new shape as an adolescent was scary but a little exciting. This is different .
I am struggling to set boundaries with my disordered - eating friends because the amount of food “noise”(restricting, ruminating, complex negotiations and decision making around a meal, etc.) is so anxiety producing for me . I wonder how other post menopausal women are coping socially- do you feel supported by each other ? Judged ? Then there are the women who are taking weight loss medications so that for now they don’t have to grapple with these issues! (No shade, but who made these rules that it’s not acceptable for our bodies to do its thing? ) Anyway, to everyone on here sharing their thoughts and experiences , I so appreciate you !
I'm lucky in that my best female friend is someone who also will absolutely eat the fucking cake. She feels like she needs to do something about her weight, but she's the least-disordered person I've ever met when it comes to food, and this is really helpful for me. As for everyone else? I don't really know. I'm really nerdy, and a bit neuro-spicy, so I don't have a lot of "normal" friends who are really hung up on fashion and that kind of thing, and that probably saves me from some really judgy stuff I'd get if I had normal friends. Also, I think whoever "made these rules" for body shapes was trying to sell us something, like weight loss medication or new clothes or whatever else preys on our self-esteem and tells us we're all hideous unless we use their product.
And I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like an adolescent again. Whole new body, new shape, lots of feelings, everything is weird and different.
❤️❤️❤️
My Fitness Pal has a lot to answer for. I even went one better and used Lose It! So bad for those of us in ED recovery.
Another angle: my doctor told me that people ADHD are more likely to struggle with intuitive eating because we don’t receive the same hunger cues. I thought that I’d healed my ED by eating when I’m hungry, but apparently my brain doesn’t know what hungry feels like.
It’s a whole journey of relearning those cues, right?
loved this article! i always am on watch for media that is grosssss about how to feed ourselves. i rewatched crazy rich asians a few weeks ago and was like: this female rom com main character has the healthiest relationship with food i’ve seen on screen..maybe ever? i loved that about it. i’m reading Fat Talk right now and it’s soooo good!
This hit hard. I have a knee injury - it gets worse when I weigh over a certain amount. I got sick of tracking food so I just do intermittent fasting and clean eating but I’m tired, easily injured, and the weight won’t budge. I have zero mind body connection. Is this a thing my doctor will have heard of?
So sorry, Nicky. That sounds so tough. Recovering from injury really throws a wrench into everything. A sports medicine doc or physical therapist will probably have heard of RED-S. It was called “female athlete triad” in the 1990s but it’s not a new diagnosis
This is really bringing up a lot of questions for me. What if you know you aren’t feeding yourself well, but you also don’t have an appetite? What if food tastes bad? I feel like after having my son food doesnt taste the same. Anyway, maybe i should do some research before asking/sharing but maybe you have heard of this or have some tips.
Those are great questions, Mar. I wish I had answers!
Hey, Mar. How long ago did you give birth? After my first child was born, I didn't feel hunger reliably for many months - maybe up to half a year - but it did come back eventually, and I never experienced that again with subsequent babies. Those first months were really tough, and you have my sympathy. Does all food taste bad? I found (fortuitously) that I had largely lost my taste for processed foods; it was like I could taste the chemicals or something. Real whole foods, well-seasoned, were the best. Otherwise, my only tips are the obvious ones. Fill your kitchen with tasty foods you *should* eat and nothing you shouldn't. Feed yourself by the clock, not by appetite; standard mealtimes make a huge difference. Get advice about portion sizes - especially protein needs - or just fill your plate based on your memory of what used to be normal for you, then add another quarter- to half-serving if you're breastfeeding. I couldn't believe how much food I needed to feed myself and a four-month-old! Most of all, have a mindset of taking care of yourself right along with your son. And hang it there!
Been there - even when I was out of my super skinny phase, eating more than my friends and convinced I was ‘fuelling’, my body was still shutting down. Lesson: we need much more food than we’ve been told if we want to be able to do fun, active things 🍞 great piece!
Chloe, thank you for reading! I SO relate to the "eating more than my friends" and thinking I was "fueling." For some reason I got really stuck on the idea it was bad to eat as much as my husband.
The result of awful conditioning! Glad you’re doing better xx
Thank you for sharing! These words aren't easy to throw out onto the internet, but I'm grateful you did. I would classify myself as "kinda recovered" from my ED... I'd say I'm right there with you with about 60% of my thoughts every day being about food and/or my body. Newly pregnant and starting to see some changes in my body, this feels like a whole other beast that I wish I already defeated. But here's to hope and asking for help!
Congratulations on your pregnancy, Trinity! I’m so happy for you. The body changes with pregnancy, in my experience, were challenging, but there’s so much opportunity on the other side for healing as you talk to your kiddo about nutrition and food 🖤🖤
Thanks for posting this! There's so much recover from in terms of the way women perceive their bodies. Too much to really get into in a Substack comment, probably. But suffice it to say that I'm with you on the peril of millennial "body ideals," diet culture, and self-inflicted damage. Every essay that touches on acknowledgement, recovery, anger, and hope is vital. <3 So thank you again.
(I also wrote about this topic, if you're interested in a quick read on similar themes: https://thathag.substack.com/p/the-weight-of-being-thin)
Thank you and I love your piece. Especially the infographic 😅
This is important, thank you for sharing.
Thank you for reading, Maggie!
Can relate... intuitive eating is held up as such a standard in ED recovery but I definitely found I needed some more objective guidelines. After years of being so incredibly disconnected from my body, I need help in learning how to re-connect with what was actually needed to nourish myself.
YES YES YES! My dietitian started holding up pictures of meals and it finally helped show the discrepancy between what I needed and what I was eating 💀
Mine showed me a “plate by plate” example and I was like 😧. I still have issues with it. I go look at the plates from time to time, and notice I’m still not feeding myself enough food just on a day to day.
I'm really glad to know I'm not alone in this! Just using full-sized dinner plates to get a sense of portion size blew my mind
I’m extremely conditioned to use little salad plates for my meals. I keep busting myself doing this over and over.
My daughter even said how I did this when they were growing up. Also that I rarely ate what I’d fixed for them. My mother did this also and is still a huge fan. She’s hard for me to interact with, because I’m fat now, and she has many diet “suggestions”.