CN: discussion of weight gain, food, disordered eating, and fatphobia.
It feels like it’s been a really long time since I put a photo that showed any more than just a close up of my tits on this blog. It’s really difficult to talk about my relationship to my body- I know that even at my largest I still just about (only just!) fit into ‘straight sizes’, both in my clothes and as a category, and so I know that when I talk about my issues with gaining weight I run the risk of validating fatphobic attitudes and directly hurting people larger than I. I don’t want to do either.
But I’m also someone with a history of disordered eating and sexual trauma, and in that context it’s really difficult for me to feel as if I can’t talk about my relationship to my body and how that changes when I gain weight, or the reasons why I gain weight- because in times where I feel out of control, food is a refuge. It’s a safe, sweet, numbing place (until it isn’t) and it’s something I can control (until I can’t). Food is pleasure, for a while, until it very swiftly becomes something I use as a weapon and a means of self- harm. The more I eat the less comfortable and at ease I am in my body, and that isn’t just about how I look- it’s also about how my knees begin to hurt, my back starts to ache, how I’m not able to kiss my kneecaps in Happy Baby pose, or hold plank or Downward Facing Dog for as long, or dance wildly for more than 5 minutes without feeling grotesquely puffed out.
Those are things that make me feel more at one with myself physically and emotionally, and I don’t know how to parse the feeling that it is wrong somehow for me to enjoy them, that the side- effects of being lighter- feeling lighter- should not give me pleasure, that my individually enjoying being in a lighter body is in some way violent towards people who live in larger bodies.
I don’t talk about changes of diet or weight loss and I’m not going to. Those are things that might happen or might not in the future but are not relevant or interesting in this moment. What is relevant is that I want to stop feeling as if I need to hide my body as it is from myself or anyone else. I’m not super- keen on it right now, but hiding it away is a sign of shame and I’m trying not to Do Shame any more (except- perpetual disclaimer- for the good kind). So here you go:
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