NOTE: Today’s post speaks about food/fat/body-shaming, disordered eating, food rules, shame, anxiety spirals, and other sensitive topics. Please read and reflect and journal with care; if today’s not a day you can face these topics, skip and come back when it’s safe for you to do so.
I recently returned from what I can truly call a lifetime trip - a 7-day food tour in Croatia. I booked it a year ago, paid it off over the summer, found cheap flights, and packed only a carry-on. I could not wait to dive into Croatian food, wine, cooking classes, market tours, winding ancient alleyways, stunning squares, and more.
What I did not anticipate was food, fat, and body-shaming.
On a food tour.
A tour whose sole purpose is to explore food. To put food in the mouth, to chew and taste and swallow and digest.
It. Was. Brutal.
And worse - I was brutal. To myself.
I have struggled with my body image since I was 10. That’s 29 years, the majority of my life. I’m currently just shy of my heaviest ever, despite exercising and eating well and moving my body and doing all the things I “should do” for my health. I’m working with a phenomenal dietician (Meagan Ryan, Aware Nutrition) but the main focus of our first six months has been healing and recovering from burn-out, then managing my stress. We’re just now beginning to question whether intentional weight loss is my next focus.
When I tell you that I have done the work to address my food rules, my confidence, my body image issues, resting and recharging my battery - I’m all in.
And yet - two days into this incredible food tour, and it all collapsed (temporarily). By Tuesday night, I was anxiety spiraling, journaling until 1am, crying, and deciding I should talk to my doctor about GLP-1s. I was convinced that I was too late in life to change, to feel worthy, to find romance, to love my body and be deserving of others loving it.
It was awful. Add to that the guilt and fury over the fact that I was awake and having this spiral on a trip I’d been highly anticipating for almost a year, and it was a brutal night.
Here’s what hurt me:
Women in their 50s and older are conditioned to believe they have to earn their calories, walk off their calories, feel ashamed about eating food and enjoying it and not intending to “get rid of the weight.”
Women in their 80s still believe they have to burn off breakfast
A woman in the middle of a sunset power-walk up a mountain to see the view joking that she and I “were thinner before our food tour” to the college students walking with us.
Someone joked that I “must have an extra leg” when I went for a last bite of (delicious) carrot cake.
My deliberate ignoring of my body’s food cues and over-eating.
Blood flow and digestion are impacted by tension in the diaphragm, and vice versa (it formed around two massive blood highways in the body as well as where your esophagus empties into your stomach). Physically eating more than your stomach can expand to accommodate can throw off the tension relationships, impacting blood flow, breathing, digestion, anxiety, and more. I was uncomfortably full, and my body did not know what to do with that; hence, heightened anxiety.
Here’s what helped:
Journaling and excising the poison in my head
Taking off my too-tight sleeping shorts that were making me uncomfortable (sometimes, it’s the smallest, dumbest, most obvious things)
Calling my dietician for support
Remembering my food cues and actually using them
Ativan (as well as daily Zoloft. These have literally changed my life in the last 5 months. 10/10 recommend).
Balancing electrolytes to help bloating
Clapping back. For the second half of the trip, I didn’t stay quiet if I heard people talking about earning their calories or other bullshit. I became the voice I needed to hear.
Calling out the group, nicely but firmly, on the last night. One woman looked shocked; but more nodded their heads. I was not alone in feeling, and it was later revealed to me that some of the women’s beliefs had already trickled down to their kids, who were battling disordered eating.
Realizing the next day that it was a speed bump, not a derailment.
The trip, ultimately, was truly remarkable. But I will remember it equally for the beauty and the brutality; the food and the phobias; the culinary delights and the cultural degradation women have faced, continue to face, and perpetuate on one another, based on our weight, our bodies, our shame, our indoctrination into “one size fits all” health and wellness sphere.
I want this to be a body neutral story, if not a body positivity ending yet. I’m still a work in progress, and I don’t have many answers here. Today is a better day. I’m still sad, frustrated, and aggravated that a food tour was subject to food shaming. Can’t we just have our gelato and eat it, too?
It makes me sad then furious to think of the power and brilliance women deny themselves when we spend so much energy focused on making ourselves smaller. Can you imagine where we could be as a world if women hadn’t been completely bulldozed and brainwashed by the diet industry? By the belief that our importance comes from our pants size instead of our brain power?
I am confident that I will not be on my deathbed bemoaning not having more of a thigh gap. I will probably be wishing I could have one more taste of goats milk gelato with caramel swirls, or that I hadn’t saved the expensive Scotch for a special occasion. I will not be sad that I didn’t have more casual hook-ups; but I will be sad if I live my life without partnership because I didn’t think my body was worthy of being loved by someone else. I will not wish that I had done the extra weight lifting or cardio class; but I will wish that I’d snuggled my dog more, or taken her for a sunset beach stroll. I will be sad when my time is up, but I can’t possibly believe that I will regret taking up the space meant for me on this earth, during my time on it.
Big hugs, friends. Prompts below; and take care of yourselves.
xx
Ash
Prompts
When have you found joy or connection in something that also carries old pain or shame? What did it teach you about the complexity of healing?
Where do you still shrink or apologize for taking up space, physically, emotionally, or energetically? What might “taking up your rightful space” look or feel like instead?
What lessons about bodies, food, health, wellness do you remember learning as a child? When, if ever, did it occur to you that those lessons could be faulty, wrong, biased, or need not apply to you? What replaces them in your mind?
What would you say now to your younger self? What would you want to say to your older self? What do you hope these other selves could say back or remind you?
What happens if you let yourself pause before choosing, whether it’s food, exercise, a comment, a mirror check-in?
What parts of your body still wait for permission to exist, to be seen, to take up space?
What else could you do with the time and energy you spend holding yourself to a certain standard/behavior/rules/etc?
