[Republished with comments turned ON]

After I received a prediabetes diagnosis in 2023, I thought I could cut out all sugar and bring my A1C down that way. Of course, I couldn’t sustain it more than a few months, the same amount of time I usually manage to cut out sweets. 

Friends suggested I talk to a dietician. I knew there was nothing a dietician could tell me that I didn’t already know about how to eat well, but to shut them up, I made an appointment. The first dietician I talked to at Berry Street, wanted to talk about recipes. I told him my problem was emotional eating, specifically with sugar. I needed someone who knew about emotional eating. 

He referred me to another Berry Street dietician and she turned out to be a perfect fit for me. Dana understood there was no point in talking about what I ate until I felt better about myself. My self-image had to improve before I could consistently treat myself well (for instance, reducing the sugar). 

What we ended up talking about was the extremely low number of obese people who lose significant amounts of weight and keep it off. We talked about the diet culture that teaches women that we have to look a certain way, and the diet culture that teaches everyone that no matter how fat we are, we CAN get our weight down with enough exercise and healthy food. Or maybe with meal replacement products. Or with surgery. Or with whatever the company is selling.

Gradually I realized that I had been brainwashed just as much as anyone else. After being slim until my mid-40s, I put on a lot of weight. But I believed it was a temporary aberration. I’d gained and lost before. I just needed to get on with the losing part.

But I knew I wouldn’t lose weight permanently without lifestyle changes, so I needed to find what worked for me. Permanently cutting out sweets looked possible to me, if I could just beat the depression that caused me to manage my mood with food.

Dana gently explained to me that cutting out an entire food group is rarely sustainable. She told me whether it’s sweets or carbs or another category of food, the person who eats one way her whole life, and then changes her way of eating completely, especially in middle age, is extremely uncommon. And it’s not an expectation that most of us can realistically hold ourselves to.

Slowly, I realized what should have been clear to me years ago, what should be clear to every American: the vast majority of people who reach obesity stay that way. Or they yo-yo diet, but they don’t keep the weight off permanently. And that includes me.

(Yes, there are drugs like Ozempic, but even if my health insurance covered it, as soon as I no longer had that insurance, I’d have to give up such an expensive drug. It’s not practical.)

During our second meeting, Dana brought up a concept that was new for me: body grief. Body grief is grieving the body you aren’t going to have, whether it’s a physical state you used to have or one you never had but were trying for. Dana gave me some material from a coach called Bri Campos, and I started listening to her podcast. 

Until I listened to Dana, and began listening to Bri’s podcast, I fully believed that I just had to rewire my brain to not get depressed anymore, and heal 100% from every bit of trauma I’ve ever experienced, and keep a completely stable mood every day, and then I’d be able to stay off the sugar. And then my A1C and weight would come down, and I’d never have to worry about developing diabetes. 

Breaking that delusion has been devastating. I went from size 10 to size 18 in the final months of my marriage in 2013, until my then-husband told me, “I can’t do this anymore.” Since then, for different health problems (not overweight), doctors have had me cut out entire categories of food. More than once, I ate the way the doctor told me to, got the medical problem under control, lost weight, then went back to eating typically, had the health problem return, and gained the weight back. I slowly went up to size 20, then 22, then 24. All the while I remained calm because I told myself it was temporary. No need to despair. It wouldn’t be long before I’d once again tie my shoelaces without strain, regain the ability to do my favorite yoga poses, fit back into my favorite jacket, be able to cross my legs. 

Now I feel like I’ve been playing musical chairs with my weight, but the music has finally stopped and I’m stuck at morbidly obese. It feels like a nightmare of being trapped in a body that I tolerated because it was temporary, but now must settle into for the rest of my life. This body feels foreign. This body does not feel like who I am. This body is unmanageable.

I’m in mourning for the slimness I will not have again. I’ve been in mourning for well over a month now. I cry a lot. I rage a lot. I feel scared a lot. I don’t know how I’ll ever feel confident again, or date again, or not wince at what I see in the mirror. It’s hard to imagine living without shame and disappointment. My whole life I’ve struggled with self-hatred. Accepting my fatness has made that even worse.

A few things have stood out to me from Bri’s podcast:

1. The body has no normal.
2. Acceptance is a byproduct of grief. 
3. Acceptance doesn’t mean feeling comfortable or being happy with how things are. It’s an adjustment to what is, and a return to living.

Hearing these things has caused me both relief and discouragement. Apparently grieving the body I used to have won’t bring me happiness or contentment. It will just help me get on with my life.

I imagine a woman in grief over a family member. She’ll never think, “It’s better this way. I’m glad that happened.” She won’t say, “Everything DOES happen for a reason, and now I see that it’s good that my mother/father/love of my life died.” But if that woman allows the grief to roll through, she’ll eventually live her days without that loss being constantly front and center. Her grief will always occupy a certain space in her life, and it might still overwhelm her occasionally, but most of the time she won’t stay caught up in it.

So I guess that’s what I’m hoping for: reaching a point at which feeling how fat I am won’t occupy every minute, and shame won’t shout constantly in the background, and I won’t feel like a failure wherever I go. But that requires two things: that I feel the grief and allow it to pass through, and time.

People can grieve a death for years. I wonder if my grief will take that long, too.

Share this post: on Twitter on Facebook