I got unsolicited weight loss advice yesterday.
And while I appreciated the friend’s vulnerability in sharing what has helped her in her journey to self love, I had to tell her, “No thanks” because I’m dealing with reprogramming my brain and I have to avoid ANYTHING that might talk about weight loss and since the website for this program had giant fonts/banners solely with messages about losing weight, I didn’t think that wold be great for my mental health.
This has happened a lot recently. People reaching out to give me advice I didn’t ask for about weight loss/fitness/health. I think people assume I want to lose the weight I have gained in the last 4’ish years. Why else would I keep getting unsolicited advice about diets that worked or podcasts about weight loss or fitness apps?
With this specific recent exchange I asked myself: Did I post something on the internet that might have been interpreted as wanting to lose weight? BECAUSE I NEED TO CLARIFY THAT SHIT, STAT.
I do this every time I get unsolicited advice. I look at things I posted and wonder what I said that indicated I might need “help” with things surrounding my weight because I do not want to give off that message. I want to give off the opposite message: That I love this body no matter what it weighs.
But truthfully, the only thing that I think is causing the onslaught of unsolicited weight loss advice is: I got fat.
I think the general assumption is if you gain weight that you probably want to lose it. But here’s the thing…
I do NOT want to lose the weight I gained.
Sometimes I say stuff out loud as a mantra to convince myself of something I don’t fully believe yet. Sometimes I write down things I want to believe someday but don’t quite yet. But let me tell you: That statement right there? There is no wavering. I say it with the more conviction than I say anything else. I have no desire to lose the weight I have gained.
As someone who spent the better part of ages 14-41 trying to lose weight…this is a HUGE change in my life. FOR THE BETTER. And it is not a change that I waver on. There is no part of me that longs to be thin again.
NO. NOT AT ALL.
I may struggle to love this body sometimes, but I hated my body all of the time when I was constantly trying to lose weight. AT EVERY WEIGHT. I took “before” photos when I have weighed 140lbs and 110lbs. I was never satisfied. I was always trying to get thinner or more muscle definition or better quads or defined arms or skinnier and skinnier and skinnier…because I hated my body at EVERY SIZE.
So there is no part of me that wants to lose weight ever again. Or really do anything to change what I see when I look in the mirror. I want to learn how to dress that body. I want to learn how to style that body. I don’t want to change that body.
Here is what I my personal “health” journey is currently: To love the body I have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To love myself every second of every day. If I am doing something active, it has nothing to do with what my body looks like. As a matter of fact, I stopped using the word “exercise” completely because it has so many connotations around dieting. Instead I use words and phrases like: Being Active, Movement, Nature Bath, and Adventures.
The only reason I once in awhile still struggle loving this body is because of all of the programming done living in a society that defines beauty and health in very strict fatphobic parameters. We live in a culture where everyone is trying to not be fat - like being fat is the worst thing a person can be. Even our medical professionals have been biased against fat people. Here’s a great article that breaks down all the ways we’ve been misinformed about weight loss. So, from bad medical understandings of weight, to beauty and diet industries that profit off our self-hatred…we are all raised with the same (implicit and explicit) anti-fat bias. The same anti-fat bias that means everyone assumes the person who gained weight wants to lose it.
So basically every time I’m given unsolicited advice I have to remind myself: This person is not trying to hurt you by assuming you need help you didn’t ask for. They have also been programmed in the same fat-hating culture that you grew up in.
The other things people are assuming is that my weight gain and my depression have a causal relationship. I think because I’m so open with my mental health struggles and it’s so obvious I’ve gained weight…people like to assume one caused the other.
For the record, when I say “people assume” it’s because someone actually said this to me. I think the exact quote was “I struggled with depression after I stopped running and gained weight too…” I was not lying when I said I’ve been getting this kind of “advice” a lot.
There’s these misconceptions about mental health and fatness:
1) If you’re depressed, then you just need to eat better and exercise more and then your mental health would improve.
2) If you’re fat you are surely depressed.
People assume either I’m depressed because I gained weight or I gained weight because I’m depressed. And let me tell you - there is definitely a correlation, but not a causation.
Let me break down my life for you in gory detail, okay? Because I just want people to understand the journey that could lead a person to be more depressed and more fat, but the two not have a causal relationship.
I felt into a depression in 2016 after the election. This comes as no surprise to anyone who was reading my blog back then. It was a whiplash type of downward spiral that disrupted all of the balance that I had achieved with my mental health since my Dad had died in several years earlier. 2016, coincidentally, was also my peak running year. Before the election I had achieved my 110K goal and had PR’d a bunch of races including getting the elusive sub-2 hour half marathon time.
Note: My mental health was not balanced before the election because I was active and thin. My mental health was balanced because I had spent the previous years working through a grief therapy program and worked through a lot of childhood grief from abandonment issues with my Mom so Child Kim was finally healing.
What I had yet to address was Adult Kim. And the 2016 election simply shook the balance which caused a depression and that depression forced me to do a lot of introspection. You see, Adult Kim had been told in earlier years that she showed signs of body dysmorphia and a binge eating disorder but Adult Kim needed to heal Child Kim because the grief was drowning her in the moment and so she pushed the Adult Kim things to the side.
So, when my mental health began to slide in 2016, it was Adult Kim who was deteriorating. That meant it was time to face all of Adult Kim’s problems now that the foundation of a healed inner-child was strong.
The work was slow, the learning was painful. I had to look deep at the habits I had developed in my fitness journey and start to face the pain behind them all. I often joked about sneak-eating a dozen donuts in my car, but that was no joke. That’s a Binge Eating Disorder. The “purge” part of my cycle was running 25 miles the next day. I also was obsessively tracking calories and miles in my damn bullet journal. But most importantly: I hated myself every time I looked in the mirror. 130lb Ultra Runner Kim looked in the mirror and hated herself. I felt like I looked gross and ugly and fat and terrible and just wanted to keep losing weight. Hello Body Dysmorphia!
Adult Kim had some work to do.
But I really didn’t start understanding the effects of these issues until around 2018 when I got started getting a clear view on what obsessing over weight loss can take from a person’s joy of life. I had been obsessing over my weight under the guise of “improving my running” for years and with experience and therapy and studying and shifting perspectives I got a strange outside view on what that obsession caused me to lose: I was never fully present at mealtimes with friends because I was always thinking about calories and how many miles I might need to run to negate the meals/beers. Food was not something I enjoyed completely because all I could think about was how it balanced out with my running. When I wanted something that wasn’t “good for me” I would sneak and binge a lot of it (making myself sick) and then drown in shame later. And then I would look back at the Kim who binged all of that and be so disappointed in her. I started to see all of these habits for what they were: HATING MYSELF IN EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY.
2018 was also the year I lived off and on with my Mom and I got a very clear view of what happens to someone who never faces their own demons or never works to heal the things that cause them to self-sabotage. Her demons were very different from mine, but the way she obviously struggled with self-loathing was eye-opening because it was like I could see what the manifestations were of that untreated self-hatred.
So I really think my “healing” started in 2018 and every year since I’ve gotten better and better.
I’ve also gotten fatter and fatter.
And while I’m healing a big part of my soul with giant doses of Radical Self Love, I’m still often depressed as fuck and I still suffer from anxiety disorder because…
My brain chemistry is off! Just like it’s always been off!
This is another thing I think people forget. There’s a lot of healing that can be done with therapy and lifestyle changes and that’s important, but my brain chemistry is still off just like it was when I was running 70 miles a week and weighed 130lbs.
That’s probably never going to change and that is okay.
What is not okay is hating myself, so I practice Radical Self Love. I don’t worry about losing weight. I don’t even worry about gaining weight except for the practical side of needing new clothes. I recognize that I am a soul and a spirit more important than a body and while I want to love this body and take care of it, I’m not going to assign some value to it defined by industries that only profit if we hate our aging faces and our gray hair and our flat butts and our stretch marks and our muffin tops.
So I just simply wanted to post my story as an example and a reminder that people who gain weight may not want to lose it and people who seem fat and depressed can still love their lives and love themselves. I saw a tweet this morning that was something like, “If you woke up as the version of yourself you want to be, what would be the first thing you do?” and my honest-to-god thought was: This is a bonkers tweet. Why assume I’m not currently the version of myself I want to be? I am always the version of myself I want to be aside from the periodic struggles with loving myself and so I guess my answer is: Love myself as I am?
This showed me how much I have changed. I was always on a journey of “self-improvement” or “betterment” and while I definitely have habits I’m trying to work on, they’re rooted in love of my current self. And it may seem like a small change to some people but to me? It’s huge.
Also…just in case my rambling wasn’t clear…Offering unsolicited weight loss advice to a fat person, especially if you’re a skinny person, often times comes off as Concern Trolling and I would just like people to stop doing it.
Thank you for this post. I’m not in a good place with self love. I love that the article resonated with you.
I love all the things about this post!
Last night I had a conversation with myself, to stop comparing my now-self to my younger-self and to others. I'm not as "fit" as I was but that's ok. Time I would've ridden miles on my bike instead I'm going to baseball and softball games and loving it. I'm not trained to do a 70.3 race in July that got deferred from last year. And I'm still telling myself, that's ok, you don't HAVE to do it.
Thank you for your love and transparency. 💙