5 ways to feel better in your body right now

These things are all way easier than continual self-flagellation

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CONTENT WARNING: This post includes references to abusive relationships, suicide, and disordered eating. Please take care and feel free to pass on this one. Also, I’m sending virtual hugs if you have been impacted by any of these issues.

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I have plenty of holes in my memory around important events, so I’m often struck by how seemingly small moments have lodged themselves with great precision in my gray matter.

And there’s no shortage of seemingly small moments that have to do with judgment about my body.

During a recent Edit Your Life conversation with

Dacy Gillespie

, we talked about body stories. Dacy recommended reflecting back on these stories as a way to square up with the reality that you were likely fed a lot of B.S. about your physical being. The eventual goal is to recognize the absurdity of these narratives so you can step onto the path towards self-acceptance and appreciating the body you’re living in now.

Some of my body stories include:

• In my experience, Koreans are blunt and also pretty brutal about telling you that you are fat—often while instructing you to clean your plate. As a kid, my body type was neither lean nor large, which meant I wasn’t subject to as many direct criticisms. That said, I heard and internalized plenty of negative talk around body size, clothing sizes, and how those things relate to being considered a “good” and “attractive” girl/woman.

• At a family gathering, a relative I hadn’t seen in a long time greeted me by yanking out the neckline of my shirt and peering down the front so she could check and comment on the state of my breast development. This experience was mortifying in and of itself, and it also made me feel that during this already challenging time of physical changes—exacerbated by lack of sex education—everyone was judging me and boundaries were nonexistent.

• In middle or high school, somehow a Suzanne Somers ThighMaster (or knockoff) made its way into our house. The message was clear: thighs need to be minimized. Also, blonds were superior.

• Not long after high school graduation I was at the beginning of an abusive relationship that lasted three years. My freshman year included a series of intense manipulations by my abuser—e.g., a (fake) suicide threat via pills and alcohol, disappearance, and stalking—that led to a dynamic where I tried not to anger or irritate him, worked to earn praise, and felt trapped as his only person. During the summer after my freshman year of college, I started losing weight due to stress and not having time to eat, given that I worked an office job in Boston during 9 to 5 hours, then often took public transit directly to a night job scooping ice cream until 11pm. As the weight started falling off, he said, “You’re starting to look good.” To reduce his criticism and abuse and earn praise, I started restricting my eating intentionally, dropping about 20-25 pounds in an alarmingly short period of time.

• After that summer, I returned to campus and a classmate remarked on how “amazing” and “much better” I looked—the direct implication being that skinny was better, and also perhaps that I didn’t look so great before. (This person and I experienced a lot of friction freshman year so these comments felt loaded.)

AND SO FORTH. This is just the tip of my personal iceberg. I wouldn’t be surprised if you have an iceberg (or two) of your own.

The collective impact of negative body stories takes its toll. I am 51 years old, more than three decades past my summer of disordered eating. I am a confident, competent, and generally content person who has co-built a home environment/family system that is unconditionally caring and full of love and joy. And yet I’m not immune to judgment, or the potential for those body stories and narratives to creep into my mind. That said, while I still have moments where I wouldn’t mind shedding the layer of padding I acquired during the pandemic, I’d also much rather be in a mindset where I accept my physical self for wherever I am in the moment.

Because I deserve it.

You deserve it too.

And so, below are five ways I feel better in my body in the present. It is, in fact, possible to take concrete, simple actions in this domain, even while doing the work of squaring up with the absurd judgments of other people, or the realities of the narratives driven by the patriarchy and consumer marketing. Speaking of those narratives,

Karen Walrond

and I talked about this in an interview for a Boston Globe Magazine piece I wrote on ageism. Shame-based marketing is there for a reason. The purpose is to make you feel crappy about yourself so you buy something to fix the problem. This is a loving reminder that the problem is not you.

1. Skip the scale

The summer where I experienced a direct connection between weight loss and my abuser’s treatment, I weighed myself multiple times a day on the scale in my parents’ bathroom, praying for the needle to go down. I was fortunate to be saved by timing and friends. I returned to college after the summer, which created a much needed buffer, and I received real talk from a couple of caring, concerned friends. I stopped restricting my eating and returned to a healthy place where my pelvic bones were no longer jutting out (which prompted my abuser to call me Porky Pig). I also vowed to never step on the scale at my parents’ house, or own a scale after I moved out, which has been fantastic. I figure that unless there is a medically necessary reason one needs to monitor weight, there’s no need to have an instrument of judgment—and trigger of bad memories—in my space.

2. Ask to skip the weight read out at the doctor’s office

Speaking of medical necessity, when I go to my well visits, I tell the staff member doing my vitals that I don’t want/need to hear my weight unless there is a medical concern. When I was pregnant with Laurel and Violet, I actually felt fantastic about my body, but I still told my doctor and midwife that we only needed to talk about weight if there was a concern related to my babies or my health.

By the way, related to weight and doctor’s visits, if you have ever found yourself feeling crappy about your BMI, know that BMI is B.S. too—in terms of being a measure by which you are categorically judged. For a recent medical perspective, see this article, BMI Was Never Intended to Be a Diagnostic Tool, by Brandy W. Root, RDN.

3. Choose clothes based on your actual measurements not arbitrary size numbers

During my conversation with Dacy, we talked about the arbitrary nature of clothing size numbers (see her article sizing is a dumpster fire; LOL best title ever). I have heard so many women fret over size numbers (e.g., whether they can still fit into a certain size). If this tracks for you, I invite you—urge you—to let that nonsense go. Dacy’s post offers historical background on why sizing is B.S., and at a baseline level, because clothing size numbers are not standard to actual inches or centimeters, it’s not helpful to benchmark yourself against them. For example, I have clothing ranging from a size 2 to a size 10, as well as XS to L. If you lay them all on top of one another they are about the same dimensions (i.e., they all fit me now), which is ridiculous.

Measure yourself and buy the size that aligns with that measurement. If you’re struggling with seeing whatever that clothing size number is, cut the tag out!

4. Wear clothing that fits and feels great

Related to my previous point, clothing should feel good. Stop trying to squeeze into things that don’t fit. If you need to squeeze into something, suck it in, not breathe, etc., you are doing a disservice to your body and mind. Dacy noted:

“If you want to feel better in your body right now, if you want to have a concrete step you can take towards body acceptance, buying clothes that fit is the most tactile, the most somatic experience you can have that will push you down that road. Because we all know what it feels like to put on clothes that are too tight or uncomfortable, and we all know how that makes us just aware of our body all the time, right? If we're wearing pants that are too tight, it's going to be something we’re aware of all day.”

Ironically, the pandemic helped me lean into thinking about how to be as comfortable as possible when I need to get out of my sweats. Yes, part of that strategy involves elastic waist pants and denim, breezy tops, and dresses that feel like wearing a velour tracksuit, but it’s also about choosing items that fit my body in the present. No more pinching! Breathing is important!

5. Focus on a different metric

As a former scientist, I typically love data and numbers, but as described earlier, when it comes to weight, I am not interested in numbers. Instead, if you want to feel better in your body, focus on a different metric. In my amazing and joyful rowing/strength classes, it has been pretty magical to feel myself getting stronger. Now I delight in metrics such as picking up and getting through repetitions with a heavier set of weights, the ability to go deeper in lunges (which are typically very challenging for me), and maintaining full plank form for longer. Other ideas include increased flexibility, distance or time on a bike or walking/running, or even basic things like drinking more ounces of water in a day. (It continues to blow my mind how water solves so many freaking physical ailments!)

I am finishing this post just after returning home from a class where I used 12 pound weights for the first time. Having started at 5 pound weights a couple of months back, this feels pretty freaking awesome! Thank you, body!

The reality is, our bodies change, and many of us are holding onto old narratives that need to change too. There was a moment during my conversation with Dacy where she noted that she encourages people towards a mindset of, “I don’t have to fight this anymore,” when it comes to accepting our changing bodies. I felt my breath catch in my chest because this simple and powerful statement captures the absurdity of how women are conditioned to fight their own existence.

But we have agency in this journey. We can choose to do it a different way. And we deserve it.

Final thoughts

First, as you move towards a better place with your personal, internal work, I encourage you to also examine your response when these issues come up in your relationships. There are a couple of common scenarios I encounter related to body issues, and while there are nuances to each interaction and I handle them depending on my mood and the moment, this is generally how I operate:

• If the situation feels intentionally toxic (e.g., someone of a smaller build talking about how fat they feel to people they know have struggled with weight, offering to lend clothes to someone who would not fit in them, etc.) I just don’t take the bait; I refuse to say, “Oh, don’t be silly. You look amazing!” And if the relationship warrants it, I reach out to the person to whom the bait is intended (if it’s not me) with love and care and a calling out of the B.S. baiting tactic.

• The more common scenario I encounter is women self-flagellating over their size and changing shape. Depending on the relationship and situation, I tend to either make a lighthearted comment to plant a seed of awareness (e.g., “I get that it can be hard, but just cut out the damn tag. Clothing sizes are bullshit!”) or engage in a deeper interaction (e.g., starting with, “It sounds like you are really struggling with this…” and engaging further around body acceptance).

I am definitely a “step into the conversation” person, and I know it can be awkward, and I think women deserve to have space to talk about these issues and we need to change the narrative together.

Second, if you are in the sphere of girls/young women, please take care. This means doing things such as not self-flagellating about your changing body or commenting on their physical shape (positively or negatively; let’s just stop doing that). There is enough toxic messaging out there; your job is to work to reverse that tide.

Third, since I mentioned shame-based marketing above: Another way you can encourage change is through your consumer actions. For example, one concrete way I do this is through my podcast, because I feel that my voice can impact both brands and consumers (listeners). Because I am part of a podcast network that manages advertising for me, I receive vetting emails for brands that want to advertise on my show. I routinely turn down weight loss products, and I explain why. And when it comes to skin care products, with each vetting, I repeat that I will not work with a brand that requires my read to include anti-aging marketing (words like “anti-aging” and “age defying” make me want to throw things against the wall), and I explain why.