I gained weight over the holidays. Will everything be okay?
A guest essay from Vogue's Emma Specter.
Today’s guest essay is from Emma Specter, a culture writer at Vogue and the author of the upcoming memoir, More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for "Enough." Her book, due out July 9, chronicles a lifelong fixation with food, and is as an examination of the ways in which compulsory thinness, diet culture, and the seductive promise of “wellness” have warped countless Americans’ relationship with healthy eating. Click here to pre-order More, Please, and read on for Emma’s advice to a Diemer struggling with weight gain after the holiday season.
But first, here’s what else people are talking about on Diem:
i’m 18 and just finished high school two months ago. what jobs could i search for?
how much of an inconvenience is it to suck d*** with coffin nails?
Is it normal to hate myself after finding my boyfriend’s porn?
First of all, at the risk of being corny, I want to thank you (and would love for you to thank yourself!) for bringing this question to Diem instead of just letting it rattle around in your brain. I’ve dealt with plenty of brain-rattling fear and anxiety about weight gain too, especially over the holidays; I don’t know about you, but I tend to find several weeks straight of family interaction just a touch stressful, and food is always there to soothe me when I’m feeling triggered by going to sleep at 8 p.m. in my childhood bedroom after a seventh-grade-style fight with my mom. Tough times aside, though, the holidays are also a time of mulled wine and peppermint bark and Yorkshire pudding and eggnog lattes and all kinds of other wonderful seasonal treats, and it’s okay to let yourself enjoy them even if it leads to weight gain. Weight gain is not the enemy; the voice in your head that tells you you’re a piece of shit for gaining weight is, and you’ll need help in silencing or at least quieting that voice (I definitely did!)
I don’t know if you’re at a place in your body journey to believe me about this, but I’m going to say it anyway: There is no amount of weight you could gain or lose that would make you more or less worthy of all the good things this world has to offer. I know this to be true as deeply as I know my own name, but I also know that it took years of therapy and eating disorder support-group attendance and exposure to all kinds of beautiful fat bodies for me to begin to believe it, so I’m not expecting you to read this and immediately feel better. I do hope, though, that you’ll allow yourself some grace and ask yourself: “What does this weight gain represent to me?” Is it just about the weight itself, or is it about your fear and anxiety that you won’t be loved or respected or understood in the way you want if you weigh 5kg more than you did before the holidays?
It’s really, really hard to accept change, whether it’s at work, in your personal life, or in your own body, but acknowledging that said change is happening–and that more change might come, too–is the first step. I want to gently encourage you to watch out for what Sonya Renee Taylor calls “meta-shame” (the state of feeling shame for feeling shame about our bodies), because you didn’t create the fatphobic beauty standard that so many of us still suffer under; you’re doing your best to live within and despite it, and that is not an easy thing. It is going to be okay, really, I promise, but it’s also okay to not be okay; let yourself sit with the complex, maybe-painful feelings you’re experiencing around your weight gain, and then go out or hop in the kitchen and buy or make your favorite meal for dinner, because you fucking deserve it.
Diem + Goss have joined forces for a *FREE* Sex and the City Quiz night in NYC. Cosmos will be provided by BODY vodka, of course. RSVP here by answering a very important question: Which of Carrie Bradshaw’s boyfriends would be most likely to eat you out on your period? (And feel free to invite friends!)
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