I was lying to myself...
+ how I discovered body grief
The year is 2015.
I’m sitting in my therapists office in downtown Nyack wearing my workout gear.
I had just finished telling her about this 10 week health detox prescribed by my doctor. When I described it, she claimed it sounded. Intense but I assured her that it was for my health [even though the doctors and I ultimately wanted the results to be weight loss.]
My therapist, Maggie asked: How do you define health?
I shared the rehearsed response I told everyone: exercise daily, eat healthy foods + not feel out of control around it.
Maggie: So then by that definition, you’re already healthy.
Brianna: No - I also need to lose weight.
Maggie: Okay, how much weight do you need to lose to be healthy?
*now at this point I was getting irritated*
Brianna: I don’t know, I just know I can’t be healthy in this body.
Maggie: does it feel true to say that weight loss is also important to you for health
Brianna: I don’t care what my weight is, I just know I need to be smaller
Maggie: I hear what you’re saying.. but cognitively, are seeing the dissonance in what you are saying? You are telling me you need to lose weight to be healthy, but that wasn’t in the definition of health you gave. You aren’t willing to say that weight loss is important to you, but you also know that it is a non-negotiable.
*the woman was too stunned to speak*
Brianna: I don’t want weight loss to be important to me…
Maggie: Let’s try this thought experiment. If we were to take health aside for just a moment. We are going to pretend that all but your weight, you are healthy. Will that be enough for you?
It was in that moment that I realized I had been lying to myself.
I knew the right words to say and no one every questioned them.
Weight was important to me. And I didn’t want it to be.
Two things can exist at the same time.
A few weeks later:
I returned to the doctors post detox.
I had followed it to a T. No cheating.
I skipped out on all the fun foods at all the events — one of my best friends weddings, at a retreat I sang at, and my favorite holiday of all time — my birthday.
I drank this nasty shake that I had to hold my nose to consume x2 a day. I did it. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was proud.
I lost some weight, but I was miserable + hungry.
I was so excited to move into the “re-entry” phase of adding in foods. [Goodbye nasty shakes].
And that was when the doctor told me, he’d like me to continue with the detox…
I started crying.
So I asked him for how long would we continue the gross shake phase.
And he said, “until you are healthy”.
Devastated does not even begin to describe what I felt.
I went back to therapy to process. Maggie asked me what story I was telling myself.
If I didn’t exist in a smaller body, why would that be so bad?
The real the fear for 2015 year old Bri was that existing in a fat body meant that no man was ever going to be attracted to her. Boy oh boy was she so wrong.
Here’s why I was stuck oscillating between the dissonance.
As human beings, we will try to evade the uncomfortable. The unknown is SCARY, unchartered territory. Our nervous system is trying to protect us in the only way it knows how.
Here’s the problem:
Avoiding discomfort is like putting a bandaid on a wound that needs surgery. How long will the bandaid hold?
Here is the unavoidable, hard truth:
Weight loss will not protect you from difficult body image moments.
The worst part about healing your body image it is that in order to NOT feel pain around your body image — you have to face the discomfort.
Discomfort is required for growth.
You have to be willing to look at the side the cliff you are hanging off of… and either you can keep holding on. Or you have let go and drop down in the chasm of the unknown.
Diet culture + Body Hatred is that side of the cliff.
Radical Body Acceptance is on the other side of the cliff. But you cannot get there till you navigate through the chasm of darkness below.
That chasm, that darkness is called body grief.
And you can pretend that “it’s not that bad”. You can say that your motivations aren’t for aesthetics - but for health or comfort and ease. You can diet, take GLP1s, get weight loss surgery [this is the body autonomy].
But unless you learn how to tolerate discomfort and shift your beliefs about what that discomfort is saying about you — you are putting a lot of faith in that bandaid to heal your body hatred wound.
Dear Body Griever:
You are probably a badass in real life [even if you don’t feel like one]. Maybe you have an amazing job or an awesome partner or family....You are skilled + talented + brilliant + loved… And yet this body shame makes you feel small, stupid, + frustrated. Healing feels futile + hopeless.
Maybe life is already HARD and you cannot imagine it being any harder.
You are grieved by:
Needing to ask for a table instead of a booth or booking an extra seat during a flight
being limited in clothing options, even in plus size stores
having a hard time going to the bathroom, tying your shoes or standing for long periods of time
trying to find a comfortable way to have sex in this larger body
You feel stuck in this body you hate and it feels like there is no way out...
If you are thinking - “Bri... kindly get the f*ck out of my head” - instead, I invite you to step into my head for one hour in my free webinar.
This is your time to ask your most uncomfortable body grief questions, out loud.
We will navigate through the suck of your grief - together.
