Body Image Part 1: Weight Change

Hello!

Today I thought I'd have a chat about something that's pretty much constantly on my mind; My body, and more specifically, my weight. I have believed that I am fat since I was about 9 so I don't think I've ever really had much body confidence. This got worse during my teens as I developed into a very curvy shape alongside girls who were naturally much slimmer - hence the reason why I've titled this as a part one of a series. However, I'm not going to ramble on about the diets of my teens, I'm going to talk about now. The year of 2017 has basically been a year of noticeable weight changes for me. My weight went up a lot in the first half of the year, and then it dropped very quickly in the second half. The thing is, the weight change wasn't due to dietary change and it was unintentional in both cases which is why it has been extremely hard over the past year to accept my body the way it is.

I'll start with the weight gain. In January I'd been on the contraceptive implant for just over a year and it really wasn't working for me. I won't go into too much detail because I want to write about it later but I ended up having to take the combination contraceptive pill alongside the implant to regulate my periods (they were lasting over 3 weeks!!). As soon as I was getting a double dose of hormone, my weight (and my mood swings) skyrocketed. My natural body size is a UK size 10 and I swelled up to a 14 in two months. A good marker is a ball dress I wore to the university sports ball in January that I also wore to a recital in June.

In the picture on the left, the dress fit comfortably, with lots of room to spare. On the right, I struggled with the zip and it was uncomfortably tight. I couldn't believe I had put on so much weight, especially when my diet had not changed.

The weight gain upset me a huge amount. I decided that I must do something about it - anything to stop me from feeling so revolting. Now, I am not saying that anyone who is a size 14 or above is really fat, not at all. It's just that at my height which is 5'3" and with my natural body size, the extra weight looked wrong, and felt wrong. I cut out biscuits and sweet things from my diet, I tried to eat as much fruit and veg as possible (despite having a healthy diet anyway), I tried not drink alcohol, and I'd drink as much water as I could. I started doing 100 squats, 50 sit ups, and 50 heel raises every day, and would go to the gym and throw myself into at least an hour of cardio as often as I could. To my utter dismay, nothing shifted. I still felt bloated, my clothes were too tight, and I hated my boyfriend touching my body, refusing to believe him with he insisted that he still thought I was beautiful.

What made things more uncomfortable was seeing people staring at me, especially my family. They didn't say anything but I watched my mum watching me as I ate, clearly trying to work out whether it was a dietary issue but said nothing; evidently she saw nothing to be concerned about. But still, she watched me. My friends also seemed to notice, but what was killing me, was that no-one dared to say anything but I felt like I was letting everyone down because I was no longer as small as I was before. My grandmother was mildly obsessed with shape, and with watching her figure. She would also make a habit out of pointing out fat people. My mum is far less intense, but I have watched her fussing over her shape and commenting on it ever since I can remember. Being uncomfortable with any kind of weight gain was ingrained, I guess. However, mum wasn't stupid, she could see that I was battling with the weight that wouldn't shift, and also battling with irrational mood swings and suggested that I get the implant out - I'd never wanted it anyway! So, I got it out, and the weight finally started to come off. It wasn't me after all! I started to feel a bit more comfortable with what I looked like, though I still worried that I was still too fat, and still much bigger than I had been before. I told myself that once I got back to university, the weight would shift faster with all the walking as I could still see that I had a way to go. I'll use another comparison. A dress I wore to a ceilidh in early February and also to a ceilidh in Freshers week.

And I did lose the weight... My God did I lose it...

So, I'd been cruising through the term nice and easily, and I felt good... then everything crashed. On October 14th, I threw up from anxiety for the first time. From that point on, I was unable to eat properly, and threw up nearly every day for 2 to 3 weeks. I'd already been losing weight from all the rushing around campus but it was at this point that the weight just fell off... This is where I am just now. Thankfully, the sickness has stopped and I can eat normally again and the weight is coming off more slowly. But I can't help feeling self conscious about it, especially as I dropped back down to a 10 (or smaller, as my clothes are gaping on me) in a month or two...

The picture on the left was taken in August when I hadn't lost anything. The picture on the right was this weekend. Admittedly, there's not much of me on show, but I feel like there's a noticeable difference in the face. The picture at the top with the skirt was taken about 2 weeks ago, and when the summer pictures were taken, it was skin tight.

It's funny, because I was trying so desperately to lose weight over the summer but now it's been lost in such an uncontrolled way, I feel extremely conscious. I'm feeling the stares on me again, for a totally different reason. I went home for a weekend when I was feeling particularly ill with anxiety and I just wanted to hide. I saw the surprise on my boyfriend's parents' faces. Needless to say, when I asked him if they'd noticed, he admitted that his mum had voiced her concern. And, like it was in the summer, when Joe puts his hands on me, I worry because of the difference in my body shape. My ribs show prominently when I lie down and I panic that he finds it uncomfortable when he holds me, despite him still insisting that he thinks I'm beautiful.

Though, I am not skinny. I know this, and I will never be skinny naturally. So it seems ridiculous, and narcissistic that even though I've lost a lot of weight very quickly, I still want to be skinny, despite feeling uncomfortable being smaller. I suppose going through so much change in one year, it's going to be very hard to accept my body because it's not constant. And I know that people are probably reading this and thinking they hadn't noticed or that I'm making a fuss over nothing. And I know that nobody is going to look at me and think "Goodness me, isn't she slim!" or "Goodness me, isn't she fat!" because I am neither of those things. But, right now, I feel uncomfortable whatever I am. So, from now, I'm going to try my best to like what I have... Maybe not all the way to love, but God loves a trier!

Now, I know that I've rambled on forever but it needed saying and I really hope that you found it helpful in some way, or at the very least, it explained my weight changes if you'd been wondering.

So, I'll leave you with a picture I took in January when I felt quite confident in my own skin so maybe I'll keep looking at it to remind myself that it is possible.

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Lots of Love,

Sarah xxx

Today's Track: Quindon Tarver 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)' - one of the pieces that gets me through anything so I hope it helps you as much as it does me!