When I was 18, I went to fat camp. By 22, I had entered rehab for anorexia. It’s like I spent my college years crafting my own E! True Hollywood Story, but more Ensure, less coke.
Now I’m in my 30s, and my relationship to my body is not quite healed, not quite sick. It hangs somewhere in the balance.
Maintaining my weight through regularly scheduled, therapist-approved habits, like meal prepping and avoiding alcohol, has gotten harder. While I’m no longer torturing myself into an engineered body, I can admit I’m not as comfortable in both my clothing and movements as I once was. Basically, I’ve gained weight, and I’m not loving it.
I’m navigating a new, unwelcome irony: I want to feel stronger and more at ease in my skin, but I’m terrified that trying to lose weight will be a gateway drug to losing my mind.
For the past decade, I’ve been working on accepting my body in all circumstances and states, letting go of perceived judgments, and, frankly, not being a complete lunatic about every calorie. But the very idea of losing weight can so easily summon back the ghosts of food rules, obsession, and the cycle of restrict, binge, punish, repeat.
Is it possible to improve my energy and feel more comfortable in my body without surrendering to the old playbook? What if losing fat doesn’t need to be an expression of self-hatred, but instead an act of self-love?
Often, I feel like I’m balancing on a Bosu ball—one direction leads to toxic diet culture, another to unhealthy weight gain. Backward is relapse. Forward is … ambiguity. And every time I get advice, I tip too far and fall flat on my face in a room full of hot people.
Much of the weight-loss advice is stuff you’ve undoubtedly heard before: eat balanced meals of protein, complex carbs, veggies, and healthy fats, says Michael G. Wetter, director of psychology for the Eating Disorders Program at the University of California at Los Angeles. Don’t cut out food groups. Pick exercise you actually enjoy. And while all of that sounds simple enough, it gets messier when you’ve spent years in the trenches of disordered eating.
My treatment team tells me to avoid all-or-nothing thinking, to eat the damn ice cream, and to focus on reducing stress and improving sleep. But then I open my phone and see that this week’s trending weight-loss advice includes: reduce caloric intake, lift heavier, and cut sugar completely. Somewhere in the middle is me, spiraling.
So I needed an actual plan. Here’s what’s helped.
I opt for timed group classes on ClassPass instead of wandering a gym aimlessly. There’s something helpful about having someone else set the pace—and let’s be real, some boiled-chicken-obsessed dude built the program, and he probably never threw a baked potato at a nurse’s head in rehab. (She had a fake British accent—she deserved it.) Structure helps. Chaos does not.
As for my diet, Wetter says to “work with a dietitian to create a structured meal plan that includes three meals and one to two snacks daily, spaced no more than four hours apart. This reduces the risk of bingeing or obsessive thinking about food.”
I’ve also gotten into somatic therapy around food with the help of a workbook. As Wetter suggests, I’ve been using technology with apps like Recovery Record to track my thoughts and feelings during meals. The Strong app is also great for reframing fitness to be process-oriented, like focusing on mobility and endurance rather than solely on calories burned.
Although experts discourage the elimination of entire food categories, I’ve learned that setting gentle limits around sugar (like sticking to one or two small chocolates a day and prioritizing naturally occurring sugars from fruit) helps me manage my triggers. I sleep better, stay fuller longer, and poop like a champion, thanks to all the fiber.
I may still be body checking in the mirror or reading labels for hidden sugars like they’re legal documents. All I can do is continue to get back on the Bosu ball and hope my efforts produce a stronger core. I believe that, over time, losing weight isn’t just about a visual change but an emotional one as well. And maybe, even, a feeling of peace.
Chelsea Frank is a Los Angeles–based writer of fiction, comedy, and travel journalism. She writes a food column for Forbes and contributes to InStyle, Popular Science, TripSavvy, and Uproxx
