On the first night of our trip to Colorado last month, Tony and I found a pizza place for dinner. Not realizing it would be freezing after sundown, we opted for outdoor seating and were led to a table on the adorable patio of an Italian restaurant. We ordered our food. Then we waited.
We waited some more.
I put on my fleece, and folded my arms against my body to keep warm. Excited to be on vacation, we started talking about our weekend plans. But the food still didn’t come. Tony pulled out his phone as he often does, and went to take a photo of me.
I smiled.
It wasn’t my best smile. It was my “I’m a little jet lagged, cold, and hungry” smile. So when I saw the photo Tony took, immediately I felt awful about how I looked. I asked him to delete it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first or last time on our trip I would do that.
When I saw the photo Tony took, immediately I felt awful about how I looked.
The next morning, we spent a few beautiful hours watching the sun rise on the red rocks of the Garden of the Gods. There, again, Tony started to take photo’s of us. But each photo reminded me of the weight I’ve gained over the past year and a half. With shame feeling dark and heavy in my chest, I asked him if we could take more photo’s of us later.
This awful feeling about how I looked, and the fear that I had let myself go, stayed with me. Until finally, later that morning, I stood at the bathroom mirror, putting on my makeup. In my reflection, all I could see was the dark circles that have been under my eyes for months. The shame began to feel heavier until suddenly I realized something:
My body was not letting me down.
Nor, had I let it go.
Since January of 2020, hard life things have been happening and they haven’t let up. I remembered every little and big thing I’ve been carrying. Things that had happened to those I love and to me. Things that have challenged our marriage, both making it stronger and us exhausted. And I looked in the mirror, and thought—
Of course you look like this. You’ve been through a lot.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, forty-two percent of Americans have reported unwanted weight gain. The average amount people have gained—twenty-nine pounds. This means almost half of us have experienced a significant shift in our bodies. Not because we haven’t been taking care of ourselves—but rather because we’ve been reacting to all the ways the pandemic has turned our lives upside down.
Almost half of us have experienced a significant shift in our bodies. Not because we haven’t been taking care of ourselves—but rather because we’ve been reacting to all the ways the pandemic has turned our lives upside down.
Friends, all of us have been through a lot. Yet as women, many of us are still trying to live up to the impossible standard of beauty our culture has given us—in the midst of holding ourselves and our lives together in the middle of a pandemic. We’re still believing harmful messages of how our body isn’t measuring up, when it’s our bodies that are carrying us through.
Very often, the first step in finding contentment, is practicing gratitude. A few years ago, around swimsuit season, I wrote a post about celebrating the things our bodies have done for us over the years. Quite a few women wrote to me to say they appreciated that post, but that being thankful for their bodies was very difficult.
We’re still believing harmful messages of how our body isn’t measuring up, when it’s our bodies that are carrying us through.
In this season, if you’re like me with a few extra pounds and dark circle under your eyes most days, being grateful for your body may be even more challenging. After decades of being told our bodies should be different—it’s easy to look at how our bodies have changed due to the stress of the pandemic, and believe they are letting us down. That we are letting ourselves down because we can’t seem to curb our eating or get out and exercise. Only,
Our body is not our enemy.
Our weight gain is not a sign of failure. It’s a sign of trauma. So instead of treating ourselves with contempt or shame, we need to begin to treat our bodies with appreciation. We need to thank them for how they keep showing up for us. We need to treat them as friends who have been through a lot—for us.
How has your body shown up for you during the pandemic?
What ways are you still beating up yourself and your body for not measuring up?
Friends, there are so many things we wish we had control over right now, but don’t. What we do have control over though is navigating this time as healthily as possible. Join me on this journey, and for more tools and content on how to do so, subscribe to my email list . If you do, you’ll receive my Five Ways to Declutter Your Mind PDF for free!
