I lost weight and found more fear underneath
Thoughts on being asked if I've lost weight (trigger warnings for discussions of weight and diets).
BIG TRIGGER WARNING HERE: I’m discussing weight loss, diets, and body image in the ahead newsletter. I really, strongly advise that if you find any of these topics triggering, you don’t read on.
It’s a bit of a follow-up to this newsletter I wrote back in June, which had a really incredible response. If you haven’t read that June newsletter yet, please do so before reading this one.
Have you lost weight?
Have you lost, like, a *lot* of weight?
Have you got thinner?
Are you on Mounjaro?
How did you get skinny?
It’s always a question rather than a statement, and I never know the right answer.
Do I play it cool? Act like I hadn’t even noticed? Oh, this old body?
Do I do the self-deprecation thing, the same way I would if I got a compliment on my hair? Oh, no, I’m still big. My thighs still rub together when I walk. I have a belly roll, promise.
Am I supposed to say yes, actually, more than 20kg? Admit I hadn’t weighed myself since university, but that this year, I bought a set of scales and hop on there every week? Apologise for my stomach rumbling?
The first people to ask were my parents. In the hallway of the house, saying hello, they threw it in and caught me off guard: ‘have you lost weight?’. My reply: ‘God, I hope so’, followed by a subject change, rushing them through to the kitchen and offering cups of tea.
Then a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. ‘Have you lost, like, a lot of weight?’. I’m wearing a dress that’s having its first outing despite being bought months earlier. A green silky tea dress. I ordered it initially in a panic for a wedding. Tried it on and hated the visible curve of my belly straining against the fabric. Now it’s a little oversized. ‘Oh, maybe? Thank you!’
Then over Christmas and into January, questions in quick succession. Family members. Hair stylists. The Sainsbury’s delivery driver. Anyone who I hadn’t seen for a decent chunk of time. Friends said nothing. I’m not sure whether they didn’t notice (perhaps seeing a slow, gradual change didn’t register. It certainly worked that way for me) or they’re of the same culture as me, one where commenting on someone’s weight is seen as wildly inappropriate?
We’re not supposed to admit to wanting to lose weight. It’s been that way for a while. Millennials like me were raised in the depths of diet culture; special K diets (the cereal, not the drug) and going carb-free and shaking branded maracas through daily Zumba classes. Then along came body positivity. And suddenly being ‘on a diet’ was deeply unchic, although you could get away with it if you described your restriction as ‘eating clean’ or ‘doing whole 30’.
We weren’t supposed to try to lose weight. But equally, fatphobia and intense judgment on bodies remained, so being thin was still in. You just had to do it naturally. The 2010s were a time of chill girl models who were photographed eating pizza.
By 2020, performative food enjoyment was passé. Instead you needed to love, or at the very least accept, your body. Or be neutral about it. Know that you’re more than your appearance and think of deeper things than your hunger; read The Body Keeps The Score. But equally… you needed to be healthy. Be mindful of what you’re putting into your body! That peanut butter is ultra-processed! And seed oils, the horror!
Finally, the last two years. Ozempic arrived in Hollywood and the power of skinny was everywhere. Celebrities started out saying they were just walking more — hiking, so much hiking! — until it became OK (for some of them) to say they were injecting themselves to eat less. Buccal fat removal was a buzzword, formerly full-cheeked women showing up with sculpted, skeletal faces out of nowhere. Headlines queried if this was the end of body positivity, pointing out the shrinking sizes on runways and red carpets. On social media, bodyshaming of all varieties continued to be rampant — slim women called fat, normal anatomy framed as ‘gross’, any woman over the age of 25 old and haggard and in need of Botox.
Ozempic started out as a weird celebrity thing but it began trickling down to the norm. Wegovy arrived, along with Mounjaro. Soon my For You page was filled with people sharing what they eat in a day on Mounjaro (spoiler: not much!). But for most people it stayed a dirty secret. Online chatter said that if you used Mounjaro to lose weight it was ‘cheating’, that you were lazy and that your weight loss was tainted with shame. We spoke about it in whispers and made it into a game. Do you think that influencer who’s suddenly no longer plus-size is on the jabs? Being on weight-loss injections held, for a brief moment, a sort of mysterious glamour. It was what celebrities and the ultra-rich did. Chic. The second GLP-1s went mainstream, they lost their allure. To use them is to acknowledge your body, a body that still has shame attached. Does it seem like you can’t win? It’s true! You can’t!
We’re not allowed to be fat. We’re not allowed to genuinely love our bodies, that’s cringe. We’re not allowed to hate our bodies either, that’s buying into diet culture and letting capitalism win. We can’t try to lose weight but equally we can’t just remain as we are. Get thinner but dear god, don’t even think of talking about it. Let’s all pretend it’s not happening. Studiously ignore your friend’s shrinking portions. Hide your Mounjaro pen behind the condiments in your fridge door. Look up berberine in incognito mode then delete your history just to be safe. Read about the tapeworm diet making a comeback then seriously consider buying tapeworm eggs from the dark web. But do so silently. To make eye contact with your desires — whether that’s for food or to hit your goal weight — is to lose the mission. We’re all above it. We’ve got much bigger things to think about.
I don’t know how to feel about the questions. Maybe I should think it’s rude for someone to comment on how I look. But when the person who topped up my botox called me a ‘skinny minnie’, I was thrilled. Someone said recently that they didn’t know what was different, but I looked so ‘well’. I glowed. How can it be rude to observe a fact? Or to attempt to give a compliment wrapped in curiosity? I obviously want people to see my weight loss, otherwise I wouldn’t have worked hard to lose the weight. And yes, let’s be real: I have been trying. No matter how oblivious to the difference I might pretend to be, I have been actively attempting to lose weight and cheering the results. I put on jeans last week that I remembered cutting into my stomach a year ago. They’re loose now.
The thing that’s tricky is that I haven’t lost all the weight I aim to lose. I still have that prickly shame that makes me want to say ‘don’t look at me! not yet! soon I’ll be appropriate to be perceived!’. And alongside it now is this fear. What if I can’t keep the weight off? The other day I donated some size 20 jeans because they were now far too big. As the trash bags got picked up from my doorstep I started feeling sick with worry. Wasn’t it incredibly cocky to assume I’d never need those jeans again? How embarrassing would it be to be right back to the size I was last year and having to buy trousers in that same size? How humiliating to have tried and failed?
I’m scared that I’m fooling myself, that I haven’t even lost that much weight, that I’m imagining the return of my previous jawline. There’s real terror there; the scary idea that the photos I saw of myself from last year and the year before are the ‘real’ me, rather than the version of myself I’m striving to become. What if I can’t lose the rest of the weight? What if I do, and it’s still not enough? I feel like I’m running, not towards a goal but away from something. From what? I can’t outrun myself, my shame, the existence of my body. I can’t hide away until I hit the weight I deem acceptable, to then arrive back in the world as if I’ve always been that way. The evidence is out there and I can’t snatch it back. Everyone can see that photo where my arm bulges and my stomach hangs. They can also see effort in the absence. No matter how insouciant I proclaim to be, no matter how good a job I do of averting my eyes and redirecting other people’s, the proof is in the lack of a pudding. It’s impossible to pretend you don’t care about how you look when you’ve altered it so obviously.
It’s polite to pretend so perhaps I’ll do that. You pretend you haven’t noticed my diminishment. I’ll pretend it happened without me noticing. I can ignore my hunger. I can deny my desire exists.
This is so honest and heartfelt. Thank you for sharing 🙏
As someone at the start of my weightloss journey, I could relate to much of what you said. Why do women feel such shame about their bodies? I am trying to look at becoming fit and slimming down as purely health-related and trying not to get too hung up on body image, but it's not easy. Thanks for sharing such a relatable post :)