My Story
TRIGGER WARNING: I don’t hold back from mentioning triggers like scale numbers, dieting behaviours, descriptions of negative body image and the emotions that come with that. Reader Discretion is advised if these topics are sensitive and triggering.
My name is Kaylee. I’m 37 years old. I’ve been married for over 10 years and have two wonderful daughters. For most of my adult life I have had a negative body image. I say that specifically, rather than saying that I’ve struggled with weight. Because my story isn’t about weight, although that plays a part. It’s about the beliefs I’ve held about my body, regardless of what it looked like or what number was on the scale.
Picture a girl, standing in an open field. The sun is shining and she’s surrounded by beauty, calm, peace and potential. Then, imagine the foundations of a building starting to form around her. Brick upon brick, encircling and stacking on each other. These bricks are beliefs, thoughts, feelings, perhaps some truths, but also many distorted or uncertain ideas, and some flat out lies. The house they build around this girl is where she lives, and the house itself is her journey of health and wellness.
This is my house and my journey. We all have one, and they are all unique. Shaped by the influences we’ve had in our lives, be it people, places, or entities, like the media and society we live in, our jobs, or interests. All bricks are pieces of our journey, and all land somewhere between nurturing and harmful.
Some bricks are laid early on in our lives, some a bit later. Some of mine were probably laid in my early childhood when I was labelled a picky eater, and told in no uncertain terms how much of a problem I was because of that. More bricks were laid in my high school years, where I was more into drama and music than athletics. I labelled myself as not athletic, which lent itself to the belief that I wasn’t much into exercise or movement.
I would not describe myself as being in a bigger body, but I was curvy. It was pointed out to me over the years that I had a desirable “hourglass shape”, but with that came large “child-birthing” hips (this was actually pointed out to be by an adult when I was around 13), butt and thighs, as well as bigger breasts. So the message that added bricks to my house was that although my shape was desirable, the larger parts were not so much. Although, I must say that I don’t remember this ever being a negative, that it was something I needed to change, it just was the body I had, and it just wasn’t athletic or perfect. The first memory I have of stepping on a scale with the purpose of checking my weight, I remember having no context whatsoever as to what the number meant and what I was supposed to do with that information, but it did lay the foundation for every number that followed.
The bricks really started to pile on in my late teens when I went to college for the first time (2005-2007). I moved away from home for the first time and like many in that boat, at 18 years old, was navigating scary new territory. I have a few distinct memories that shine on the walls of my health journey house. The first is sitting on my bed in my dorm room by myself one morning, mindlessly eating cookies directly out of the package, beating myself up for doing it, and repeating to myself how bad I was and how I was going to regret it later. The second is a hallowe’en party I attended only a couple months into my first semester. There was a scale in the bathroom, so out of curiosity I stepped on it and was mortified for some reason by the 150 that glared back at me. I say the number with caution, but it does play an ongoing part in my story. And lastly is a collection of memories involving going to the gym and making comments about how I needed to burn off the pizza I’d eaten for lunch. Gym attendance was motivated by staving off getting fat and earning the food I was so bad for eating. The bricks laid here reinforced that I was bad at eating (picky eater, can’t control myself around bad food), and that the gym was where I could make up for it, or punish myself. I couldn’t tell you where these beliefs came from specifically at this time, it just seemed like standard things to say, think and feel. More and more bricks being laid, with each thought, feeling and belief that passed through.
Over the years that followed it was the same cycle of bricks that kept piling on. I would beat myself up because I couldn’t get this eating thing right, I’d steadily gain weight as the years went on, start some sort of program to restrict, reduce, count calories, step up the exercise, then lose weight. Then, when the program finished, I’d start eating the foods I hadn't eaten in weeks, believe I was out of control, stop exercising to give myself a “break”, and steadily see the scale inch up. And on and on it went like someone had pressed the repeat button. Plus, through all of this, life is happening: changes would come along, like losing a job, moving away, coming back home, getting different jobs, finding new interests, meeting someone special, getting married, going back to school. All these things would play a part in the timing, ability and drive to commit to “being good.” From this, a theme emerges, when I reflect. Through the ebbs and flows of life, I kept the same criticisms and judgements of myself. I believed that when I couldn’t “stick with it”, I was the only one to blame and I had no self control. The narrative I repeated, the bricks I kept laying was that I was lazy and couldn’t get it right. So back on the train I’d get and repeat the same practices of restricting, reducing, counting and exercising for punishment.
I would repeat that same song and dance in a variety of forms from 2005 until 2022. I could list here every diet, meal plan, exercise plan, pounds I gained and lost, different clothing sizes I fit in to, foods I restricted, foods I ate but hated. All of it are bricks in the house that by this time is reaching up pretty high. Most importantly, the shade of the bricks being dark and opaque, the lack of light in my house being caused by the negative words and judgement I used against myself, and sometimes heard from other people. Regardless of whether I was on the “health track” or off of it, I was still beating myself up.
Was I happy and did I feel good when I dropped the weight? When I fit in the smaller clothes, and had a slimmer figure? Of course I was! I’d done what I set out to do. I’d achieved the prescribed ideal of “healthy” and had the hallmark before and after picture to prove it. Plus the compliments when people notice, the pictures I felt I looked good in, the praise from fellow fitness professionals, it was all very gratifying. Who wouldn’t be happy? But those feelings didn’t last because the inevitable regain eventually occurred, as did the inner harassment. And those feelings were validated by the noticeable lack of attention and praise when my body got bigger. So throughout the years, despite any drop in the scale, clothing sizes and body size, I was still chastising myself for not being able to “stick with it” all the time. A common thought I had during that time was, What I wouldn’t give to be 150lbs again. But obviously I wouldn’t give that much cause I can’t seem to stop eating bad things. And it was a constant belief that if I could just lose the weight and then I’d be healthy, live healthy, do everything perfectly and be happy. Except when that didn’t happen, it only served to add more dark and heavy bricks of guilt, shame and blame.
The most influential thing that happened to me during this journey was the decision to return to college to study Health, Wellness and Fitness (2014-2017), with the intention of becoming a personal trainer and owning my own training business. Out of the several motivations I had for changing careers, the one I probably mentioned the least was that I wanted a job where staying fit and in shape (and really, staying thin), was my job. And since my first thought to become a professional red-carpet walking actor, was most likely out of the question, a personal trainer was the next best (and attainable) choice. But spoiler alert: the same cycles continued. Even when I started working as a trainer in the industry, and despite actually losing weight, periods of following meal plans, becoming leaner and stronger than I probably ever had been in my life, the yo-yo was still swinging. And the inner battering still played on. At the end of the day, I blamed and shamed myself for not being “as good as everyone else at being fit and eating perfect”.
In the last half of 2019 some significant things happened. My older daughter turned one, I officially opened my personal training business, my husband and I booked our first family trip to Mexico, and I weighed the most I ever had in my life to that point. This all contributed to hiring someone to help me lose weight, keep me accountable and “get this eating thing right”. To sum it up: every diet-y behaviour came out to play during the weeks that led up to our December trip. Starting with the “last supper” mentality, where in one evening, I ate all the foods I “never would again”. It also included classics like counting, weighing and measuring everything I ate on the plan where I ate the exact same thing every day; weighing myself every day and checking in with my weight and progress pictures once a week; going to bed hungry and feeling happy because it probably meant a dip in the scale the next morning; numbly stuffing in food that wasn’t satisfying; refusing foods I liked because they weren’t on the plan; receiving compliments and seeing the physical change in my clothes which validated the process. When I look back, it’s weirdly fitting that this final diet I ever did really did hit all the typical beats, like a greatest hits album. It was the perfect roof for my “house of health”, which I now identify as being my “house of diet culture”. At the end of the diet I hit all the typical beats there too. I lost over 30lbs in about 4 months, I fit into clothes I’d purposely bought too small, I thought I looked good in the trip pictures, and I distinctly remember receiving messages from fitness professional friends whom I hadn’t heard from in months, to congratulate me on my transformation. I did it all, I accomplished the goal, and I received the praise to lock it in.
But I’m sure you can guess what happened next. I didn’t stick with the diet, because eating the same thing every day grew tiresome. To be fair, I don’t know if or how the meal plan would have changed if I had continued, but I was ready to be done with a structured, guided approach and felt I could continue on being “perfect” on my own. The imminent onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and getting pregnant again notwithstanding, I had already started gaining weight back before either of those things happened. And once again I succumbed to the belief that I just couldn’t trust myself to be “good”. But with my body beautifully growing a new life, that was the least of my concerns, and I just told myself I would get back on the diet train once my baby was born.
Thankfully that didn’t happen.
In February 2021, 2 months postpartum, I started reading the book Elephant in the Gym by Gillian Goerzen. She’s a fellow Canadian health and fitness professional, and I found her book when I was scrolling for something new to read in the fitness and wellness space. Her book caught my attention because it talked about the typical crash diet messages we hear all the time, and how there are different ways to approach our health journey. I was intrigued further when she talked about not setting goals in the traditional way, and viewing the journey with compassion and curiosity. It challenged things I had always believed, but in the best way possible. It opened up a window in my dark, tall house of diet culture, a window that suggested there could be another way other than beating myself into being “perfect”. I started following Gillian on all social platforms, and that laid the foundation for what happened a year later.
I was reading a blog post Gillian wrote where she talked about looking back at past pictures of herself and didn’t feel guilt or shame about how much thinner she was back then compared to how she’d gained weight since, and she commented on how far she’d come to get to that point. It literally stopped me in my tracks. You mean to tell me it’s possible to not compare past and current versions of yourself? You mean, constantly feeling like a failure because I could never stick with a food or exercise plan was something I could overcome? She then listed the books that had helped shape her mindshift, among them was the 4th edition of Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. I’d heard Gillian mentioned Intuitive Eating briefly before, and my initial thought was, that sounds nice, but let me lose this weight first. But this post she’d written hit me in a different way. I had to check it out. I bought and read Intuitive Eating in March 2022, and I cannot put into words how it literally changed everything. The anti-diet approach was, in no small terms, everything I never knew I’d always wanted. Because despite my decades of dieting and weight cycling, at the heart of it all, was a girl who just wanted to eat well, move her body and be healthy. I just truly, truly believed, the path to getting there was through dieting and weight loss. And I truly, truly believed that I was terrible at doing those things because the weight always came back and I could never eat perfectly or exercise consistently. But the evidence and research presented in Intuitive Eating was clear and compelling. It wasn’t my fault at all. I wasn’t terrible at doing those things at all. Diets, meal plans, challenges, weight loss, it all sets us up to fail, either by design, or just because restriction and extremes are not sustainable long term. I wasn’t the problem, the system I was following was the problem. Plus I learned about how the body is designed to stave off starvation (which is what intentional calorie restriction essentially is), and it has mechanisms out of our control to ensure weight loss doesn’t continue to happen. There are over 100 biological factors that contribute to our physical makeup, including body size and weight, and 40-70% of those are not within our control. And probably the biggest impact of all was the realization that my body weight was not the definition of my worth, value or health. That health is defined by so much more than simply the number on the scale or the size of my clothes, and being healthy is not equal to being in a smaller body. That my worth inherently lies in my existence as a human being, not in a number or a size.
Fair to say that the bricks of my “house of diet culture” started crumbling down pretty quickly. Light started streaming in, and it was a relief, a breath of fresh air, to find a different, evidence-backed path that didn’t involve another stint of food plans, restrictions and lack of enjoyment around food and movement. Unfortunately as this house of beliefs crumbled, I sort of swung too far in the opposite direction, trying to get away from diet culture as quickly as I could, and started spewing out my new found revelations to anyone with ears. I did so with passion and excitement, but with a still very new understanding of what Intuitive Eating as an approach really was. I look back and cringe at that time, even though I really did mean well, because I was so focused on “not having to lose weight” that I missed the overarching point: Intuitive Eating is about reconnecting with our own individual body needs and carving a path through the external influence, to settle in our own unique, ever-changing healthy space. Setting aside the pursuit of a smaller body, embracing the all-foods-fit mentality, and moving our body simply because it feels good, are just pieces of that reconnection. I see that more clearly now. But I’ve learned that making and owning the mistakes and missteps is only how we learn and grow.
As I’ve read and discovered more and more over the past couple of years, I’ve continued to tear down and rebuild my “house of health”. I’ve been able to challenge thoughts and beliefs that I thought were necessary but in reality were very harmful. I’ve replaced those with new realizations and discoveries about myself, my body, my needs, and my preferences. I’ve worked on healing past pains regarding food and exercise so that I can add new habits and beliefs that are developed with fresh, compassionate eyes. I’ve embraced my body as a precious and incredible machine that gives me function and life, not as something that needs to be beaten, shaped, reformed and criticised. Were there healthy habits and practices that came from all those years? Yes of course. Even if my fitness was inconsistent, I still gained a plethora of experience and confidence. And of course, despite the yo-yo dieting, I’ve been able to weed through the conflicting and confusing messages to find even dieting advice that still serves me today, except instead of it being in control, I’m the one calling the shots.
This journey is constant and ongoing. There are still beliefs that I am sorting through and working out. There are still behaviours and habits I want to add to my life, but I’m doing this work with grace, curiosity and respect for my body and this journey. Will I lose weight again? Maybe, maybe not. One of the body’s ways of protecting itself during times of starvation (ie. dieting/caloric restriction) is by holding on to fat stores. Will that change? I don’t know. I certainly wonder what differences I would see in my body today if I had not subjected it to so much weight cycling over the years. Rather than restricting and categorizing foods with good and bad labels, what if I had just eaten a balanced variety of foods with joy, respect and compassion and let my body do its thing? Do I want my body to change? I’d be lying if I said no. I still have many days where I feel like trying to lose some weight seems like a good idea (especially when the pull towards that is constantly in my face on social media). But I will never again alter my intake, restrict or remove certain foods or food groups, or exercise with the express intention of changing the shape or weight of my body. Because I know the harms that this can cause both physically and mentally/emotionally. I know, both from personal experience and acclaimed research, that this is a futile pursuit, and it will not lead me to my actual goal: having a peaceful and balanced relationship with nutritious foods, consistent movement, and my amazing body.
I often breathe a sigh of relief that I found the path I am on. My relationship with food, exercise and my body is the healthiest it's ever been, even though I’m not the size I thought I would need to be for me to get there, and that’s okay! My understanding of health, wellness and fitness is also the most diverse it’s ever been. I’m grateful for my time in diet culture. Even though at first I dealt with massive regrets, I have come to embrace even those times of my life with grace and love. After all, it’s all a part of what has shaped and informed me. I’m just glad to have this path to continue on the rest of the way.