Reclaiming My Body
Twelve. That’s how old I was when I first started taking diet pills.
I was twelve.
And that was years after starting to diet.
I don’t remember the first time I went on a diet. But I also don’t remember ever NOT trying to control my food intake and make my body smaller.
My mother is quite slim – always has been and has struggled to keep weight on. I was granted a very different genetic code. One that delivered fuller thighs and more overall roundness and softness.
And the house we lived in between the time I was in 4th and 10th grades was next door to a woman who was obsessed with weight. Not only hers but mine as well.
She convinced my mother that I needed to be put on diet pills. Because, according to her, if I didn’t get the weight off as a child, I’d be doomed to carry it around with me forever.
OH NO! 😱 THE CURSE OF THE FAT! 😨 WE MUST BREAK THE CURSE OF THE FAT!😰
🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠
Turns out, when you start taking diet pills as a child, THAT actually fucks up your body and makes it more likely that you’ll raise your body’s set point for weight.
But, hey. It was the 90s. We were enamored with the heroin chic look, and everything we ate was fat-free. So when diet pills became available at mall kiosks, it fit right in with the culture.
It was 8th grade when I actively started noticing boys paying attention to my body. And working at the mall in high school meant getting a lot of comments.
Including the invitation to attend the wedding of a celebrity from my hometown. I worked with his cousin. He told her I was cute and wanted to see me there.
I was 15.
Fucking gross. 🤢
At 16, I was running three miles a day in an effort to burn off as many calories as possible.
And when I say three miles a day, I mean every day. No matter what.
Was I at a frat party getting wasted off of Strawberry Hill Boone’s Farm a few blocks from my high school when I remembered that I hadn’t run yet that day? Cool, then I was walking to the track so I could get those three miles in. I might vomit on the football field afterward, but hey. That would just be a bonus! It meant the calories from the alcohol didn’t count!
My goal weight was 113 pounds.
But no matter how much I punished my body, how many pills I took, or how much I restricted myself to lettuce, I never found a way to get below about 130.
As an undergrad attending a women’s college, it was always jarring to leave campus.
The catcalls were unnerving. And the accusations of performative lesbianism for the benefit of the men attending the other colleges or who just lived in the town were neverending.
So, I took it upon myself to get paid for the catcalls.
I became a stripper.
For two years, I took control over the context of objectification.
Up on that stage, up on that pole, at the tables, and in that lapdance room, I reversed the power dynamic of patriarchal oppression over my body.
I could decide who saw me, who got my attention, and who had access to touch me. And I got fucking PAID for it. With bodyguards around for protection and to kick out any jackass I didn’t like.
Performative lesbianism WAS part of the gig at the club. But as an actual lesbian, that worked out in my favor, too.
Dancing at the club, playing soccer and basketball for my college, and working out with both Army and Air Force recruiters on a regular basis kept my body pretty fit.
Until fibromyalgia started to hinder my body’s ability to function at all.
Then, fitness didn’t matter quite as much as figuring out treatment.
Which, honestly, didn’t ever really work. Medications created side effects that were worse than the symptoms themselves.
And then there was the weight gain.
Forty pounds over just a few months.
It was devastating.
I didn’t want to see anyone. Because I didn’t want anyone to see me.
Eventually, I got to a point of acceptance with my weight that I could function in normal life without completely punishing myself in every single moment.
But I’m gonna be very clear that I didn’t do it on my own.
It was therapy.
Because anyone who claims they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps in any kind of capacity is full of shit, and gaslighting you like that just isn’t really my brand.
And my first year of grad school, I simultaneously attended massage therapy school.
For the first time since they began, my fibro symptoms began to get under control.
But control also came back with a vengeance to my food intake.
The world of “wellness” is rife with all kinds of fucked up ideas about how much control we have over our health. And being trained to see through that lens, I started down a path of intense orthorexia.
I didn’t know that was a thing until about a decade into it.
But it’s a thing. Disordered eating isn’t just anorexia or bulimia. An obsession with health-consciousness is disordered eating. Hyper-fixation with “clean” eating and doing detoxes on a regular basis isn’t actually healthy – mentally or physically.
Plus, we don’t actually have as much control over our health as we like to believe. And putting a moral value on health – that “healthy” is somehow morally superior – that’s actually pretty fucking ableist. Health is a privilege that isn’t afforded to everyone equally.
Hell, for that matter, neither are “healthy choices” like fresh foods, clean water, and safe spaces for movement. Systemic oppression in various forms prevents that.
So, like, fuck the wellness world and all of its moral superiority.
About a decade ago, I started experiencing symptoms that doctors couldn’t figure out.
Without going into all of the details of how the medical system in the United States is a total fucking nightmare, I’ll just say that having received no conclusive answers for anything, the general consensus was to cut out gluten.
So I did. And my symptoms improved.
(That didn’t help the orthorexia. But 🤷♀️)
Over time, there have been other foods I’ve needed to either limit or completely eliminate. And I’m extremely grateful that there are so many allergy-friendly foods that have come on the market in recent years because that makes eating a hell of a lot easier.
But it’s really easy to take symptoms for food-related sensitivities and wrap it into disordered eating.
And the whole point of sharing this entire story with you is to get to the part of recovery and what that looks like.
Because this time, it wasn’t therapy. It was the coaching tools I teach that actually helped me reclaim my body.
I teach my clients the tools that I’ve seen the most benefit from within my own experience and the experiences of the thousands of clients I’ve coached.
It was actually during the Covid shutdown that I really started working on my relationship with my body.
I had worked on it to a certain extent prior to that. With a coach. And I had gotten some pretty incredible results.
But then I went on another “losing” spree. Cleanses. Obsession. And I got down to a size 6. Which was, honestly, something I felt really great about!
For about two weeks.
Then, like magic, a pair of size 4 “goal jeans” came into my life.
And that’s when I knew I hadn’t actually healed like I thought I had.
Not that I hadn’t healed at all!
I just thought I was done. That I had conquered the body stuff.
Really, I had only gotten a little below the surface.
Some intense excavation was needed. And the Covid lockdown provided the perfect opportunity for it.
At least for it to start.
Over the course of the last few years, I’ve gained a lot of weight.
Because of that, I’ve outgrown a shit load of clothes. (Most of which I got rid of during a yard sale just before Halloween.) And one of the most healing things I’ve done is allow myself to purchase clothes I love that fit my new sizes.
Fashion has always been something I’ve loved. (Literally – the outfit I wore for my first day of school as a kindergartener was curated at every detail. But that’s another story for another day.) And allowing myself to play with fashion as my body changes has been a new experience.
In the past, weight gain has been so shameful that I’ve hidden my body under ill-fitting clothing. But adorning my body in looks I love has been one of the things that has helped me to reclaim myself within my body as it changes.
I’m not sharing all of this with you to tell you that buying a cute outfit’ll magically fix your body image.
Fashion is simply a tool, like many others, that we can use to weaponize against ourselves or to uplift ourselves.
And how we use it largely depends on what other tools we have at our disposal.
But it also depends on what kind of support we have available to guide us through using those tools.
When I was a massage therapist, I used to hear allll the time from clients on my table who wanted to start doing yoga or Pilates because they could do them from home with YouTube videos where nobody would see them. And I would ALWAYS encourage them to go to a class for at least a few weeks before trying it on their own.
Why? Because when you have an instructor watching how your body moves, they can offer gentle guidance and correction to ensure you’re in proper form. Which is important because if you’re not in proper form, you can actually injure yourself. But when you’re well-guided, when you’re coached, you start to be able to feel what’s right.
And the same is true with life coaching tools.
I’ve seen some of the tools I teach used in unhelpful ways. When we’re just self-coaching, we can easily weaponize the tools against ourselves.
Hell, I’ve done it myself.
Just like all the shit I learned in massage therapy school turning into orthorexia.
When we’re left to our own devices, no matter how good the tools are, we can manipulate the tools to fit our old self-harming patterns.
That’s why working with a coach is so important.
I’ve got three spots for 1:1 coaching if in-depth, hands-on support is your thing. Book a consult call with me, and we’ll go over details.
And if you like a more self-guided DIY approach with a community aspect, Project Reclamation registration is open for learning to coach yourself well and getting support along the way. Sign up directly at KeliLynJewel.com/reclamation.
You deserve to reclaim your body.
