I’ve been on both sides of body shaming.

When I was bigger, people said I should lose weight.
Now that I have, they say I’ve gone too far.

Funny how no one ever stops to ask how I feel—
they just measure their comfort against my body and call it concern.

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The Familiar Voice of “Concern”

It’s always framed as care.
A soft tone. A tilted head. A comment that lands like a stone.

But it’s never really about health. It’s about control.
About comfort.
About how they feel looking at you.

Because apparently, your body is everyone’s business until it makes them uncomfortable.

I’m 5’9” and 160 pounds—squarely within the recommended range.
But the real “health crisis” seems to be that I don’t look the way they think I should.

So Maybe the Trick Is to Stop Playing

Because that’s the thing—if you play by their rules, you’re guaranteed to lose.
There’s always a new “better.”
A smaller.
A thinner.
A version of you that will finally make them approve…until it doesn’t.

So maybe the only way to win is to stop playing.
To love your body the way it exists today.
To stop apologizing for evolving.

Does that mean I’m happy with my body now?
Not always. I still hate the excess skin, stretch marks, and surgical scars I can’t do anything about because I can’t afford surgery.
But that’s what I work on in therapy—learning that body acceptance isn’t a before-and-after story. It’s a lifelong practice.

And I’ll keep fighting to love my body, because I don’t want my girls to see me tearing myself apart and think that’s what women do. As always, they’re my compass—guiding me back toward healing, again and again.