Me, myself and my body image: a neverending rollercoaster

Let me preface this by saying I’m going to be talking about weight and body image today. I feel like some might appreciate the trigger warning. I’m nervous about writing this because I’m a bit scared to delve into the subject when it can be such an emotive and sometimes controversial one but I think it’s important to cover nonetheless. I also think there are connections between how we feel about being single and how we feel about ourselves – and our body image is obviously a part of that. What I am saying here could be applied to other ways our confidence is knocked by how we look or how we feel about how we look. I have friends who have chronic illnesses, which sometimes make them so bloated they look pregnant, for example. Others who are used to being really muscly might feel this way when they are injured and can’t train. Some people I know feel this way about their skin if they have acne or another skin condition like psoriasis. For me, the issue is fluctuating weight.

I know there are some people who pretty much stay the same weight, whether slim or curvy. They might go up and down a bit but nothing major. I am not one of those people. My weight yo-yos up and down and with it goes my confidence. It is hard to admit this. I want to be one of those people who totally embrace how they look and can post pictures to social media standing proud in their bodies no matter how big. I love those Instagram accounts. When I’m on the larger end of my yo-yo, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a full-length picture of me on my social media accounts unless it’s an old snap. This is even though I can look at pictures of other people the same size or bigger and think ‘wow they look amazing’. I find the body positivity movement so inspiring and yet I just can’t totally apply the same philosophy to myself and my body.

It also affects my attitude to dating, when I bother with trying to date (which doesn’t happen very often as long-term readers of this newsletter will know). Because I do yo-yo so much, choosing pictures for the dating apps can fill me with fear. The last thing I would want to do is catfish someone into meeting me based on pictures where I’m a certain size only for them to turn up and find that I’m no longer that size. Obviously, if any man was judgemental about my weight I would sack him off but I can also see it wouldn’t be right to trick someone. A female friend of mine told me the story of how betrayed she felt when someone turned up looking nothing like their photos on the app. I’ve been so worried about this in the past that I’ve shown my dating profile to male friends to check it is an accurate depiction of me. I usually try to get around it by posting a variety of pictures from me of all different sizes. But if I am not feeling myself because my weight has shot up, I just take myself off the apps because there is no way I would want to meet someone new and have to try and flirt when my confidence is on the floor.

Recently, before lockdown, I was going to have a male friend who had previously been a love interest over for dinner. I wasn’t 100% sure what the deal was. Maybe it would just be a friend-thing or maybe it would be something else. I ended up postponing three times. The reason? I felt gross. Rationally, I know he isn’t the type of person to care so most of the feelings were about myself and how uncomfortable I was feeling. I also do think it’s a matter of clothes. Even if I am bigger, I still feel relatively OK if I’m wearing clothes that fit well – and my wardrobe includes clothes from around three different sizes because of how much I yo-yo. Unfortunately at the moment, I have tipped into a dress size that I have no clothes of which means hardly any of my clothes fit. I feel uncomfortable and squeezed and pinched. It’s hard to feel sexy when you’re clothes are making you feel like that. When I decided that I should get over it, he then had to postpone because of car issues and then lockdown happened and we missed the boat. A part of me was quite relieved!

It isn’t just potential romantic interests that I want to hide from. I’m much less likely to organise nights out (in normal times) when I am feeling this way and a few years ago I upset a friend by not turning up to her birthday. The reason I didn’t go was that I had nothing to wear that fit comfortably and was suitable for a big night out of dancing with a bunch of people who were mostly younger than me. I got myself in a right flap and my bedroom looked a state because there were discarded clothes everywhere. In the end, I gave up and sent a text to cancel. Although I made it up to her, I never actually told her the real reason I didn’t show. I was ashamed. Ashamed that something that many think is so trivial could stop me from being there for my friend on her big day and stop me from letting myself have fun and dance the night away, which I love to do.

It also isn’t even actually to do with my size. It really is about body image. When I lived in South Korea, I refused to go out on New Year’s Eve because firstly I was a bit under the weather but mainly it was because I felt overweight and that none of my clothes fit. When I saw the pictures of my boyfriend having fun with all our friends, I kicked myself for missing out on a great night out and not being able to share those memories. The thing is, I was actually at my smallest when I lived in South Korea. It was partly the cuisine which really suited me and partly because said boyfriend had broken my heart into smithereens just a few months earlier which caused me to spend my evenings slamming an exercise bike in the gym while crying instead of spending time alone in my flat. I digress - the point is I felt disgusting about myself even though I was slim, which goes to show it is not about the actual weight.

During both of these incidents, I was also in a bit of a hole at the time with my mental health because of course, it all comes back to that. I’m not one of those people who can’t eat when they are upset. I eat my emotions and so when I’m feeling like shit, I eat more and spend more time lying on my sofa beating myself up for not doing exercise and then I feel more like shit so eat more. At that New Year’s Eve in South Korea, I was slim but even so I was still stuck in this cycle at the time. I’ve got to the age of 36 and I’ve read so many books and articles and inspirational Instagram posts and watched TV shows and documentaries about how to break it – and yes I am in therapy – and yet I still slip into it. I have reached a stage now though where I can think: ‘OK I am doing it again.’ and I can usually nip it in the bud fairly quickly but it’s exhausting and I’m over the neverending rollercoaster of emotion!

Part of the reason I kicked myself so much when I realised we were going into lockdown again is that I felt I didn’t make the most of the brief period where we could go out the house and socialise. But I didn’t do much of that because 1. I was depressed and 2. I wasn’t feeling good about my body. I had essentially locked myself up before lockdown was reintroduced here. Now here I am stuck at home on my own most of the time wondering why I didn’t jump on a train to see my best friends, most of whom live in other parts of the country, when I had the chance. Again, not a single one of them would give a shit what I looked like if I had gone so this really is all in my head.

For anyone who relates to what I have said today, I really recommend reading this great article by Rachel Thompson at Mashable. I have shared it before and am sharing it again. She says: “My body image is my sex life's worst enemy. It is the voice in my head telling me that I need to lose weight before I go on dates. It is the seed of doubt when I notice someone looking at me in a bar. It is the thought that whirrs in my mind when I'm in bed with someone, drowning out any thoughts of pleasure.

“During a recent sexual dry spell — brought on by an episode of extremely low self-esteem — I realised the one thing standing in the way of a fun and fulfilling sex life was my own brain. I had a choice: Did I want to live my life hiding out of sight because glossy magazines, billboards, and my unkind classmates in high school made me feel unloveable? Then came the question: How do I go about dismantling the destructive feelings I've had about myself for most my life?”

She has also more recently written about how to stop comparing yourself to your past self, which is a nice follow-up and some useful advice. She says: “It sounds really hard to do, but a really important step in moving away from self-comparison is acceptance of who you are right this minute. You might not necessarily feel ready to write a gratitude list, but you can acknowledge the changes between your past and present self.”

Self-compassion is definitely something I struggle with. I not only beat myself up for not fitting in hardly any of my clothes or not being able to find the motivation to work out or not wanting to see friends or flirtations because I feel gross but I also manage to beat myself up for not feeling positive about my body. It’s ridiculous. I confessed to a friend the other day about some of this and how I need to get off my arse and do something about it. She responded with a simple piece of advice that what I really needed to do was be much kinder to myself. And it was like I suddenly had permission to stop being such a bitch to myself. I decided to start by patting myself on the back for the healthy habits I am managing to keep such as going for a walk every single day and making sure I get enough sleep.

I also reminded myself that we are in the midst of a pandemic and maybe I should let myself off the hook a bit. Then I saw this tweet, which I saw because the same friend above had retweeted it (Thanks Emma!) I think it’s actually about work and productivity but I am reading it through the lens of not being able to make myself do an hour-long intensive HIIT class:

I don’t have a magic wand if you relate to anything I have said today but I can offer you permission to be kinder to yourself, especially during this pandemic. It’s far from over and we have to keep going and it would be great if we could do so while not being quite such a nasty person to ourselves.

Sending you lots of love if you ever feel like I do.

Have a good week,

Lots of love, always

Nicola

Twitter: @Nicola_Slawson | Instagram: @Nicola_Slawson

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What caught my attention

It's time to end the tyranny of coupledom

Oof. That deadline. I squirmed a little just thinking about how many would judge her for that (“you’re just bitter” is something I’m sure people would think seeing it) but she is so right. Here she explains the problem: “In 2020, it is no longer legally or culturally obligatory for women or men to marry or to stay married – to be or to act heterosexual. Yet against the backdrop of these radical upheavals in personal life, one unchanging aspect of the cultural ordering of intimacy becomes ever clearer: our lives remain profoundly shaped by the couple norm. This is the powerful and ubiquitous force – at once both social and psychological – which maintains that being in a couple is the natural and best way of living.” This article is off the back of a really interesting article she has co-authored called The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm: intimate citizenship regimes in a changing Europe.

Real Talk, Should You Actually Freeze Your Eggs?

In this article, Vicky Spratt explores the rise in popularity of freezing your eggs and whether it’s actually worth doing. She says about the increase: “It’s not hard to understand why this is happening. On a recent girls' holiday, whether or not to embark on egg freezing was a daily topic of conversation. All five of us on the trip were in our early 30s, working full pelt in our careers and, regardless of relationship status, neither financially nor emotionally ready to start a family. This trend is seen across the country: the Office for National Statistics reports that the average age at which both women and men have their first child has increased in recent decades.”

'Freezing My Eggs Has Given Me Some Peace Of Mind'

This one is almost a follow-up to that one. The author of this Grazia article chose to travel to South Africa to get her eggs frozen. This paragraph stuck out given I wrote about whether 35 was the worst age to be single (I know some of you felt I was wrong about that but now I’m 36 I still think there is something about the age 35. I was also interested to hear how she felt the uncomfortable emotions around being single and wanting a child slipped away during treatment. Melissa Twigg writes: “Frozen eggs or not, 35 is a complicated age to be a woman if you want to have children. But freezing my eggs has given me some peace of mind. The process made me confront sticky, suffocating emotions – ones like shame and panic – that single women are taught to feel. It turns out that, for me, injecting myself with a cocktail of hormones made those emotions slowly wither away.

The lowdown

• Yesterday the lovely Jillian Anthony made my day when a postcard she sent me from the epic US road trip she is currently on arrived. If you haven’t signed up to her amazing newsletter Cruel Summer Book Club, what are you waiting for? It’s so good. She also happens to be a badass single woman making her own way in the world.

• Talking of postcards, this week I sent some of my best friends a ‘hug’ in postcard format courtesy of my talented friend Emma Winterschladen who I mention above as being the good who gave me good advice. As well as being a journalist and writer, she is also an illustrator and has an Etsy shop where she sells prints and postcards (and also now some stunning Christmas cards!). Check it out here. (This is not an ad, I just love her stuff!)

• Tiffany Philippou and I are putting another masterclass on writing about your life. It’s all about how and why you should start a newsletter, Medium account or blog and how it helped Tiffany to break into writing and me to pivot away from so much news reporting. We also cover confidence, motivation and self-promotion. The masterclass will also provide a chance to meet other writers and ask lots of questions. Get your ticket here.

About me

For those who don’t know, I’m Nicola Slawson, a freelance journalist who lives in Shropshire, UK. If you would like to support what I do, please consider subscribing to be a paid supporter of The Single Supplement. If you would prefer to make a one-off contribution, you can also buy me a coffee, here’s the link to my Ko-Fi page. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter.

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