It had finally happened. After months and years of looking in the mirror and wondering if I looked overweight, someone finally said it to my face. In an off-hand comment, someone told me that I had put on weight and did not resemble the thinner person that I used to be.
I thought the rolls and lumps had been well hidden underneath baggy t-shirts, or that my bright makeup and big hair would distract from my rounded, post-baby tummy. I thought that my nearest and dearest were supposed to reassure me that I was already perfect, or that I looked “fine” at the very least. But this time, someone else spoke the words that were always in my head, and it left me with a choice: to agree, or fight back.
It’s one thing to constantly tell yourself that you’re gross and that you need to lose weight. But when someone else voiced my secret thoughts, it made me realise how cruel I had been to myself.
I’d piled on the baby weight, and had also piled on the self-hate. It was my weapon and motivation for reclaiming my pre-baby body. Every time I looked in the mirror or at a photo of myself, I silently screamed that I was disgusting, unattractive, lazy… things that I would never say to another person, and yet they had become my personal mantra. It was this self-loathing that helped me get on the cross-trainer at five am, or stay that little bit hungrier during the day. I didn’t want to be gross. I wouldn’t be gross.
And so, when I was told quite bluntly that I was no longer thin or glamorous, my thoughts of self-loathing began to spiral. I cried about it to my husband. He understood how bad I felt, when I was already self-conscious that none of my pre-baby clothes fit.
