'Help! I started to lift, gained ten pounds, and it's making me spiral tbh'

The Question

Hi Casey,

Like many women, exercise and diet were primarily ways to stay thin throughout most of my life (I'm 25 now). About a year and a half ago, I was fed up with not feeling healthy and started weightlifting and eating more protein, which honestly has been great! I feel stronger, my strength has clearly improved, a fun side effect is that I can actually see my biceps sometimes (not the main point but still cool).

The only thing is, I also had to let myself actually start eating the right amount of food after restricting for all of my life (not to an extreme level, but enough to where I never gained weight at all). Because of this, I've gained about 10 pounds in the last year and it's making me spiral tbh. Every time I look in the mirror I can only see how my arms look too big or my stomach isn't as flat as it used to be. I know probably a good portion of the weight gained was muscle, but that doesn't help the fact that I feel so much more uncomfortable in my body. It's like a both/and situation; I feel stronger and healthier, but I also like the way I look much less (except for the rare days where I just feel buff, and that's fun).

I keep getting the urge to stop lifting weights and eat less food again so I can get back to the weight I used to be at, even though I logically know that's not a good choice. (As an aside, I also voluntarily shave my head and I've internalized the idea that if I'm going to be a bald woman, I should at least be a VERY THIN bald woman; so screwed up!) How can I learn to be content in my body being stronger and healthier but not as small as I'd like it to be/have been conditioned to want it to be? It feels impossible.

—Buff and Sad

The Answer

Oh goodness, I want to hug you.

I will say first, for responsibility’s sake, this is the type of situation that can benefit from working with a mental health professional. (There is nothing wrong with you; rather, a lot of us reach adulthood unequipped with tools we are owed to navigate this crazy mixed-up world we find ourselves in. Thank you parents, thank you school system, thank you community leaders and politicians, etc.) Feelings about your body deserves space and respect and curiosity, and there is no better place to explore them than with someone who is professionally equipped to help you understand them better. To that end, everything I’m saying here is in my capacity as your internet friend who does not know and cannot see you.

I’ve seen situations like yours draw a range of reactions. Gaining ten pounds is something that happens to many people, sometimes many times over in their lives. Despite how common it is, people are very reluctant to talk about it openly, because it can provoke such an unpredictable range and intensity of reactions.

Some people will be dismissive to the point of rage, already pissed at you because you are not enlightened about your body to the point of your physical existence being nothing but conceptual to you. Kim, there's people that are dying.[^1] Some people will panic and inundate you with every possible weight-loss tip they can think of. “Woman who has gained ten-ish pounds” is a prism through which everyone feels entitled to refract. They pour out, not just their opinions, but all of their projections, long-held assumptions, insecurities, and everything else, not to mention additional meta-refractions over all the ways the feelings you are having are wrong. Some people are happy to gain ten pounds. Gaining ten pounds can be life-saving. Gaining ten pounds also makes some people panic. All of it is wrong, to someone.

We spend so much time trying to Fix now, because there is so much information on how to deal with every possible physical and psychological flaw. This is an overwhelming amount of pressure. This might not be the case for everyone, but I suspect it’s why a lot of us feel especially anxious and depressed these days: We are living like we are always on the Price Is Right stage, looking back at the audience to tell us what to do.

But we don’t need fixing (for the most part). We don’t even need acceptance (yet). The real problem is that no one gets time or space to feel their feelings any more, to honor their emotional inner life; we are highly incentivized to rush into trying to ascertain what everyone else thinks, and then temper our next actions accordingly, to spackle and sand and paper over it to make it look nice. This has been true of women’s experience for a very long time, and has only gotten worse with the here-comes-everyone of the internet. Despite everyone’s efforts toward explaining and rationalizing and radically accepting, everyone does not feel better, by and large. Even to say we feel a way “because misogyny,“ “because patriarchy,” “because capitalism” can be true at a societal level and also feel dismissive at the individual one.