The Cost of a Fluctuating Body
The emotional toll, the physical price, and the psychological tax of existing in an ever-changing body
Radically accepting and learning to love your ever-changing body is hard work. How normal it is for her to change shapes and sizes based on the day, the week, the month, the year. It’s part of being human. Yet it can be so difficult to navigate the feelings around this very common experience.
For me, I’ve noticed the things that come up around my shifting body weigh heavy on my mental, physical, and emotional life. Some weeks, keeping up with my feelings about my body seems like an actual part-time job. So, I wanted to come here and share my thoughts on the cost of living in an ever-changing body.
The Emotional Toll
It can be hard to cope with a body that doesn’t quite stay the same. I know from my own personal experience that it’s frustrating, it can make me feel insecure, it can kickstart my desire for control, and it can send me back into a bad body image cycle. My feelings ride high when fluctuation is on the table.
The time and energy exuded to have to deal with this emotional toll could be used for so many other transformational things. Yet this is just something we have to deal with as humans. It just doesn’t feel fair to me that so many people out there are spending so many valuable resources on managing their emotions around their shifting bodies instead of pouring into exploring the things they love in life. And my hope is we can get to a place where we are all well-equipped to acknowledge the feelings, let them pass, and move on with our lives.
The Physical Cost
My body has fluctuated and changed throughout most of my life - from growing into my adult form, to gaining and losing weight along the way, and arriving at my current 33.5-year-old body that is sure to change again. And with bodily shape shifts comes a cost: new clothes to fit said changing body. Because I don’t know about you, but for me, the way I feel in my clothing deeply affects my experience of existing in my body.
During the pandemic, I gained weight. I’m sure I am not alone in this. During a time when we were all struggling financially due to the shake-up of life as we knew it, it had dawned on me that a changing body meant a need for new clothes.
In order to keep up with feeling confident in my expanding body, I had to continue to spend my precious resources on buying new clothes that actually felt good on me, so I didn’t spiral into a bad body image cycle and go back to the dark places my mind once inhabited.
The actual physical financial price of a fluctuating body is costly. I feel very privileged right now, because my body hasn’t drastically shifted in the last year or so, and therefore, I can recycle my current wardrobe without the pressure to get new in order to feel good. But I’ve been in the position many times throughout my life where my body was changing, and I needed to adapt my wardrobe to it.
The Psychological Tax
The psychological games we must play in order to continually work to accept for our evolving bodies is taxing on the psyche. As someone who struggles with body dysmorphia, I’m constantly re-routing myself back to my body and back to the present moment. Sometimes my mind gets so swept up in what it perceives in the mirror, or the way my jeans feel just a little too tight, or how bloaty I feel in my body, or how sticky I feel in my jeans (because it’s literally summer outside). And it takes a real clap-my-hands-together moment to pull myself out of the mental swirl of it all.
Like any strong relationship, the one with your body takes work. Is paying the psychological tax worth it if it keeps us feeling neutral (or even good) about our bodies?
Take care of yourself. Us body dwellers are navigating a lot ❤️🔥
While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your healthcare providers.