I love that I'm gaining weight

Something I thought I'd never say

Heads up, this post talks about body dysmorphia, dieting and some disordered eating. Please take care of yourselves as you read. 💙

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None of my pants fit anymore. And I feel great about it.

The morning we found out I was pregnant, I took a shower. I remember looking down at myself and calling to Andrew, “Wait, my body’s about to change!” I looked at my stomach, my thighs, my waist, and tried to imagine all of it expanding. It was kind of scary. And thrilling at the same time.

My whole life I’ve been striving to be thin. Like most American women, and most women in the industrialized west, those were the operating instructions I got pretty much as soon as I realized I had a body. My mom is reading this and might be wondering if she’s to blame. You’re not, mom. It’s the (fat-free, low-carb) soup we’re all swimming in. My story isn’t unique, and also my relationship to my body is.

Tracking where the dysmorphia set in feels hazy. Was it ever not there?

I was tall from a young age so wore bigger clothes than my two best friends and was convinced by 6th grade that this meant I had a weight problem.

I started running the summer after 7th grade and wrote in my journal as a goal: “Operation: Lose the Love Handles.” I ran every day, weighed myself, and tracked any changes.

It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that things got weird. I spent a study-abroad year in France, living in the middle of Paris, and became obsessed with not gaining any weight. I’d heard it was fairly common for exchange students to gain 15-20 pounds on years abroad, and I was determined that this wouldn’t be the case for me. I ran daily, strictly limited my portions of all the delicious French food around me, and did not have a single crepe with Nutella the whole time I was there. (A tragedy, in retrospect.) I also became convinced that I was gaining weight— I felt massive in comparison to my waif-like French classmates. I refused to weigh myself for fear of the number I’d see on the scale and wrote home warning everyone that I was gaining weight, asking them to kindly not be surprised when they saw me.

When I got home, the first thing my mom said to me as she hugged me in the airport was, “You’re so skinny!”

It turned out that I had lost a good amount of weight in France. Needless to say, I was thrilled.

Over the course of my senior year, I relaxed into life at home, stopped fixating so much on what I ate, and naturally returned to my baseline weight. When I realized things were changing and noticed some stretch marks on my thighs, I begged my mom to take me to see a nutritionist. I didn’t want to be fat. She obliged. The nutritionist, God knows why, encouraged me to try WeightWatchers, and I jumped in with full enthusiasm. It was amazing to watch the number on the scale drop every week as I neared my target weight. When I finally got there, I was so psyched. It was the spring of my senior year of high school, I was the skinniest I’d ever been, and I felt like I was in charge of my body.

Then I went to college and things got really wonky. I began swinging backwards and forwards in a pattern of what I now know is called yo-yoing in the diet world. I’d spend a semester being fastidious about diet and exercise, and then at a certain point I’d snap and start bingeing. I’d gain weight and feel disgusting. I avoided mirrors and hid from photos. Food was constantly on my mind. I exercised in a way that felt punitive, with the sole goal of burning calories and keeping my weight under control. I was never happy with how I looked. It was exhausting.

At one point I attended a youth meditation retreat and heard a woman in her early thirties— an elder to me, then— speak about her relationship to her body at a campfire. I remembering her telling us about the long history of women’s bodies being controlled as a way to control and diminish their power. A woman’s body, she explained, was connected to her power, and society’s attempts to keep her body small were in order to keep her power small. She shared that through her yoga practice she had begun to reclaim her weight, her body, and her power. I remember looking at her then, short but not small, solidly muscular and unapologetically thick. And powerful. She didn’t look like a woman I’d see in a glossy magazine. She looked like a woman who belonged to the Earth, and belonged to herself. It was a paradigm-shattering moment for me.

I began my own yoga practice midway through college and after a few significant running injuries, took a break from running. At first I was panicked that this meant I would balloon, but strangely, I didn’t. It was only after I graduated from college and spent a year in Ecuador where I started every morning with an hour of yoga in the cool mountain air, that things somehow changed. I don’t know what it was about being there. It’s mysterious and I still struggle to track when and how the fog lifted, but after returning from Ecuador, something was different. Somewhere along the way I stopped obsessing about food. I ate dessert when I felt like it but didn’t binge. I ate cheese and bread and fried things without fear. And by twenty-four, my weight was somehow stable, seemingly all on its own. It was like a spell had broken, and I could stop tormenting myself.

Nearly ten years later, I’ve continued to live with a generally happy relationship to my body. I eat what I want, I exercise because it makes me feel good. And I’ve been content with my weight and the way my body looks and feels for the majority of my adult life. I do like that I’ve stayed thin without really trying to. And I do notice that in moments when my clothes feel looser or I step on the scale at the doctor’s office and am surprised by a low number, there is a vestigial pulse of “Yes!” that echoes back to the days of trying to control my weight.

But for the most part, it’s not something I agonize over.

Back to the present: I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about my body massively changing with pregnancy. In the first trimester when everything felt bad, I was bloated and some of my clothes became uncomfortably tight in a way that compounded my overall malaise. Not only do I feel like shit, but now I’m getting chubby.

But as things have balanced out and my mood and overall outlook have skyrocketed with the advent of the second trimester, my feelings about getting bigger have also shifted.

I absolutely love it.

Last weekend I went through my closet and took out everything that doesn’t fit me right now. I made two piles. “Donate” and “Revisit.” Some items, miniskirts and teensy crop tops, went straight into the donation pile. I was possessed with a powerful clarity, realizing without doubt or hesitation that I’m simply not going to wear them anymore. Some items, like my old favorite mom-jeans (which will soon be ACTUAL mom-jeans!) are going into storage for now, to revisit postpartum when I’ll see if I still want them.

I’ve bought several long flowy skirts with stretchy waistbands. Full-panel maternity leggings that feel like a hug to my expanding middle. Oversized sweaters and new soft tee-shirts. It’s fall, layer season. I love feeling cozy, ultra-comfy, and wearing clothing that emphasizes and honors my growing belly. Instead of fighting the change and trying to squeeze into an old shape, I’m embracing it.

I haven’t weighed myself and I don’t feel any need to. I do know that I’m bigger than I’ve ever been. And it feels radical to be loving it so much. To not only accept that my stomach isn’t flat or tight, but to celebrate it. And it’s not even something that I’m trying to convince myself to feel a certain way about. It’s just unfolding.

A new life is growing in me. This child, who I sing to and speak to and can feel dancing and stretching and swimming inside of me, is getting bigger every day. What could be more wonderful? Life is a feast of abundance and possibility. Of course I’m gonna have an extra serving of spaghetti bolognese. Of course baby gets a warm brownie with ice cream. For a while now I’ve been aware of my body as a vessel, but I’ve never felt so exquisitely attuned to it. My heart is expanding, my womb is expanding, and all the skin and flesh around it.

I said to Andrew the other day, “I’m so relieved that I’m not even worried about being thin anymore.” To take full breaths and relax my abdominal wall, to feel the expansion of my belly, the thickness and softness of my thighs, and just feel delicious.

I have no idea how much more will change, in my body and my mind, as I become a mother. How many other ways I’ll be initiated. So many things— nearly everything— are unknown, but this one is clear, and it feels huge. No pun intended.