How Having Twins Healed My Body Dysmorphia

Body dysmorphia is categorized as when a person obsesses over their body image in a very negative way; this is something I’ve battled for almost my entire life that started soon after I lost over 65lbs in high school. For context, I had reached 200lbs at 13 – a freshman in high school nonetheless – and wore my Dad’s clothes because that is all that fit me. 

After being so overweight, I experienced a tremendous phobia of gaining it all back, which then evolved into full-fledged body dysmorphia by the time I hit college.

At times, this was so debilitating, I’d remain in hibernation over gaining 2 lbs {wtf!} where I’d avoid all opportunities for social interaction. I would obsessively weigh myself, morning, one hour later, right after eating, all the time all resulting in feeling gross.  Fast forward to me being pregnant with the boys  – what the f was I going to do? I’m sharing some ways in which I coped while pregnant to self-heal my weight shame and anxieties.

There were years where I  only eat rice cakes and others where I ate mostly mango. Anything to keep the control and the caloric intake to a minimum. But that had to change and as fucked up as it sounds, as much as I wanted to be pregnant I was terrified as to what I was going to do. I needed to fuel my body with nutrients that were going to help my twin babies grow and I didn’t actually know how I was going to stop from hating myself for the next 9 months.  

How Having Twins Healed My Body Dysmorphia

Take the scale away:

For someone with body dysmorphia this is scary AF. Eddie was adamant about this because it was fueling the demons and it disappeared a year into our fertility journey. I bought another scale – that one disappeared. It freed myself from the numbers. Up one pound, down an ounce. It was liberating.

Research:

I’ve always researched health trends, foods trends, been to nutritionists – the works,  but I needed to understand what combinations to eat to give my boys what they needed. I approached it the way {I think} athletes approach fueling for competitions. The best foods need to be nutrient dense foods {I’ll be sharing specifics with you soon} literally every single day to ensure I was doing my part – especially considering I was a high risk pregnancy {as all twin pregnancies are}.

No Weigh-Ins at the Doctor: 

Your weigh-in as a preggo at the doctor is a mental fuck. You know you will be heavier, because you have to be, so Eddie and I made the decision to bypass that for my mental health. I talk about that a bit here. I let the doc know and every nurse too to only alert us if there was something to alert and went as far as walking on the scale backwards each time to ensure I didn’t poison my mind.

Eat When You are Hungry. Stop When You are Full: 

I listened to my body the whole time. When I was hungry, I ate. When I was full, I stopped. I was never, ever starving {something I wasn’t familiar with}. Seems simple, but I had actually never done this… ever.

Kindness to My Body:

Carrying babies is not a joke. It’s seriously hard shit. As my belly was growing, I found peace in the fact that my body was thriving. My babies were healthy, I was healthy. That’s the only thing that mattered.

Since I’ve had the twins, the mirror has stopped playing mind games on me.  I’ve learned to listen to my internal intuition and alerts and not care what anyone else thinks or says. Its hard to not find myself slipping back into old habits, but it’s working for me. Most importantly, I’ve got to show up for the boys and I don’t have time for self-loathing. There’s no time to sulk in bed. It doesn’t make me a better or worse mother if I’ve gained or lost a few and I believe that sense of purpose has been instrumental in healing my body dysmorphia.

How do you exercise self-love and acceptance? I’m still learning, so I want to know!

P

Xo