How a dietitian helped me rebuild trust with myself- Part 1

As I sat in my mother’s apartment, just having left my husband with the sober realization that divorce was on the horizon, I wondered if I’d ever trust myself again.

Could I really ever trust myself with men? My life has been full of crappy relationship stories, but this one was so different. This one hit hard, and I knew it.

I began to feverishly work at recouping everything I had left. I found a therapist. I talked to multiple coaches. I reached out to… a dietitian?

Something deep inside led me to this conclusion that if I couldn’t trust myself, it was paramount that I find a way to build it, and fast. Otherwise, I’d be super vulnerable AND looking outside of myself for help, and it was too fragile a time to be doing that. After all, anyone I was close with was also in shock when they heard what was going on.

So I thought of another area where I often lacked trust with myself- food. For years, I’d been on a rollercoaster of talking about and trying diets and exercise programs, looking to overhaul my health. These attempts were only met with exhaustion and more assumptions about my health, creating mountains out of mole hills.

I couldn’t quite accept that caloric deficits were the end result of any diet and exercise program, and that I had simply outgrown what had worked in the past.

Instead of finding HIIT workouts as draining simply because I am a mom of two small kids, I assumed my adrenals were wrecked.

Instead of recognizing that restricting was leading to overeating to compensate and I was never really in a deficit, I figured I had hypothyroidism.

Instead of giving myself what I wanted for a while, to reset my hunger cues and connect with my body, I kept choosing to restrict, overeat, exercise, and continue to Google reasons I was bloating. Good pattern, huh?

Alas, I found a way to rebuild my trust with myself- by addressing how I was listening to my body first.

When I began talking with my dietitian, I found that I was drained of energy because I’d start the day with water and coffee, or an energy drink. I’d go a good chunk of the day fasting, which for me, was not helpful. My sugars would actually drop, and then I’d be starving. I’d overeat and then take some sort of stool softener or laxative to get that full feeling to go away. I’d lose hydration and then drink more coffee, and then go back to wondering why I was so tired.

I never expected this to take me where it has. I see myself as more complete on my own, and I find that I’m able to enjoy what I see in the mirror, knowing I’m not the size I once was.

Do I want to be in shape? The short answer is yes. But now, I’m realizing body image issues can actually stem from things that have nothing to do with my body.

Case in point: I’d see myself in the mirror or in a photo and I’d think, “I don’t look like that. I like that, but I don’t look like that. It’s a good angle. It’s deceiving.”

Turns out, with the help of my dietitian, we were able to deduce that I was learning how to relate to the world as a single woman, experiencing a whirlwind of change. I was making a conscious choice to sit my butt down and just exist in the world as myself, and it was bringing up the fact that I continue to sort out how I relate to those around me. I had to learn how to show up as Brittany. Not as the wife of a doting husband. Not as a mom of two girls. Not as a professional anything. Just Brittany.

Turns out, that played a few tricks on me, and it came out in the form of rejecting what I was seeing in the mirror for a while. When we don’t have a role to play, we might lose a sense of what image we present to the world. That’s what happened with me.

The answer comes with time. I’m still working on how I relate to myself and the rest of the world. How I want my hair, how I want my clothes, how I view my body. But the first, most valuable lesson I’ve learned is that body image can be dictated by more than just what we see on social media.

In fact, I’d argue that body image is more rooted in our current emotional state, and our own definitions of who we are- especially as we see our roles in society. The social media and magazine thing just adds more pressure. What are your thoughts?