Something that came with Trikafta that I didn’t quite expect when I imagined my life largely without CF was weight gain and a new relationship with my body.
After a lifetime of constantly trying to GAIN weight and hardly fitting in XS clothes, I suddenly started watching my weight creep up and up and up. Fat and cellulite appeared in spots I had never found them before, I went up in clothing sizes not once but two times (and then a third time if you count pregnancy and post-partum) As thankful as I was for the health afforded to me thanks to Trikafta, I was really struggling to accept my new size.
I dipped my toe into dieting and quickly realized how awful and soul sucking it was. There’s gotta be a better way.
Enter: Intuitive Eating, the anti-diet movement, and health at every size.
I have learned, through reading books and listening to countless podcasts, all about the ways diet culture makes us victims to a lifetime pursuit of changing our bodies, and that this pursuit actually has some pretty serious mental and physical health implications. Diet Culture is a term used to describe the belief our society buys into that thinness is valued above all else. Being thin is equated with moral superiority, “health,” and societal acceptance. The weight loss industry is valued at over $250 billion a year.
And the worst part? Diets don’t work, there are countless studies that show 95% of diets fail in the long term (meaning 5-10 years) and lead to weight regain. And 2/3 of dieters gain back even MORE weight than they lost. And then diet companies make it seem like it was your fault, the diet didn’t fail you, you failed the diet. You didn’t have enough willpower.
But the reality is, our bodies are smart, and when we diet our bodies think we are in a famine. So it makes every effort to hold on to weight and fat to prevent you from starving (and dying) the next time famine hits. So when you invariably give up the diet because you’re starving, your “set point” weight (the natural size your body wants to be largely determined by sheer genetics and other environmental factors) increases, your metabolism slows down, your body stores fat to protect you, and you despair and do it all over again because diet culture tells us we should all be thinner.
Diets are set up to fail. Evelyn Tribole, the author of Intuitive Eating, describes that when you restrict food, your body is designed to crave food to protect you. When you hold your breath under water, your body does everything it can to get you to air, and when you get to the surface you take that big deep breath in. The same thing happens with restriction, you restrict and restrict and restrict and when you finally eat (whether it’s forbidden or not), you overcompensate and binge anything and everything you can get your hands on. And diet companies tell you that’s a YOU problem, a willpower problem, when truly it’s your body protecting you from starvation. We don’t blame people for gasping for breath when they need air, so why the shame around eating?
If diets worked, people wouldn’t need to go on endless diets in their lifetime. And the weight loss industry knows this, it’s profiting off of it and it’s fucking disgusting.
I learned that weight cycling (gaining and losing weight over and over again) leads to a number of health concerns, a wacky metabolism, and tons of psychological harm.
It was difficult coming to terms with all of this after living my whole life in diet culture- where I was praised for being naturally skinny, where people told me how jealous they were that I could eat anything I wanted and not gain weight. And it was difficult to come to terms with the fact that now that I had a larger body, this might be my size forever. I didn’t want to buy new clothes, or have rolls and look different in a bathing suit, I didn’t want to hate what I saw in the mirror.
But it’s been a journey and through lots of self-discovery, I’ve learned that to truly focus on health, I had to let go of trying to fit into those XS clothes and embrace my new size. I had been conditioned to believe that being in the “overweight” or higher BMI category (BMI is bullshit by the way) was inherently unhealthy. But I learned through intuitive eating that health and weight is determined by a number of variables like genetics, income, education, stigma, access to food, chronic illness, etc.
Losing weight is not a magic cure that equals health. Sure you might look more “acceptable” by diet culture standards, but aesthetics isn’t the whole picture. The pursuit of weight loss comes at a cost to your mental health. Hating your body AND being hungry sucks.
Instead, I’ve learned to focus on health promoting behaviors more holistically. Reducing stress, sleeping enough, processing my emotions in therapy, exercising in ways I enjoy (Running! Peloton! Skiing! Walking!) and eating intuitively which means letting go of external food rules, eating when I’m hungry regardless of calories, stopping when I’m full. It means allowing myself to eat all foods, focusing on what makes me feel good, what gives me energy, what satisfies my sweet tooth, what keeps me full. No focus on calories, or numbers, or macros.
And the amazing thing is, while you may think that giving yourself permission to eat all foods would mean you’d never stop eating donuts, the exact opposite happened. I found myself craving whole balanced meals. I could have a bag of chips or candy in my house without eating the whole thing. I learned that when you restrict, THAT is when you start to be out of control around food. But when you’re allowed it all, food loses its allure.
But perhaps the hardest thing that came with intuitive eating was letting go of my idea of the “perfect body.” It took me quite some time to get comfortable with the fact that I may not be “skinny” again and that this journey could potentially lead to more weight gain. I’ve learned that the place your body settles when you nourish it appropriately, get regular joyful movement, and take care of it beyond just what you eat, is where your body is meant to be. My body wasn’t meant to be 100 lbs, that was my body fighting to survive CF. My new healthy body is meant to be larger, because now my body has fully healed. AND my body post-baby is meant to ALSO be larger, I grew a freakin human and I feed that human every day with milk from my own body. This body is meant to be celebrated, not disdained.
And everyone’s experience is different, but for me my weight settled within a year of doing intuitive eating. I didn’t gain weight indefinitely. I did a lot of mental work to get comfortable with my new body. I stopped following fitness influencers with flat stomachs and visible abs and impossible gym routines. I found people on Instagram that looked more like me and embraced their curves (@thebirdspapaya, @mikzazon , @tiffanyima, @jaimmykoroma, @britanilancaster) I read More Than a Body, and focused on what my body could DO, not what it looked like. I brought up my body image struggles in therapy and processed what I was willing to sacrifice for good health. I wrote and journaled and detailed my experiences on my Instagram @laurenbweeks. I refused to participate in conversations about dieting, and about other women’s bodies (BOTH negative and positive comments because complimenting weight loss can sometimes fuel disordered behaviors). I stopped weighing myself, I stopped examining every roll and cellulite in the mirror, and I stopped comparing myself to other peoples’ bodies.
And once I came to terms with it all, it was so freeing. It’s exhausting worrying about what you look like all the time. And frankly, it’s fucking boring. So I let it go, and I enjoyed all of the other wonderful things about life: my new found cf-free health, being a mom, my family.
I plan to share more about my journey here, so if you have questions or there’s something you’d like to hear more about please comment or message me!
If you’re interested in learning more about intuitive eating, below are some books and podcasts I recommend!
Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
Health at Every Size by Lindo Bacon
The Fuck It Diet by Caroline Dooner
More than a Body by Lindsey and Lexi Kyte
Podcasts:
Food Psych
What the Actual Fork
Maintenance Phase
Find Food Freedom
How to love your body
Food and body freedom