Yes, I Gained The "COVID 19" But This Time I Don’t Want To Feel Guilty About It

I am no stranger to gaining weight. I grew up fat and after starving myself during my teen years, I landed in the category of “thick”— not skinny, but also not fat. I had curves in “all the right places.”

But as I talk more about in my book, Eat Your Way To Self-Confidence, my horrible relationship to diet and exercise caused my weight to go up and down for years, which always messed with my sense of confidence and self-worth.

Then in 2017, while working as a video producer at BuzzFeed, I got an opportunity to try a product called Fitness Genes, which gave me a diet and exercise plan based on my genetics. At the time, I was at the highest weight I had been in ten years, and really wanted to find a sustainable way to manage my weight.

And to my surprise, I managed to lose 10 lbs in the trial 30 days and another 20 lbs by the end of the year. It was the first time in my life where I felt like I had actually gained control over my body. It also marked the beginning of my new, positive relationship with food, which inspired me to write my book.

Left to right: Me after following Fitness Genes for 30 days and losing 10 lbs; Me after following Fitness Genes for 4 months and dropping an additional 20 lbs in 2017.

But flash forward three years, and after having survived a pandemic and making it through grad school, I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life.

Now, in my past, whenever I discovered I had gained weight, I always felt this overwhelming sense of guilt, shame and sadness. But this time… I don’t know—It was like a mix of “Well… That happened” and “Fuck, I know I’m supposed to feel horrible about this… But I kinda don’t want to.”

For someone with my history, getting to this place about my weight gain has been so fascinating for me.

It could be because I am getting older…

Or because I’ve been in therapy for the last three years…

Or because I started taking anti-depressants fairly recently that have given me the amazing ability to acknowledge my emotions while not being overwhelmed by them…

But even though I haven’t been feeling the best about my weight gain, I have also equally had no desire to shit on myself because of it. And I’ll be honest and say that I would like to get back to where I was before the pandemic, but I guess I’m trying to question why we need to feel horrible about ourselves whenever we gain weight? Like why can’t it just be something that we observe and then make a choice about what we want to do? Is the guilt and the shame really necessary?

In our culture, gaining weight is supposed to be this horrible, awful, devastating thing.

But I don’t know, there’s something about seeing over half a million people die from a deadly virus that really puts your emotions in check.

As I talked about this with my therapist, she reminded me that our bodies have been the site of trauma for the past year and a half. We haven’t been able to see our loved ones, people have been dying all around us for months, habits and routines have been crazily disrupted.There was absolutely no reason why I should feel bad about having my cake and eating it, too.

So, for a few months I really let myself have what I wanted without remorse. And mentally, it felt really good— truly liberating in a way that I have never let myself experience.

But then I had a photoshoot… And while I always make do with what I’m working with, I, again, was confronted with this weird mix of emotions where I knew I wasn’t happy with my appearance BUT I still had no desire to hate myself for something that is so human. Bodies change; they fluctuate. No one ever stays the same forever. And yet, we spend so much time hating ourselves over what is inevitable instead of learning how to peacefully confront our changes.

Me in April 2021 having gained over 30 lbs.

If you’re like me and you’ve gained the “COVID 19,” I think it’s totally fair to acknowledge that you’re not happy about where your body is at. I just hope that we can get to a place in society where instead of hating ourselves for those fluctuations, we can learn to peacefully recognize the changes in our lives and make decisions that best support both our physical and mental health.