“Help! I thought I was ok with this change in body and food was a comfort, exercise was off the table, and I figured that nearly everyone was doing it, but now I’m feeling insecure and nervous in my own skin!” Does this sound like a recent thought you may have had? You may also be feeling confused and unsure of where to go from here. Well, I have good news, you are not alone. No matter what our own unique experiences were like during COVID, many of us went through something difficult and found ourselves finding new ways to cope. There are no coping tools that are inherently good or bad and they all serve the purpose of getting us through a tough situation. It is only after long-term use that we can determine if a coping tool is creating the life that we hope to have in the long run. So please, please, please, do not beat yourself up. Every coping tool that we use, whether maladaptive or productive, deserves a “thank you” at some point for helping us get through an unpleasant emotion or situation.
During quarantine, our options were extremely limited and many of us had to use what was available to us, which was often food. When our bodies and brains experience trauma, especially chronic trauma such as COVID, we turn towards vices that help us with emotional survival. You may have used food while someone else used alcohol, knitting, running, making videos, gaming, or a mix of things. If your emotions were all over the place, and may still be, while also experiencing fear and uncertainty, the brain will do anything to get its mind off this and ease the body. If your mind chose food and rest/limited movement to help you with your emotional survival…yey, this is wonderful news. Without this who knows where you would be today and how much worse things might be for you. During COVID your body and mind asked, and sometimes demanded, food and rest to relax and you listened. You may not have been capable to use any other coping tool or had the mental capacity to even fathom doing something else, and that is ok.
Whether your body is larger, smaller, or the same you are still the same person. Only now you are someone who has survived a trauma larger than any of us could have ever imagined. Perhaps it is unfair and even irrational to blame or shame ourselves for using a coping tool that got us through a collective trauma where nearly everyone in the WORLD was scared for their survival. Instead of beating ourselves up, we might use this time to say thank you to our mind for keeping us alive. Today is a new day and tomorrow will be a new day as well and so on. Just like your body and mind adapted during COVID and took the actions it needed to take, it will also take the actions it needs to take today and moving forward. Our bodies are incredibly adaptive, and it is ok to trust them. Maybe weight loss is not the answer, and we might stop to think about what we perhaps had to sacrifice before COVID to maintain the weight we were at. Were you sacrificing your hunger needs, friendships, socializing, a slave to working out, damaging organs, obsessively thinking about food, body checking, having irritability and trouble sleeping, skipping events because of food, or negative self-talk? If your answer is yes to any of these then you may consider keeping some of the relaxed mindset that helped during COVID. If this is not your experience, then it is ok to trust yourself and to trust that your body knows what it is doing. Our minds know that our physical, emotional, and mental needs are forever changing, which is awesome! The most important thing is to not deprive your body of the nutrients it needs to perform at its best so you can lead a life that feels nurturing, supportive, and loving to you. Lastly, maybe hug yourself, it has probably been a while. 😊
