Heather, in just the last 2 weeks, I experienced being able to "see" the correct size of clothes that would fit me without putting them on. It seemed a normal thing in the moment... "these are too small, I need a medium, please." And I was correct. One of the pieces was a small and I could see it would fit me and kept that one. It did indeed, fit me.
Reading through this, I realized I must have, at least on some level, come through, what I call "Mind-Body Integration Syndrome." From seeing myself enormously fat still after losing 100 lbs. to ultimately losing 280 lbs. and being in remission from obesity ("maintenance"), for 16 months... I seem to have integrated, at least for the moment.
I don't gasp when I see myself in size 4 pants that are too big on me anymore. I don't look at the clothes, over and over, before pulling them on, worried I will be ripping them apart with my thighs or big ass. I don't have any illusions this will always be my thinking. I can't imagine that 5 decades of physical super-obesity will mentally vanish in a mere 16 months.
But reading your piece... I'm sitting back and pondering what, if anything, changed. Besides time.
Mind-Body Integration Syndrome. I love that you named it. Because that’s exactly what it is, and having language for it changes everything.
What you’re describing in that clothing store moment is the map finally updating. Not dramatically, not all at once, but in that quiet ordinary moment of reaching for the medium without second-guessing yourself. That’s not a small thing. After five decades of a different body story, that moment of simply knowing, and being right…is everything.
280 pounds. 16 months of maintenance. And the gasp is gone.
I think you’re right to hold it lightly. Not because it won’t last, but because integration isn’t a destination you arrive at and stay forever. It’s something that deepens gradually, through exactly these kinds of moments accumulated over time. Each one updates the map a little further.
What strikes me most is your self-awareness about the timeline. Five decades of living in one body doesn’t mentally vanish in 16 months. Of course it doesn’t. The fact that you know that, that you’re sitting with it honestly rather than either dismissing your progress or declaring yourself fully healed, that might be the most integrated thing about you right now.
Thank you for sharing this here. This is exactly the conversation that needs to exist.
You are the one, Heather, that brought this to my attention! This clothes experience was a mere 2 weeks ago and I hadn't give it another thought until I read your piece. I wonder how many others are reading and having "a-ha!" moments, too, but not commenting.
I appreciate your saying that I am not married to any sense of being "healed," but that 50 years of super-obesity came with (I swear) 50 documented diets, diet programs, Fen-Phen, and an RNY Gastric Bypass. They all failed. I don't remember ever having an experience like a couple of weeks ago because the weight loss was so fleeting and I honestly never expected them to hold. And/or, there just wasn't time for the integration to occur.
I think my recent shopping was more than body-mind integration, but a belief that maybe, just maybe, I *can* integrate... that this really might *not* just vanish like all the other non-successes.
I love that you've made me think!!! You're awesome.
(Someday, I will have to tell you about the exact second the RNY failed.)
Fifty diets. Fen-Phen. A gastric bypass. And now, sixteen months into maintenance, you reached for the medium without thinking twice.
That's not nothing. That's everything.
What you said about belief is what's staying with me, that this shopping trip wasn't just integration but the beginning of believing integration might actually be possible for you. After fifty years of watching things not hold, allowing yourself to believe this time might be different takes a particular kind of courage. The quiet kind that doesn't announce itself.
And you're right about the time. Integration can't happen when the loss is fleeting. The brain needs enough evidence accumulated over enough time before it starts to trust the new story. Sixteen months is real time. Real evidence.
I think you're describing something important that I haven't written about yet — the moment the belief shifts. Not the body. Not even the perception. The belief that this time you are actually allowed to arrive.
I would very much like to hear about the exact second the RNY failed someday.
I'm trying to figure out how to write it as a stand alone. I've written about it several times, so I'll give you the quick and dirty version.
I was sexually assaulted when I was 18. When I weighed a low of 150 lbs. When I was 30, I had the RNY and a year in, I weighed 150 lbs. and a group of friends and my partner took me to buy a pair of jeans. They were a size 8. When I came out of the dressing room to show them, they applauded and, unbidden, out of my mouth, I said, "I need some chips." I felt vulnerable. Unsafe. Terrified. It took a LOT of therapy to piece it together, but I began gaining weight again that day.
What's so weird is I was not a chip girl at all! I was a brownie, chocolate bar kind of person. I still do not eat chips!! (Except when the cardiologist prescribed them for my low blood pressure. Now, that was bizarre!)
When I hit 150 on my way down this time, I had a momentary blip in my brain, but I was able to convince myself I am now old and saggy baggy... who would want to come near me?! (Of course I know rapists don't attack victims based on looks.) And I kept going down until I didn't... I hover around 125-131... and am not afraid at all. I'm sure a bazillion years of therapy helped!
I keep coming back to the chips. Not your thing at all , and yet there they were, out of your mouth before you’d even formed the thought. Your body knew something your mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
That is the most honest thing I’ve read in a long time about what weight can mean underneath the weight. Not laziness. Not lack of discipline. Protection. The oldest kind.
The fact that you moved through that threshold this time ,that 150 felt different, that you kept going …that is not a small thing. That is decades of work and courage arriving quietly in a dressing room.
And an interesting aside, to me, anyway, I spent *decades* arguing that fat was *not* "protection" from anything. Not emotions. Not physical assault. And certainly not from dating.
Now that I don't *have* the fat, I can see how it was, but, even so, I don't really think I got fat on purpose to protect myself. I got fat, fatter, fattest because of my biology and being metabolically dysregulated.
Can they go hand in hand? Probably. I started to get fat, I felt safer (better), so found a "solution" to the problem through getting fat which happened because of eating, which was because I ate too much, because of metabolic dysregulation.
Much like people with eating, alcohol, drug, etc. abuse/addiction. Cycle: Have pain. Trip on a solution and suddenly we find relief and repeat the patterns.
Heather, in just the last 2 weeks, I experienced being able to "see" the correct size of clothes that would fit me without putting them on. It seemed a normal thing in the moment... "these are too small, I need a medium, please." And I was correct. One of the pieces was a small and I could see it would fit me and kept that one. It did indeed, fit me.
Reading through this, I realized I must have, at least on some level, come through, what I call "Mind-Body Integration Syndrome." From seeing myself enormously fat still after losing 100 lbs. to ultimately losing 280 lbs. and being in remission from obesity ("maintenance"), for 16 months... I seem to have integrated, at least for the moment.
I don't gasp when I see myself in size 4 pants that are too big on me anymore. I don't look at the clothes, over and over, before pulling them on, worried I will be ripping them apart with my thighs or big ass. I don't have any illusions this will always be my thinking. I can't imagine that 5 decades of physical super-obesity will mentally vanish in a mere 16 months.
But reading your piece... I'm sitting back and pondering what, if anything, changed. Besides time.
Mind-Body Integration Syndrome. I love that you named it. Because that’s exactly what it is, and having language for it changes everything.
What you’re describing in that clothing store moment is the map finally updating. Not dramatically, not all at once, but in that quiet ordinary moment of reaching for the medium without second-guessing yourself. That’s not a small thing. After five decades of a different body story, that moment of simply knowing, and being right…is everything.
280 pounds. 16 months of maintenance. And the gasp is gone.
I think you’re right to hold it lightly. Not because it won’t last, but because integration isn’t a destination you arrive at and stay forever. It’s something that deepens gradually, through exactly these kinds of moments accumulated over time. Each one updates the map a little further.
What strikes me most is your self-awareness about the timeline. Five decades of living in one body doesn’t mentally vanish in 16 months. Of course it doesn’t. The fact that you know that, that you’re sitting with it honestly rather than either dismissing your progress or declaring yourself fully healed, that might be the most integrated thing about you right now.
Thank you for sharing this here. This is exactly the conversation that needs to exist.
You are the one, Heather, that brought this to my attention! This clothes experience was a mere 2 weeks ago and I hadn't give it another thought until I read your piece. I wonder how many others are reading and having "a-ha!" moments, too, but not commenting.
I appreciate your saying that I am not married to any sense of being "healed," but that 50 years of super-obesity came with (I swear) 50 documented diets, diet programs, Fen-Phen, and an RNY Gastric Bypass. They all failed. I don't remember ever having an experience like a couple of weeks ago because the weight loss was so fleeting and I honestly never expected them to hold. And/or, there just wasn't time for the integration to occur.
I think my recent shopping was more than body-mind integration, but a belief that maybe, just maybe, I *can* integrate... that this really might *not* just vanish like all the other non-successes.
I love that you've made me think!!! You're awesome.
(Someday, I will have to tell you about the exact second the RNY failed.)
Fifty diets. Fen-Phen. A gastric bypass. And now, sixteen months into maintenance, you reached for the medium without thinking twice.
That's not nothing. That's everything.
What you said about belief is what's staying with me, that this shopping trip wasn't just integration but the beginning of believing integration might actually be possible for you. After fifty years of watching things not hold, allowing yourself to believe this time might be different takes a particular kind of courage. The quiet kind that doesn't announce itself.
And you're right about the time. Integration can't happen when the loss is fleeting. The brain needs enough evidence accumulated over enough time before it starts to trust the new story. Sixteen months is real time. Real evidence.
I think you're describing something important that I haven't written about yet — the moment the belief shifts. Not the body. Not even the perception. The belief that this time you are actually allowed to arrive.
I would very much like to hear about the exact second the RNY failed someday.
I'm trying to figure out how to write it as a stand alone. I've written about it several times, so I'll give you the quick and dirty version.
I was sexually assaulted when I was 18. When I weighed a low of 150 lbs. When I was 30, I had the RNY and a year in, I weighed 150 lbs. and a group of friends and my partner took me to buy a pair of jeans. They were a size 8. When I came out of the dressing room to show them, they applauded and, unbidden, out of my mouth, I said, "I need some chips." I felt vulnerable. Unsafe. Terrified. It took a LOT of therapy to piece it together, but I began gaining weight again that day.
What's so weird is I was not a chip girl at all! I was a brownie, chocolate bar kind of person. I still do not eat chips!! (Except when the cardiologist prescribed them for my low blood pressure. Now, that was bizarre!)
When I hit 150 on my way down this time, I had a momentary blip in my brain, but I was able to convince myself I am now old and saggy baggy... who would want to come near me?! (Of course I know rapists don't attack victims based on looks.) And I kept going down until I didn't... I hover around 125-131... and am not afraid at all. I'm sure a bazillion years of therapy helped!
The chips.
I keep coming back to the chips. Not your thing at all , and yet there they were, out of your mouth before you’d even formed the thought. Your body knew something your mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
That is the most honest thing I’ve read in a long time about what weight can mean underneath the weight. Not laziness. Not lack of discipline. Protection. The oldest kind.
The fact that you moved through that threshold this time ,that 150 felt different, that you kept going …that is not a small thing. That is decades of work and courage arriving quietly in a dressing room.
Thank you for trusting me with this.
I do trust you, Heather.
And an interesting aside, to me, anyway, I spent *decades* arguing that fat was *not* "protection" from anything. Not emotions. Not physical assault. And certainly not from dating.
Now that I don't *have* the fat, I can see how it was, but, even so, I don't really think I got fat on purpose to protect myself. I got fat, fatter, fattest because of my biology and being metabolically dysregulated.
Can they go hand in hand? Probably. I started to get fat, I felt safer (better), so found a "solution" to the problem through getting fat which happened because of eating, which was because I ate too much, because of metabolic dysregulation.
Much like people with eating, alcohol, drug, etc. abuse/addiction. Cycle: Have pain. Trip on a solution and suddenly we find relief and repeat the patterns.
Does that sound right?