The Hardest Thing I've Ever Tried to Heal
The lesson wasn't about weight. It was about worth.
The woman on the left wanted to lose weight. The woman on the right wanted to lose weight. Neither of them realized the problem wasn’t their body.
One of the longest and hardest things I’ve had to work on in my healing journey is self-love and acceptance.
If I’m being honest, I can’t remember a time when I simply accepted and loved myself exactly as I was.
I grew up in a home with five sisters and a mother who were all deeply focused on weight. Diets were discussed the way other families discussed books, hobbies, politics, or travel. Weight loss was a constant topic of conversation—it still is.
No one intended harm. The women in my family inherited those beliefs from the generations before them. But somewhere along the way, I absorbed a message that would follow me for decades:
If you wanted love, acceptance, and approval, you needed to be thin and beautiful.
That belief settled into me early.
I remember being in third grade and hearing comments about my “bubble butt.” I remember feeling self-conscious before I even understood what self-consciousness was.
In fifth grade, my mom lost so much weight that she could wear a pair of my jeans. In the mind of a ten-year-old girl, I didn’t think, My mom has become extremely thin.
I thought, I must be fat.
Whenever our family gathered, conversations revolved around gaining weight, losing weight, this diet, that meal plan, calories, points, carbs, and pounds.
As if our weight was the most interesting thing about us.
As if our bodies were our greatest accomplishment.
Or our greatest failure.
The message was subtle but constant:
Smaller was better.
So I spent much of my life trying to become smaller.
And the irony is that even when I succeeded, I still wasn’t happy.
The photo above was taken when Jason and I were celebrating my 40th birthday in California.
At the time, I was in the best shape of my life. I was teaching five Pilates classes a week, doing yoga every day, and CrossFit several times a week.
Looking at the photo now, I see a woman who looks strong, healthy, and beautiful.
But that’s not what I saw then.
I remember sitting down at dinner and hearing my thighs audibly touch.
That tiny sound ruined the evening.
Instead of enjoying the meal, the company, the celebration, or the trip, I spent the night mentally calculating how to lose more weight.
How to get leaner.
How to improve myself.
How to fix what I believed was wrong.
I eventually posted the photo on Instagram, but I cropped out the lower half of my body because I thought my legs looked fat.
I couldn’t let people see my legs.
I was terrified someone would look at the picture and see what I saw.
All I could see were flaws.
Looking back now, I wish I could go hug that woman and tell her she was already beautiful.
But she wouldn’t have believed me.
That’s the part that breaks my heart now.
I had become the thing I thought would finally make me happy.
And I still couldn’t see myself clearly.
I have dozens and dozens of before-and-after photos.
Dozens of notebooks filled with weights and measurements.
Years of tracking macros, calories, protein, carbohydrates, and body fat percentages.
By that point, I had been dieting for so long that I didn’t even need to write anything down anymore.
The numbers lived in my head.
Every bite of food came with calculations.
Every restaurant menu became a math problem.
Every social event required strategy.
I often skipped dinners, parties, and gatherings because there wasn’t anything on the menu that fit my macros.
I told myself I was being disciplined.
The truth is, I was terrified.
Terrified of eating the wrong thing.
Terrified of seeing the number on the scale the next morning.
Terrified that one meal would undo all of my hard work.
Food wasn’t just food anymore.
It was guilt.
Anxiety.
Math.
Control.
I remember taking a trip to St. George with Noah to visit my parents.
One evening we went to Tuacahn to see The Little Mermaid.
I wanted a treat so badly.
A piece of candy.
Some licorice.
Something.
But I wouldn’t let myself have it.
I knew exactly what would happen.
I would gain weight.
So I sat there surrounded by people enjoying their popcorn, candy, and snacks while I fought with myself the entire night.
When we got home, I laid in bed and cried.
Not because I didn’t get the candy.
Because I was furious.
Furious that everyone around me seemed able to enjoy a simple pleasure while I felt trapped.
Furious that I couldn’t stop thinking about food.
Furious that I couldn’t stop thinking about my weight.
Furious that I had spent so much of my life chasing a body that never felt thin enough, no matter what I did.
Looking back, it wasn’t the licorice I was grieving.
It was freedom.
The prison wasn’t my body.
The prison was my mind.
Then my body started speaking to me.
First it was panic attacks.
Then migraines.
Then adrenal fatigue.
Then weight gain.
There were countless symptoms in between, but the truth is, I didn't really start listening until the weight started coming on.
That’s when I panicked.
I hired a trainer.
Worked with a nutritionist.
Saw specialists.
Tweaked hormones.
Followed meal plans perfectly.
No cheating.
No shortcuts.
No excuses.
I knew my way around a meal plan.
I knew my macros.
I knew my calories.
I knew exactly how much protein, fat, and carbohydrates I had consumed by the end of the day because I carried a running tally in my head at all times.
Even with all of that effort, the weight continued to come.
Every month I expected things to turn around.
Every month I expected the scale to move back in the other direction.
Instead it kept climbing.
Five pounds.
Ten pounds.
Twenty pounds.
Thirty pounds.
Forty pounds.
Fifty pounds.
Nearly sixty pounds.
I remember standing on the scale staring at the number and feeling panic wash over me.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
I was doing everything right.
I was eating the food.
Doing the workouts.
Following the plan.
My body wasn’t following the rules anymore.
The truth is, the weight gain wasn’t just changing my body.
It was dismantling who I thought I was.
For decades I had believed that discipline, fitness, and maintaining my weight were part of my identity.
I knew how to lose weight.
I knew how to control my body.
I knew how to make the scale move.
Until I didn’t.
And without realizing it, I had tied so much of my self-worth to those things that when the weight came on, it felt like I was losing myself.
At first, I viewed my body as a problem to solve.
But eventually I began to wonder if my body wasn’t betraying me at all.
What if it was trying to save me?
What if all those symptoms weren’t evidence that my body was failing?
What if they were evidence that it had been carrying more than it could sustain for far too long?
The hardest realization wasn’t that I had gained weight.
The hardest realization was that I hadn’t loved myself when I was thin either.
The same voice criticizing me in a larger body was the same voice that criticized me in a smaller one.
The body had changed.
The critic had not.
That realization changed everything.
Because it meant the weight wasn’t the problem.
The belief was.
The belief that my worth was tied to my appearance.
The belief that being lovable meant being small.
The belief that acceptance was something I would earn after I became more beautiful, more disciplined, more perfect.
Healing has been learning to challenge that belief.
And it hasn’t been easy.
I still have good days and bad days.
I still catch myself standing in front of a mirror and feeling shame begin to creep in.
But now I stop and remind myself what this body has carried.
This body gave birth to two incredible boys.
This body has carried me through unimaginable grief.
Through loss.
Through healing.
Through adventures, travel, laughter, friendships, and countless meals shared with people I love.
This body has adapted.
Recovered.
Survived.
And something remarkable happened along the way.
As I stopped fighting my body, my health improved.
The panic attacks disappeared.
The migraines disappeared.
The debilitating heartburn disappeared.
The adrenal fatigue improved.
My hormones stabilized.
I stopped needing medications.
I am not the size six I once was.
I am much bigger.
But I am also healthier than I was then.
Recently, my mom sent me a text.
Some neighbors had dropped off a large tray of Rice Krispie treats.
She was touched by the gesture. Living completely at home these days, those small acts of kindness mean a lot to her.
But in the same text, she mentioned that there were so many treats she might gain ten pounds eating them all.
She’s ninety years old.
And after a lifetime of being a mother, a wife, a grandmother, and living a full life, the fear of gaining weight is still there.
My response was simple:
“Eat the damn Rice Krispie treats.”
Because that is not the ending I want for my story.
I’ve heard stories of women in nursing homes refusing a piece of cake in the final chapter of their lives because their self-worth is still tied to self-control, restriction, and remaining small.
That breaks my heart.
I don’t want to spend my final years counting calories.
I don’t want my self-worth tied to self-denial.
I don’t want to look back on my life and realize I spent decades trying to become smaller.
And I don’t want to spend the next twenty years waiting to love myself either.
Because that’s what I’ve been doing for most of my life.
Waiting.
Waiting until I lost the weight.
Waiting until I looked different.
Waiting until I finally felt good enough.
My goal now is something entirely different.
Radical self-love.
Radical self-acceptance.
Not someday.
Not ten pounds from now.
Not when my body changes.
Now.
Exactly as I am.
Because life is too short to spend it standing in front of a mirror negotiating my worth.
I want to become freer.
I want to take up space.
I want to enjoy the meal.
I want to laugh with friends.
I want to experience life fully in the body I have today, not the body I used to have or the body I think I should have.
My body has been one of my greatest teachers.
Long before I started helping others understand the messages hidden in their symptoms, emotions, and experiences, my own body was trying to get my attention.
The lesson wasn’t about weight.
The lesson was about worth.
And perhaps that’s why this has been one of the hardest parts of my healing journey.
Because it required me to stop measuring my worth by my size and start seeing myself through a different lens entirely.
For most of my life, I believed self-love would come after I changed myself.
What I’m learning now is that self-love begins when we stop asking ourselves to become someone else.
And maybe that’s the real healing.
Not loving every part of ourselves every moment of every day.
But finally deciding that our worth was never up for debate in the first place.
The lesson wasn’t about weight.
The lesson was about worth.
And I am finally learning that both were mine all along.
Another thread from my heart to yours.