Why is my obsession with being thin getting worse as I age?

the internet won't shut up about our bodies but are any of us actually talking about it? + my mindset as a “naturally” thin woman in her mid-life

I’m sure I can only see my weight gain here with my cruel critical eye

I have my mother’s genes. We are tiny Filipino people. Regardless of whatever trend our bodies are supposed to be in this moment, my body shape is like the classic white T-shirt, a timeless object in our society. My body doesn’t go out of style because I am considered petite. I don’t physically take up much space, which is how our patriarchal world wants a woman to be anyway.

Even with a conventionally accepted body type, why is it that I am not free from body image issues? Even as a naturally skinny woman, I have a messed up mindset too. And it’s gotten worse in my age of 41.

They say you should write about the thing that most scares you. Well, this is one of them. For some reason, I have no problem airing out my dirty laundry on this newsletter and with my friends. I’m loud about my chronic health issues, or how I am rage-y toward my children, or how I often have life-ending thoughts. Yet, I’m nearly mute when it comes to my body and my relationship to food.

No one wants to hear a thin bitch complain and here I am fearing I should just shut up about this topic but it’s been slowly eating at me particularly in the last few years, and glaring at me over the past few weeks.

It started about a month ago when I decided to click on Trevor Noah’s podcast because he interviewed a Filipino journalist I admire, Jia Tolentino; the topic was Ozempic, which I haven’t followed closely but the entire interview unexpectedly pushed me through so many mental and emotional directions. I found myself angry at our broken systems, sadness that health is political, and curiosity about why we care so much about what someone else puts in their body to make them feel and look better.

Then a week later, my digital scale ran out of battery. I didn’t know a 12 inch by 12 inch tool I step on would throw me into such a loop; relief it won’t tell me today’s pounds, anger I care about today’s pounds, and fear for the future weight it will hold, especially when my daughter inevitably starts to care what numbers blink at her in a few years, even with my careful modeling because I can’t shield the way the world works from her.

Then on Sunday, I read this piece from

Farrah @Substack

called Have women really stopped wanting to be thin? and it sent me down an emotional spiral. Farrah gives specific details in her life-long journey to be thin: “I have taken laxatives, tried jamming toothbrushes down the back of my throat, swallowed cotton wool balls doused in orange juice and ordered ‘diet pills’ from Ebay that came in a doll’s head and gave me heart palpitations for days on end.”

Often, I’d read and hear about people’s extremes of dieting and comfort myself thinking, well, at least I don’t do that. What sort of insensitivity is that, judging like I’m on some hierarchy of less fucked up than the next female who just wants to feel good about herself? I stupidly tell myself I’m not like them because I’m not on the market to take diet pills, or binge and purge, or you can fill in the blank whatever you personally think is an extreme way to diet or treat your body in order to look a certain way. I’m not here to be the judge of extremes when it comes to our bodies because, frankly, I don’t know what is good or bad when it comes to how we are supposed to live in our own bodies.

I just know the way it is right now does not feel right.

An internal and eternal debate about my weight has been running through my head for all of my adult life ever since I came home from college one day and my uncle took one look at me and asked if I had eaten one too many hamburgers. And while I’ve been concerned about my weight in my adult years, including during postpartum, why do I all of a sudden have a hyper focus on my body, now, in my 40s?

a postpartum pic I never enjoyed

Is it because I’m a mother of a daughter and I’ve pressured myself to model a “healthy” body image and relationship to food? I’ve become so focused on not saying or doing the wrong things in front of my children but silencing my thoughts somehow have made them appear louder in my belief system.

Over the past couple years, when it comes to food, I swing between guilt and regret every single time I eat. I know that everything I’m about to say, to many people, will sound downright stupid and annoying. Just this week, I questioned if I put too many almonds in my oatmeal. As I wiped grease off my fingers from my ham and cheese croissant on Wednesday, I wondered if I should eat much else for the day because I had such a rich sandwich before noon. I make bread for god’s sakes and I can’t even enjoy a slice of my own baking without talking shit to myself for eating it. Frankly, it makes me pissed off how much I care about my body weight.

Why is the inner dialogue so loud now?

Is it the fact that I was back on social media again? Was I hyper aware of how I looked because I hosted a video podcast? Is it because I have gray hair and dark spots on my cheeks and feel the need to control my thinness because I’m unhappy with how I’m aging? Are my midlife moods accentuating my hyper vigilance and obsession with my weight?

Research shows women over 40 are going through all the feels over their appearance, including their changing bodies. Please, tell me, ladies. Are you experiencing this too in your mid-life or is it just me?

As I looked back at pictures of myself over the years, I cringe looking at the ones where I’ve gained 10-15 pounds more than my ideal weight. Before you question my own criticism, remember many of us are own worst and cruelest critic. In these pictures, I can see an extra thickness in my arms, my already broad shoulders look broader, and I’m reminded of how my thighs felt snug in these certain shorts I wore while training for a marathon. Which, by the way, I led everyone including myself believe I was running a half marathon for my health, but it was really my desperate way to lose the weight I had gained from sitting at a desk for 10 hours a day.

marathon shorts

But even the skinniest pictures don’t bring joyful memories.

There are the ones where my thighs are gapping, a harmful body trend I fell for, whether or not I wanted to believe it then. I distinctly remember the state of my life at that moment. I looked good in those skinny jeans but I was a mental wreck. Just before then I was in another deep depression.

Before a trip to Italy, I was super sick, mentally and physically, and lost a bunch of weight. But, I guess that was worth it to me, as I was satisfied with how I looked across the Italian landscape in all my iPhone pics.

It doesn’t seem to matter what weight I am, sadness sits on both sides. So where do I go from here?

I don’t really know. Do any of us?!

I just know that I have been silently brewing with these thoughts and my millennial mind has an urge to say it out loud, even though it scares me like hell. In my 40s I have some of the deepest friendships I’ve ever had in my life and maybe I need to embrace those dynamics more when it comes to this. Maybe my friends and I need to practice authenticity when it comes to our bodies and weight. I never had friendships in which we talk about our bodies in a true and constructive loving manner, nor did I ever seek that. We just shut our traps about it, pretend that we aren’t concerned about what sort of spiral that slice of cake is going to push us through after our meal. But, I’m concerned, does anyone even want intimate conversations about such a taboo thing as our body weight? Or, like I said earlier, maybe no one wants to hear a skinny bitch complain. And a skinny depressed one, at that.

I’m disappointed I feel this way but why am I even surprised? The internet is filled to the brim with talk about our bodies, no matter what shape or size we are. Women will never win. We’ve unpacked toxic body positivity, now we’re supposed to have body neutrality even though that seems unattainable to me right now. I’ve read about the spectrum of disordered eating, body dysmorphia, toxic clean eating, almond moms, intermittent fasting, and orthorexia nervosa a.k.a. clean eating disorders. I’m sure I’ve missed a million other disorders and dysfunctions we can all dissect forever and ever.

We all sit alone on our phones and computers, reading and watching reels about all these body and diet issues yet are any of us actually having constructive conversations with trusted people in our lives about it? Should we?

Maybe someday I’ll catch up to what all the 40-year-olds seem to be achieving, embracing their “I give no more fucks” era.

But all the research, all I’ve read online, is telling me maybe we are giving a fuck, silently, and mid-scroll.

Do you have constructive and honest conversations about your body issues with people you trust? If you don’t, do you wish you did, or rather not?