By Krystle J Bailey
“Today is the day,” she claims. “That I’ll release the weight and the shame. Today, I’ll find my worth somewhere else, like maybe, just maybe, inside of myself.”
This line is from a poem I wrote in 2017 after a public journey of losing over one hundred pounds. When I birthed my daughter in 2010, I had already tried and failed on numerous occasions to lose the weight “once and for all.”
At twenty-two years old, with a toddler in tow, I signed up for a well-known weight loss program.
Eighteen months later, I’d find myself crying on my mother’s couch at seeing a buffet on a magazine cover. I had lost control. I was wearing a size two. I had lost way more than I set out to initially and the thought of food in abundance became my worst nightmare. I didn’t feel any healthier as a skinny person than I did when I stepped on the scale nearly two years earlier. I felt lost, scared, and confused.
As an overweight child of the ’90s, diets and diet culture were all I knew. I remember the first time I recognized there was “something wrong with me” in the eyes of others when a neighbor asked my mother what she was going to do about my weight. I was eleven.
The grown-ups in the world did their best to guide me and love me in the way they knew how, but it was no secret to me that there was a problem with how the rest of the world could see me. I dreaded putting my weight on school forms, sports trading cards, or anything that caused me to face myself, as those things made it true – that I was, in fact, a significantly overweight child. The word “obese” was a word I learned early, and diets were so deeply rooted in my consciousness that I owned obesity as part of my personal truth.
So, when I dropped ten pant sizes and could see my cheekbones, being an overweight person was still so deeply rooted that it took me the last ten years to create a new reality for myself. I heard my mom talk about her weight loss mentor once saying, “It took me two years to lose the weight physically, but ten years to lose it mentally.”
These are the things that were the unwritten rules in my life. I was going to be overweight forever, and if I ever did lose the weight, it might take ten more years to get my mind right.
Many of us are still working to undo quite a bit of the diet culture damage of the ’90s and 2000s. We were the guinea pigs for it! Thankfully, we have access to so much more information and a broader understanding of overall well-being now that we aren’t so easily sold the same old bill of health.
The layers of this story would take up too many more pages, but much of it can be found in my 2017 book “Nourish”, where I begin a new journey of self-discovery and self-trust. My daughter is now a teenager, and I’ve learned so much about my own path. Through my own experiences and conversations with so many others who have faced similar battles, if there’s one thing I know to be true, it’s that how we view ourselves can have a meaningful impact on how our children see themselves. We are their superheroes. I decided long ago that my mental and spiritual health would become my focus, and if there was one thing I could do to be a better mom, it was to stop obsessing over my weight and self-image. I vowed to stop talking about it altogether in front of my kids and allow them to create their own stories.
As you flip through this incredible health and wellness edition of Shore Local Newsmagazine, I encourage you to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of your life. You are an ever-evolving, ever-changing, beautiful soul of a human. If the tools being offered speak to your heart, by all means – choose them! We need tools for all of life’s journey, and health truly is our wealth. Just remember that your physical body is only a small part of the story. Don’t forget about the rest.
For the parents out there, your example speaks volumes. In the wise words of my favorite author, Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.”
We have the opportunity to do better for the next generation of young men and women. We can show them what true health looks like and speak life into them so that maybe one day, the writer typing this column will tell a better story.
“Nourish: A Journey to Loving and Embracing the Woman Within” can be found at tinyurl.com/nourish2024.
Krystle J Bailey is a published author, multimedia journalist, copywriter, and content creator. She is a regular Shore Local columnist and digital contributor as well as the booking agent and co-host of the radio show Joe’s Table for Two on WOND. Krystle can be reached at KrystleJBailey@gmail.com
