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I am Learning to Live in a New Body

Eating intuitively but avoiding my own reflection

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I was a skinny child and a thin young adult, with the exception of about a year in college, during which I discovered our cafeteria’s soft-serve ice cream machine. I spent my twenties and much of my thirties hovering fairly effortlessly around the same weight.

I was active. I cooked healthy meals. But I also ate boxes of Red Vines at the movies or drank trays full of martinis on girls’ night out.

Suddenly, right around 40, something changed. It’s an old story. Clothes felt tighter. The scale started to show numbers that I hadn’t seen since my freshman year in college. I thought it was a fluke. I was more careful. The number continued to rise.

My weight still fell within a healthy range, according to the medical establishment. No one lectured me when I went to the doctor. But I felt like someone else. My wardrobe was suddenly unpredictable. Old friends from my closet had turned on me. Zippers refused to zip. The reflection in the mirror stared back vacantly.

I hired a coach. She was a tyrant. “Too many bananas!” she announced the first week after I had consumed a total of two bananas. “You don’t need them unless you are running marathons.” I ran seven miles…