Quick little note/TW: in this post I discuss weight gain (in case that wasn’t obvious from the title). No numbers are mentioned, but I do express personal feelings towards my weight gain that are not entirely positive (stemming from my own internalized fat-phobia). So, if reading such thoughts could potentially be triggering to you and harmful to your own recovery journey, this may not be the post for you. 

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It’s NEDA Week, and that means I am getting vulnerable. If you’re new here, NEDA Week = the National Eating Disorders Association’s Awareness Week = eating disorders awareness week = etc, etc. Having started this blog while I was being treated for an eating disorder, this week is obviously near to my heart, so even though it has technically come to an end, I still wanted to share some thoughts. 

Part of what has kept me unusually quiet this year has just been medical school keeping me busy. We are approaching the end of our fourth module (renal/cardiopulmonary) and this week I had an anatomy lab practical on Monday + our usual weekly quiz on Friday. A week from today, we have our final for the module. 

The other part though, has been trying to find the words for these thoughts. The topic of this post has actually been on my mind since our second module, but I never got around to muddling through writing anything tangible.  

Last semester, I made my way through our fundamentals, musculoskeletal, and nervous system modules. I’m not sure I would say that I thrived in these modules, but I got through them. At the end of our musculoskeletal module, we got our white coats. 

Getting my white coat certainly made things feel a bit more real, but every time I put my coat on (which actually isn’t as much as you may think just yet), I wonder if I am truly worthy of it. The expectations that come with the symbolic white coat weigh on me, and the responsibilities that come with it are not lost on me. It’s a lot to take on and a lot to live up to. 

Currently, I only wear mine for Standardized Patient encounters which are basically graded assessments of our clinical skills in which we demonstrate various physical examination techniques. But the amount of time my coat spends on my shoulders (vs on a hanger) will increase over the coming years. 

The other “big” event in my life since starting medical school has been gaining weight. 

It’s almost like my biggest dream and biggest fear have come true all at once. Realistically, I have some other fairly big dreams & weight gain doesn’t actually top my fears’ list, but it’s definitely been up there for many, many years. 

One of the hardest parts of recovering from a restrictive eating disorder (besides, you know, eating food) was accepting weight gain, and gaining too much was a constant fear. I equated gaining weight with losing control, and for me, the illusion of control was one of the things my eating disorder was giving me. 

Thankfully, I have come a long way in terms of my disordered thinking, and even further in terms of actually engaging in disordered behaviors. That still doesn’t make gaining what I feel like is too much weight any easier.

It started off gradually during college. I wasn’t thrilled about the changes in my body and weight, but I could accept that it was probably healthy. 

After graduating, I had to invest in a second set of new pants to fit my still increasing weight. Again, not thrilled with having to size up again, but I was working night shift and attributed a lot of the changes I saw in that time to my totally wonky sleep schedule and the stress that can put on the body. During this time, though, I would say I was probably at my best in terms of physical fitness. I felt stronger than I had before, I was doing workouts at the fire station in turnout gear, and I was able to push myself farther on trail runs. Focusing on what my body was capable of rather than what it looked like or how much it weighed was hugely helpful for me in this time. 

Now, since starting medical school, I have had to size up yet again. At this point, it is flat out frustrating. First off, even buying second hand, shopping sales, etc, all these new clothes add up, not to mention the process of trying things on is mentally exhausting. Secondly, I cannot focus on what my body is capable of because I basically didn’t workout at all most of last semester, so my physical fitness level is the worst it has been since the development of my eating disorder in high school. Ouch.

Logically, I know that gaining weight is not the worst thing in the world. I know that it does not make me a less deserving, worthy, lovable, etc human. I know that it literally says nothing about me as a person other than gravity pulls on my body more now than it has in the past. I know all of that, and knowing all of that and reminding myself of it regularly has kept me from sliding backwards. I can sit with the discomfort I feel towards my body and not act on that discomfort in an effort to change it. 

I also know that resorting back to disordered eating habits gets me nowhere good in the end. It wrecks my relationships, wrecks my body, and jeopardizes my future. I know it would only be a temporary fix that would make things much, much worse in the long run. 

So I keep doing what I know I need to do: eating. 

If that’s not one of the biggest indicators that I have achieved a very solid recovery, I don’t know what is. It seems like the trials of recovery just keep getting bigger and bigger, testing me to see if I have “really” recovered, or if I’ll snap when things get tough. 

It’s hard to not feel as though I have “let myself go.” It’s hard to trust my body right now. It’s hard to trust intuitive eating, because if I’m being honest, my diet hasn’t been the healthiest since starting medical school. Not in the way you may be thinking though, it’s not been restrictive. It’s probably the least restrictive I’ve ever been in my adult life. Soda, fast food, lots of sugary things; things I used to never allow myself to have and really never even craved before. While these things maybe weren’t the best for my body, I think it could be argued that given my history, they were the best for my mind. 

So I ate and didn’t work out and survived my first semester of medical school, and I gained weight. The reason really doesn’t matter, so I’m not even going to try and justify it. There are tons of people (besides myself) who have experienced weight gain at some point in their lives that they were not happy about; the reasons why, endless. 

There is something to be said for being concerned about weight because you want to be “healthy,” but even that is more of a gray area than many of us may like to believe. It’s a topic I may explore more fully here one day, but today is not that day. Also, making an idol out of health has its own problems. There’s plenty of individuals who are disabled, chronically, ill, etc, who will never be “healthy,” so where does that leave them?

Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is to be gentle because you never know what someone may be going through. This applies to yourself too! I certainly have to remember to include myself in this. 

So I got my white coat, and I gained weight. With that weight gain I may have also gained insecurities, but the growth hasn’t been all bad, or all physical. There has been a lot of knowledge growth, a lot of self-compassion growth, a lot of empathy growth. Maybe this is my new set-point that I will just have to grow to accept; maybe it isn’t. Regardless, I am moving forward, sitting with the discomfort but not acting on it and not letting it derail my life. Accepting my new body is a constant work in progress but it has carried me this far, so I have to appreciate it for that. 

And that’s essentially where I am at in life: continuing to navigate maintaining recovery, body acceptance, and surviving/soaking up medical school.