I Had to Gain 15 Pounds to Get My Period Back—And It's Not as Fun as It Sounds

Looking back, I'm not sure if friends and family were using those words knowing that this would be a difficult emotional time, carefully selecting words that would suggest beauty and strength. Maybe it was that I really had been too thin before, and they were happy to see me reaching a “normal” body weight. Or was it that I was doing the one thing that they knew society encourages women not to do, and I needed all the support I could get?

Whatever it was, it meant that the greatest negativity I experienced was my own, when I looked in the mirror.

I started to notice that weight talk happens around us all the time. I'd turn on the radio and hear commercials about losing weight quickly. I would hear multiple daily conversations between friends about ways to drop a few quick pounds. I noticed how people judged themselves based on where they were in relation to their goal weight. How nasty and cruel we are to ourselves because it's physically impossible to naturally look like the airbrushed models we see in magazines, on billboards, and on social media.

It made me feel sick. Here I was, trying to make my body healthier, trying to reassure it that it was safe and doing the right thing by gaining weight and resting, yet I was surrounded by a world that only shows women trying to lose it.

As someone who had what some might consider an “ideal figure,” it now makes me angry. I would hear “ab goals,” “you look so fit,” or “you look amazing” when I would post a picture a few days before a race. All positive, supportive words, but definitely underlining the idea that looking skinny and lean is the "best" way to be attractive. When I was at my leanest, though, I still didn't feel confident; I still felt like I wasn't enough.

My body is now fully functioning again—it's found its happy place—and I know I made the right choice. Initially it wasn't easy to shut down the critical self-talk, even though almost everyone I spoke to would take the time to tell me how great I looked. I thought they were just telling me what I wanted to hear. I found writing in a journal helped to transition my thoughts. Often an entry would start insecure and fearful of what was happening, but I would almost give myself a pep talk while writing, which would leave me with a clear, confident, content outlook on what I was doing.

After my weight stabilized at the place it wanted to be, and I got used to my new body, those negative voices just seemed to fade away. Whenever someone paid me a compliment, I would make myself acknowledge it, and trust that they were saying it because they meant it.

I may be in a good place, but now my mission has been set. We need to show our daughters, sisters, and friends that body-shaming is not OK, the women on the TV do not look like that in real life, and being at a weight where your body is fully functioning is really all you can strive for.