How I Finally Got Over My Body Issues

We’re getting a little deep today. This is a long post, and there’s still so much more I could’ve said — and still want to say — on this topic. It took me two months to hit finally publish and to want to share all of this. Here’s a bit of reflection on my relationship with my body over the years…

Last week, I went to my first November Project workout in months.

HAPPY CANDID ALI.

I woke up at 4:20 AM to give myself time to go to the bathroom (several times), get dressed, and Uber my way to the Upper East Side for the 5:28 AM workout. It was comforting how, despite being away from the group for so long, so many things felt the same.

There were loads of fresh new faces at the workout, but there were also so many of the same familiar ones I know and love. We ran the same shamrock-style loops we always run around Gracie Mansion and Carl Schurz Park, and I saw several of my favorite UES puppies — plus my two least-favorite ones, those two bratty chihuahuas that once bit my ankle. We took the same group photo we always take at the end of the workout, and then I ran back to the ferry to head home — just like I always did.

NP-ers give the best hugs.

It wasn’t until I got back home — still riding that familiar NP high that comes with each workout, hug, and high five — that I realized one thing that was really, drastically different from my old November Project routine.

I never once thought about my body. I didn’t carefully plan my outfit, and I was never aware of people taking photos at the workout — and there are always people taking photos at the workouts. How I looked never even crossed my mind. And holy hell, I cannot even tell you how freeing that feels.

Don’t let Ellie’s expression fool you. She was into this until I took a photo.

But, OK, I’ll try…

I spent a really long time hating my body. I hated what I saw in the mirror and in store windows as I walked past. I hated photos. I hated how things fit and how they felt.

And then, one day last year, I just stopped.

I stopped hating my body. I stopped talking badly about it. I stopped even thinking badly about it. I stopped criticizing photos, and I stopped obsessing over my reflection.

On that day, nothing about my body had physically changed. I hadn’t lost weight or suddenly become a certain size, and I hadn’t run any remarkable time at any specific race. The switch happened overnight, and it was all in my head — and it was the best switch I ever flipped.

I’ve always told myself I have a long history with body issues “because I was a dancer.” And while, yes, the dancer part is true, when I really examine the place I got to mentally over the past few years, it has nothing to do with the fact that I grew up surrounded by mirrors, or the fact that my dance teacher senior year told me I’d “be able to jump a lot higher if I weighed less.”

The truth is, I was a super happy — if totally stressed out and obsessed with getting straight As and being on student council and honor society and being the editor in chief of the yearbook and participating in every other extracurricular I could find — girl. I was always active because I danced so much, and my body was just a body. It didn’t matter.

WERKIN’ ON MY FITNESS.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I got mono. And unlike most people — who get mono and are too sick to eat and lose a ton of weight — I packed on some serious pounds during my bout. I had to stop dancing for weeks, and my throat was so sore that the only food I would eat was mint chocolate chip ice cream. I think I ate a gallon a day. So yeah, I gained some weight. Plus, I was going through puberty. Really good times.

Once I started dancing again, I didn’t lose my mono weight. I squeezed into too-small clothes and was always uncomfortable, but I don’t remember obsessing over it. It was more of a “this is your body and this is the way it is.” In fact, my senior year of high school was probably the most I ever weighed, but I was perfectly happy with myself. I wore pleather pants and spaghetti strap tank tops to go eat ice cream sundaes at Friendly’s with my friends, and I never thought I should be anything other than exactly what I was.

Then I went away to college, and my body fluctuated a ton. Thank you, Franzia and those really good chicken quesadillas from The Ratt (yes, The Ratt) on campus. I was on the dance team and I’d occasionally hit up the elliptical with my roommates, but fitness wasn’t a priority. Having fun was, though, and my body never determined how much fun I was going to have at any given party or social event.

I am willing to bet $8,000 that solo cup was filled with boxed wine.

I remember coming home periodically from school, and if I had happened to lose some weight that semester, my parents’ friends would tell me how good I looked. By junior year, when I was really having fun in college, I remember being at a Christmas Eve party and no one commenting on my appearance — which is socially acceptable, but was surprising after it always being a topic of conversation before. Because that’s the thing: When you lose weight, even if you didn’t “have to” or if you looked amazing before, people will start commenting on it. They’ll say you look great or they’ll tell you how good you look. And of course that can feel like a confidence boost — until it stops.

There were times when two of my roommates — in a big room of nine — would be getting ready to go out and they would stand in front of the big bathroom mirrors tossing compliments back and forth. “You look so skinny!” “Oh my god no you look so skinny!” Meanwhile I was in the common room with the other girls, rolling my eyes as we cued up a rousing game of Slap the Bag.

The best college roommates ever. They brought flowers to my performance. I probably forgot to put them in water and let them die, though. (The flowers, not the friends.)

So often we talk about body issues stemming from childhood or adolescence, so I always just kind of accepted that. But it turns out, that wasn’t really my case. Did I always love my body as a high school and college student? No! But I don’t remember obsessing over it the way I did once I entered certain parts of the post-collegiate “real world.”

My issues started when I started running. As much as I love running, and as much as I attribute so much of my happiness and success to what running has given me, running also inadvertently became the root of a lot of my problems. I started working out regularly in 2008. I started running, and joined a gym where I quickly became hooked on their group fitness classes. I genuinely loved those classes. I’d run in the morning and hit up a Chisel (strength) class at night. Then I realized there were all these women doing the Chisel class — and then sticking around for the kickboxing and abs classes after. They were doing hours of exercise each evening, and that seemed fun to me!

After my first half!

I started running and working out for all the right reasons. I wanted to feel healthy, get strong, and have fun. But within a few years, it had spiraled out of control a bit. It wasn’t until I was working out to the point of injury that I realized I was less happy than I’d been before. I had lost weight, sure, but I also lost a heft of happiness. I was dependent on exercise to make me happy.

Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Wouldn’t all my other problems go away if I was permanently a size four?

Ha. Ali. No.

Definitely the smallest I’ve ever been in my adult life — but I was also fresh off an icky breakup and was barely eating. So…”skinny” doesn’t automatically = happy.

At the time, I was working at Dance Spirit — a job I adored with people who became my best friends — but we’d created something of a toxic environment. We were a close staff of five adult women, and each morning, when we were done regrouping about the crazy things our significant others had done the night before (Brian’s was always leaving the kitchen cabinets open and leaving the collar-stays from his dry-cleaned shirts all over the floor), the conversation would turn to our outfits and, most likely, our body issues. I look back now, and these scenes were straight out of Mean Girls. We nitpicked everything about ourselves in this odd, fire-fueling, cyclical way.

This was also when I had started reading lots of “healthy living blogs.” Those all seemed innocent at first, and now I look back on a lot of the ones I was reading and the first word that comes to mind is “disordered.” There were a lot of unhealthy behaviors being paraded as totally normal, and I was impressionable so I found myself following suit in many ways.

Eventually I left Dance Spirit, which is also when I started going to November Project. Instead of leaving my body stuff behind at DS, my most deeply-rooted issues developed during my early days at NP.

And that is of no fault of November Project itself! This was all on me. The group is empowering, uplifting, wonderful, and life-changing. But having photos taken at each workout became something I hated.

I went to my first workout wearing one of my favorite tank tops. It’s a black-and-white striped tank, and I had my hair up in a messy bun because the workout started at 6:28 AM and my appearance was the last thing on my mind.

But then, a few hours later, the post-workout photo album went up on Facebook. And there I was, in all my striped glory. And I hated what I saw. I spent way too much time flipping through that album (and repeatedly untagging myself) and obsessing over those photos. (I wrote about it a bit here.)

The photo that launched a thousand insults…from myself, to myself.

If you’ve ever had a less-than-flattering race photo, you might be able to relate.

Nevermind the fact that I was just coming back to running after a two-year Crohn’s flare. No no, I didn’t want to talk about that! I wanted to talk about how I looked — or how I thought I looked.

Those weekly snapshots became something of an obsession. I started choosing my outfits more carefully. I started being aware of when I was running toward someone with a camera, and I’d flash a giant smile. And yes, I was having fun, I promise I was! But I was also always on. And that is exhausting. Then, when the albums would go up online, I’d fly to the computer to stalk them and would scrutinize everything about myself.

This photo was taken ONE WEEK after the previous one. Just goes to show you that angles are everything and photos are stupid.

I know I wasn’t the only one. I know this is a pretty common thing, and it became a major talking point in my friend group. “OMG I look so huge in that photo.” “How bad is the album?” “Any good ones today, or are they all disgusting of me?” These lovely, wonderful albums — taken by people who show up just to do something nice! — were not serving me positively, but I kept going back to them.

Suddenly, I had become this woman who was obsessing over everything body-related. It was never in an “I need to lose weight” way so much as it was just a general constant check-in about how I looked. I never dieted or changed my eating habits in an effort to look “better.” I was just always tuned in to my appearance. Most of the time, I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I look back on old blog posts or Instagram photos that have captions like “thighs by Velveeta” or constant “jokes” about my thighs. And while it’s fine to joke from time to time, my “innocent” comments were pretty constant, no matter what shape my body was in at the time.

Then, last year, I hit my breaking point. I realized I was so happy — except that I wasn’t.

Braids and smiles. Just the way I like my life.

I was a blissed-out newlywed, fresh off a once-in-a-lifetime honeymoon, working a dreamy job with a new puppy at my feet. I lived blocks from Central Park, my favorite place in the world, and I had loads of quality friends and meaningful relationships.

But instead of focusing on all that incredible stuff, I scrutinized my appearance. I was constantly and second-naturedly (probably not a word…) tugging at my clothes all the time, always finding something to dislike. I’d talk to my friends and I’d realize I was boring myself talking about the same old body shit. And surely I was boring them, too. So why was I doing this?

Finally, I said enough.

I put a hard stop on the fat talk, the body obsession, and the constant body-related analysis. I stopped thinking my appearance had anything to do with my self-worth, my intelligence, my professional life, or my relationships. I stopped asking Brian to take a photo and then letting me look at it immediately so I could decide whether or not I needed him to retake a more flattering way.

And it worked.

Happy besties!

I literally told myself, “Stop doing this,” and I actually stopped. Overnight. The shift was immediate and kind of remarkable, to be frank. Just like I unfollow people who aren’t serving me on Facebook or Instagram, I unfollowed the part of my brain that was telling me to focus all my energy on my reflection.

Do I love my body every single day? Nah. But I also don’t think about it every single day. I know — and I very much accept — that my self-worth has nothing to do with my appearance and everything to do with who I am as a person, how I treat others, and how many face licks I get every morning from my dog. (Right?)

This isn’t a preachy “love your body no matter what” post. We throw the phrase “body positivity” around a lot these days, and in theory, that’s a wonderful thing. But in practice, sometimes just achieving body neutrality is OK, too. The key, I’ve found, is not making body negativity — or total body scrutiny and hatred — the driving force in my everyday life.

So here I am — not at my leanest, my fastest, or my most muscular, but I’m so much lighter.

DOGS DON’T CARE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE. THEY JUST WANT YOU TO PLAY WITH THEM.

“I know it sounds hard and like I’m trying to make it so simple, but you have to focus on the things that make you happy and bring that into your life, whatever that may be. It can’t just be ‘body body body’ all the time. You’re missing out on life! You can’t live a life dieting and trying to change inches on your hips. You’ll miss laughing your ass off with your girlfriends! You can’t keep yourself from doing the things you were made to do or destined to do because you’re solely focused on changing the way you look. The love, the confidence, the positivity, the drive…that all has to come from the inside. Focus on all the things that make you happy. That’ll get you in the right direction.” —Candice Huffine on Episode 11 of the Ali on the Run Show

Ali

Ali

29 Responses

  1. This is so true for me. I never dieted or thought “I’m going to lose weight” but there was a long stretch of time where how I looked made me so unhappy and was always on my mind. Now I don’t have a full length mirror or weigh myself. I spend a lot less time thinking about it.

  2. Such a great and refreshing post, and an excellent reminder why I love reading your work/listening to your podcast. Your straight up honesty, talking about stuff that needs to be said aloud, is deeply appreciated, esp since you never came across as someone who had these thoughts in your past blog post/social media… which I guess is a great lesson in how 99% of us all have these same thoughts about body image, even if we don’t say it publicly. Love that you made this change – it’s something I’m working on myself. xo

  3. THANK YOU for writing this amazing post. Although I did not have a clear cut moment that I decided to just accept my body, I look back on who I was a few years ago and I definitely didn’t love myself very much. At some point I stopped thinking about exercise to get skinny and focused on how it made me strong. Life’s too short and photos are too photoshopped to spend my time upset that we don’t look like fitness models. And once I let all that SH*t go I realized I was so much happier.

  4. Great post. I am almost there. I am sick of hating my body & I have been doing the critical crap for MUCH longer than you, but I think I am at the point of change. This post couldn’t have come at a better time.

  5. I can totally relate to everything you say in this post. I too followed a lot of those blogs when I was in the height of my distance running obsession. Have finally found more balance ad it feels so much better. Thank you for sharing!! Xo

  6. Fantastic post, Ali. I have nothing else to say, just — this is a great post :). I hope lots of people read this and learn from it — especially those ‘healthy eating’ bloggers you mention early on in your post.

  7. Thank you for this post. I’m probably a good 40 lbs heavier than you, and whenever I’d see you make a comment about your thighs, I’d think to myself “if she thinks *she’s* got fat thighs, what would she think about me??” (Honest talk, I thought about stopping reading your blog over this.) I’m very glad I stuck around! I noticed you’d stopped the negative body talk a while back, and am so glad! I’m working to keep myself in a body-neutral or -positive mode as much as I can, though I sometimes slip.

  8. Thank u so much for writing this Ali! I was constantly obsessed with my weight and how my body looked. That is until I found cross fit 2-1/2 years ago. Cross fit has changed my whole life. And at the age of 38 and after having 3 kids I am the most body confident I have ever been! Forget the skinny crap! I am focused on being strong and what I can do at the box and how much weight I can move, and setting a positive body image for my kids. I love my body and am so grateful for all it does for me!

  9. Love this! I can so relate! And trying to figure out what I should be eating based on all the “disordered” info out there is so confusing.
    And my race photos…the worst!
    I have just tried to find some balance in it all and triy not to focus on any of it too much. And that’s when it all goes well and my life just falls into place.

  10. Dang. That’s a great post. I worship your Instagram stories so I only “know” you from there, but I’ve always been struck by your self confidence! It’s hard to imagine you any other way. Good for you for flipping that switch. It’s not easy but man, is it ever inspiring and freeing.

  11. Ali, THANK YOU for writing this post. I share a lot of that background with you and I haven’t really been able to flip that switch yet. I have tried, but I keep going back again and again. It helps tremendously to hear from others who have been there and have recovered.

    What I currently do is that each time I look in a mirror (or at my reflection anywhere) I smile at myself and tell me something good about me (it does not have to be related to my weight or how I look at all, just something positive to stop the “gosh my thighs look huge” attitude right there).

  12. I would love to be able to turn off that stuff too. Kudos to you. Meanwhile as usual we are our own worst critic. I watch your instagram stories religiously and always think how cute you look whether you are in a messy bun and your flash dance sweatshirt or wearing your headphones or hair and makeup done. You have such a fun energy and your podcast carries that through too. Crohns takes a lot from you and I’m glad you have let the self image negative energy go. 🙂

  13. This was such a great blog post to read and especially after such a great podcast episode! I listened to this weeks podcast on an out of the norm Friday morning pre work long run (inspired by your conversation with Megha) and the combination of the two has really given me a lot to think about. I’ve been struggling so much lately with challenging runs where I feel slow and like it’s not even worth my time to be out there and this was exactly what I needed to hear. Not only do my friends not want to hear about how I think I look fat but I’m sick and tired of hearing myself say it!!

    It’s also good to know that everyone feels this way sometimes !! I’ve been loving listening to your podcasts during my long runs and am looking forward to hearing more!

  14. this is such an incredible piece. i have always loved your blog more than other health/lifestyle bloggers because it always feels more self aware and real to me and this proves it 1000%. i have a few chronic illnesses too (severe anemia, a big gluten allergy, and others that constantly mess with my life) and i used to do exactly what you did, not focus on the positive but only focus on pictures or the negative and it hurt me for a long time, especially in college and the years right after during my MA. now i am much better because ive learned that my health is the most important thing, not clothes, not pics, nothing. i even deleted my fb and it massively helped me with this too because I learned when you have a chronic illness you can’t compare your life to your friends that don’t have the same struggles (that is my experience, I can’t speak for anyone else). thanks again for this vulnerable and honest post. i send it to a few friends too. <3

  15. Loved this post!! I will say that, although I don’t know what actually went on inside your brain, this was probably more of a gradual subconscious shift than just waking up one day and deciding you were sick of hating your body. I say this only to help those who are in the trenches of it and who can’t possibly fathom just ‘deciding’ to wake up one morning and simply calling all of the self-hate and negativity off. I think everyone truly has to just get to that place of total BOREDOM with these thoughts, to the point where the brain can’t take anymore, to really say “enough.” Everyone is different, though. I appreciate you sharing this:) Thanks Ali!

  16. Thank you. I don’t know you personally but “met” you through Lindsey. Hein’s podcast and instantly connected/related with so much that you had to say. And continue to say through your blog, IG and podcast. So thank you for being honest and real and affirming feelings that we all have. Oh and thank you for the Ellie photos. Nothing makes me smile more than a good dog photo. 🙂

  17. This is great! I am not Catholic but this year for Lent, I’ve given up the self hate talk. I haven’t been nailing it 100% but I’ve been better than before and that’s at least going in the right direction.
    I’m glad you’re feeling better about your physical appearance – you should! But I’m somewhat oblivious ,for better or worse , and don’t notice people’s changing weight that much .
    Your podcast is still way fun to listen to- keep up the good work! My #1 running mistake : running without socks (I was like 20). That happened ONCE.

  18. I loved this post so much! I don’t know if I can stop the negative self-talk myself, but I’m going to try, starting today. I have been hating my body for far too long. Chronic illness is enough stress; I don’t also need the stress of picking apart my appearance on the daily. Thanks, Ali.

  19. Thank you. I’ve had serious body issues for a while now that pushed me to injuries and total breakdowns. I kept telling myself I was getting better, but today the first number I checked on my Garmin was not distance, or pace, but the calories burned. It’s sad. I am so so happy that you are in a better place. Think I might be ready to join you 😉

  20. I LOVE this blog post. I also read HLB’s and eventually they became hate reads because they were so obviously disordered and unhealthy. It was starting to effect my meals and my running, so I had to eventually unsubscribe.
    And I admit, I had also noticed your negative body talk and I was so glad when you shifted your focus. Love your blog and love your podcasts!

  21. Awesome post! We can learn a lesson from you on this subject. I have a picture of me and my dog on top of a mountain. Everyone loved it ( the pup helps) but all I saw was my fat stomach. We all need to be easier on ourselves.

  22. I really loved this post and I can relate to it a lot. While I can’t say it was as easy as flipping a switch for me, I did have the same thought process as you – essentially, I decided I was going to stop belittling myself and creating “body negativity” (love the way you phrased that). While the thoughts definitely crept back into my mind regularly, I started fighting back with positive ones – literally having conversations with myself in my head. I have hated so many race photos where I look completely happy, just because my thighs don’t look as skinny as I want them to. That’s ridiculous – who doesn’t like pictures where they look happy? Kudos to you for moving past the negativity and focusing on what matters!

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about ali

I’m the creator of the Ali on the Run blog and the host of the Ali on the Run Show podcast. I’m also a freelance writer and editor, a race announcer, a runner and marathoner, a mom, and a huge fan of Peanut M&Ms, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (way better than the first one!), and reliving my glory days as a competition dancer in the early 2000s. I’m really happy you’re here.
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