The First Summer I Liked My Body

The scale's cool but the metaphor is so much cooler, promise!

I was sprawled on the couch, salty and sunburnt from our afternoon beach day. Billy closed the refrigerator door and called over to me from the kitchen island. He said, “Becca, you are glowing.” I smirked and told him he must be having a sunstroke. He assured me he wasn’t, and I assured him the “glow” was a just side effect of being happy – a rare condition, I know. 

It was the last night we’d be together until December, when I’d officially move home from Italy. Billy made it special for me. The man spent four hours cooking a ribeye ragù, served over big noodles, just how I like it. He even paired it with my favorite wine of the summer, Juggernaut Pinot Noir. It tastes like cherries and drinks smooth like silk. Basically Sinatra in a bottle. But, like, with a super aggressive label. It’s giving Game of Thrones: Battle of the Bastards. 

We got all dressed up for no one but ourselves, a very uncommon occurrence in our household. I wore a long cream linen dress. He wore white jeans and a light grey knitted cotton polo — the one I secretly don’t like, but happen to love on him because he adores it, and I adore him when he proudly styles himself, a job that is usually reserved for my sharp (judgmental) eye. We remained barefoot. It was our unspoken attempt to humanize this silly game of dress-up.

I queued up my favorite late-night playlist on Spotify. The soulful one, intimate but jovial. The kind of playlist that makes time feel both fast and slow at once — sort of like this summer felt to me.

We were quieter than usual, making small talk about the noodles that he had boiled to perfection, noting any opportunities for future sauce improvements. Anything to distract ourselves from the heaviness in our hearts and tears behind our eyes. With less than 17 hours left together, the looming goodbye sat at the dinner table like an unwelcome guest.

We cleared the table, changed into our usual uniform - pajamas, and migrated to the couch. I curled up between his legs, the dogs in tandem. I felt effortlessly grateful. Everything just felt right, and feeling good just felt easy. That word stuck with me all night: easy

my heaven

Feeling good doesn’t always come easy to me, but this summer, it did. This year, for the most part, it has, too. With the exception of some seasonal depression coupled with newlywed homesickness (which I think is fairly normal, no?), feeling good has been suspiciously easy as of late.

I brushed my teeth and moved through my skincare routine slower than usual that night, refusing to let the night end. I lingered in front of the mirror, analyzing each pore on my nose I had yet to unclog. 

That’s when Billy’s words echoed back to me, this time accompanied by my own: “Becca, you’re glowing. Happiness suits you.” I stared into the mirror as if I were seeing myself with fresh eyes for the first time. I looked different. The girl staring back was not who I remembered her to be. She looked strong and healthy. Content. Peaceful, even, too. There was a quiet confidence in here eyes. One I hadn’t recognized. I liked it, I liked her. 

I turned my head away from the mirror and instinctively walked to the scale. I took my heavy sweater off, threw it on the floor (every ounce counts, right?), and stepped right on.

Even now I’m not sure if the impulse came from a subconscious need to humble myself — a byproduct of social media’s tragic comparison culture — or an attempt to quantify what I had just witnessed in the mirror. Mind games are messy, but seeing is believing.

The scale surprised me. I bent down to get a closer look at the number. Stepped off. Then back on. Same number. Wtf? 

Again - On. Off. Still the same. Weird.

I had lost 17 pounds over the course of 17 months without even realizing it – or an intention to, for that matter. 

In truth, I’ve always been considered small, but I never really saw myself that way. I have a short torso, and my midsection is prone to pouch. Or is it pooch? Poochy pouch. Whatever it’s called, I’ve always hated that about my body.

So, rewind to image on the left circa 2023 - when the rug got pulled out from under me and everything I once knew to be true about myself completely dissolved. I didn’t realize how unhealthy I had become or how far I’d drifted from my own body’s homeostasis. When I stopped believing in me, I stopped seeing me. In every sense of the word. I stopped looking in the mirror, and started denying my existence. I just hated myself. I couldn’t bear being me. And, looking back now, it shows.

Sadly enough, I know I’m not special or alone in the art of self-loathing. I think many people, both men and women, struggle with a particular type of body dysmorphia at some point in their life, especially in today’s media landscape.

And people don’t talk about that enough - the kind of struggle that “average” people endure quietly on a daily basis, but not deeply enough to sound the alarm. It's the comfortable discomfort that sits just beneath the surface of our skin, but is still far from the harshness that the media often portrays it to be. The kind that makes positive affirmations feel more suffocating than relieving. It’s the experience of wearing a beautiful floral dress while you sip rosè and feel absolutely dead inside, yet remain aware that this feeling is temporary, it too shall pass - you just don’t know when.

Has that been you too?

Do you know what I’m talking about?

Since college, I think I’ve struggled with this. I’ve tried almost every workout and diet under the sun (except Ozempic - no shade there, I just personally draw the line at needles lol). From Ayurveda to crossFit, hypnotherapy to macros - I have tried anything to get that sexy, slim torso all the pretty girls have on Instagram. I even dabbled in laxatives and Adderall for a semester during my senior year at Syracuse. That one was the worst of them all.

I once overheard a friend telling her sister on the phone that I looked like a skeleton. That sucked. Mostly because it was true and I had no idea how bad it actually was. No one said anything. At least not to my face. I was under 100 pounds, disappearing before my eyes. My self-image was so distorted that I only ever saw my body as what my mental mind perceived it to be: broken.

Sad, I know, but what’s sadder is my intention was pure - I just wanted to feel pretty, but the more I tried, making my way though whatever the burgeoning mindfullness market tried to sell, the less it worked.

It wasn’t until COVID hit, and I was quarantined alone in a small garage studio in L.A., that I realized the only thing worse than my body dysmorphia was my mental health. Inevitably, it got so bad that I ended up losing my period for 3 years, lost the job I loved, and went mildly manic lol.

That’s when everything changed. Starting with my priorities. They had to, whether I wanted to or not. The Universe was doing its thing, and I was forced to follow suit.

I moved back home with my parents and started my year-long hiatus of rewiring my brain. Which, at that time, felt like the end of the world. I was so stressed and depressed that my hormones clung to any life they could find within my body, especially in my favorite spot — the poochy pouch. Apparently, it is super normal for your stress hormones like cortisol to trigger fat storage (despite my sad girl diet consisting of only a Starbucks latte for breakfast and a Panera Bread soup for, well, everything else). I wasn’t trying to “not to eat” or lose weight, I just had no appetite. There were other things on my mind. Like losing my mind.

Depression runs in my family, so losing my job and detoxing myself of Adderall was like opening Pandora’s box of victimhood, rehashing any sad moment in life I had never faced, blaming anyone I could find for it. Anyone but me.

Side Note: Yes, I already know what your thinking (not me projecting again), there are far worse things than losing a job and going temporarily insane in the membrane, but my biochemistry is what it is, and sometimes even the smallest shit strikes me hard. I guess I just take a long time to process things and get a handle it. But once I do, I do it good. Really fucking good. And then it’s game over for all you chickens!

Second Side Note: Victimhood really is the true thief of joy. At least that’s what I believe. Billy has been really good at helping me snap out of that.

Eventually, my mind got less messy, and I started to begin again. I moved to Florida and got a job working at my friend’s bar. That’s when I started to come back to life. I let go of caring about anything that hurt more than it helped: diets, extreme workout regimens, and the pressure to look hot online — so much so that I barely even post anymore. I just didn’t have the capacity. Still don’t. At that point I was desperate to feel good. Not necessarily about my body, but in my mind and therefore in my body, too.

After going as dark as I did, I promised myself to never to let myself go there again. So, I said goodbye to expectations and held close to standards. Through a more tactical lens, for me that looked like moving my body at least once a day. No day looked the same. Some days it was weight lifting, most days a walk. And if I was really feeling like a ‘G’ that day, I did both. But almost every day I did something. I noticed the less amount of time I devoted to movement a day, the more energy I had to do some form of movement everyday. I think that helped me a lot.

As for food, I’ve always enjoyed eating healthy, but in effort to get my period back, I decided to eat more fully. For me, that really amounted to less processed shit and more whole foods that are easy to cook (plus lots of olive oil… I love olive oil), red wine, chocolate, and weekly dinners out with new menus to explore and people I genuinely enjoy hanging out with. Billy is the chef in this household, and he often makes fun of me for the meals I cook for myself when he’s not around, calling them “stuff” - aka anything I have in the fridge dumped into marinara sauce lol. As much as I love fancy food, anything more than one pan and five ingredients is super overwhelming for me. I think simplicity keeps me in routine. And routine keeps me sane.

Fast forward to the 2024 picture on the right. Eventually, I got my period back, fell in love, and moved to Italy, which made the changes I’d already begun that much easier. The bad days didn’t disappear, but they did frequent less often. And when they did, I now had a partner who made me laugh when I wanted to cry. My walks got longer and evoked a new sense of wonder. I began to explore food option I would have never even considered before (did someone say Vitello Tonnato??). My dinner tables were filled with friends who enjoyed me without expectations, and conversations that made me laugh until wine was nearly pouring out my nose.

I feel a bit anxious as I write this because discussing weight and posting bikini pics feels a bit touchy and very much out of my comfort zone. The last thing I want is to come off as taboo — or worse, boastful.

All I’ve ever really wanted is to be happy and live in my body rather than constantly thinking about it.

There is no one-size-fits all blueprint to finding that. And shit man, it takes time. I think that’s mainly what I’m to get at here. For the first time, ever, I focused on consistently doing what felt good and true to me, then said fuck off to everything else.

Shedding my jacket, just like I did with years upon layers of insecurity and self-doubt, and stepping on the scale was a moment of reckoning with how much lighter I had become through the baggage I had released. And no, not because some silly numbers told me so (though, let’s be real, that’s always a nice bonus lol), but because I now realized I finally embraced the happiness and self-acceptance I had been searching for this past year. The weight I had released was just as much mental as it was physical.

So yeah, the scale is real but, mainly a banger of a metaphor - albeit it a controversial one but, like, whatever. It’s my story.

As much as I would like to end this essay with a golden promise that with enough therapy and wine, you will find a slim waist and a path that’s free of bad days, momentary meltdowns, and chronic comparison syndrome, I can’t. Because you won’t. 

I still get worried that my arms look big in pictures. I will never not resent the fact that abs have yet to magically appear on my body. Negative thoughts aren’t the strangers I wish they were; they just visit less often. I practice not being so hard on myself, because frankly, I’m fucking exhausted. I just take the best and leave the rest - the best advice I have ever gotten from my best friend, Carly.

However, I can promise you this: you know the annoying clichè that everyone tells you? Well, it becomes a lot less annoying when you inevitably realize it to be true for you, too. When you stop trying so hard to shape yourself into something you’re not, you become everything you are.

I’m still working on that. But for the first time in a long time I feel effortlessly grateful. I am content with being confidently lost. Things feel right and feeling good feels easy.

And that my friends, is the story of the first summer I liked not just my body, but myself.

♡ Destin, Florida ♡