What if the Weight of Stress, Opinions, Responsibilities, and Expectations Wasn’t Just a Metaphor?

I recently had a Dutch test and consult through @drbethwestie .

Maybe I should back up a bit. After my amazing coach, @ashley.mondor posted about seeing a doctor to help with her sleep issues, my ears perked up. I’ll be honest. I haven’t slept well for most nights for almost a decade. Probably much longer. I can fall asleep ok, but 5-6 nights a week, I wake up and have trouble falling back to sleep.

I used to take Advil PM every night. Healthy right? Not so much. Eventually, I realized that this didn’t actually help. I switched to Melatonin, but after some time realized that this didn’t really work either. When Covid hit, I gave up caffeine and all alcohol except for one glass of wine per week. Eventually, I stopped drinking altogether. I’d pour a glass and forget to drink or just didn’t really want it. After I had lost a lot of weight really quickly during a hard time, it all came back and just stayed. None of it helped.

So after hearing about Dr. Beth, I decided to take the Dutch test and see what was really going on. The good news is that by quitting my job, alcohol and caffeine, I had managed to keep my cortisol level within a normal range. The bad news is that not much else was in normal range. After 16 years of hormonal birth control, my estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone were out of whack (my term; not hers). And after spending 13 years in a high stress job, my cortisone levels, were fucked. With my hormones as they were, I had weight loss resistance, so matter what I really did, I wasn’t really going to be able to lose weight the “normal” way. Also, that sleep issue? Well, because my body stockpiled stress hormones for years, whenever I went to sleep at night, my body would go into protective mode. Ready to wake at a pin drop in case there was work to do. My body has been living in protection mode, perhaps, for most of my life.

Fuck. Out of my job for 16 months and turns out that the job, those unhealthy relationships, and the expectations of society was still in me.

I am currently on a regimen of supplements as well as creating a sleep schedule with an hour wind down at night and no screens. Red glasses to help my body get ready for sleep. Little to no lights. Seed cycling and tinctures for the hormones. This is still on the beginning stages, so I’ll have to fill you all in on that progress some other time.

Here is what I have figured out since meeting with @drbethwestie . The only times I have be able to maintain a “healthy” weight since puberty was when I was in either personal crisis or crisis situations. Like the most extremely stressful situations, my body was primed for. But for everything else, it felt like it needed to carry that extra weight to protect itself or to prime itself was those high conflict/high stress situations. In other words: trauma.

This made me wonder: how many people carry that “shameful” extra weight that a fatphobic society likes to point out as being unhealthy, when the body might be carrying that extra weight as a hormonal protection from all the shaming messages around that extra weight, new fad diets or unattainable beauty standards? Or the messages around worth and productivity? Or the trauma or painful moments they have endured? Or placing or finding ourselves in emotionally, physically, or spiritually unsafe situations? Or. Or. Or. Maybe it’s none, some, or all of the above for you. Nobody’s journey is the same.

What I did feel after pondering this was more appreciation for my body. For the lengths it’s gone to help keep me safe. Now it’s my turn to curate a life where I’m not carrying the weight other peoples’ expectations or opinions. Where I’m not forcing my body to calibrate to burnout. Where I’m not going out of my way to place myself in physically or emotionally unsafe conditions. Where I’m re-training my nervous system around what safety means.

Thank you, body, for keeping me safe.