Infertility, Body Positivity, and Disordered Eating: My Story

In this current social media age, we get a lot of mixed signals. On the one hand, we are told that we should love our bodies as they are and treat them with kindness and compassion, as if they were a friend or a small child. On the other hand, we are being sold all kinds of work out regimens or diet programs, and being told that we can achieve the perfect butt, waist, or legs through these means, as though our current versions of ourselves are not quite good enough. I'm usually pretty unfazed by either doctrine. I'm not particularly concerned with "loving my body" as it is, since I think the best case scenario is just not to think about it so much. And I'm also way too lazy to let myself get worked up into trying to become perfectly fit. However, some things in my life kind of changed my perspective.

Now I won't lie and say that I'm absolutely indifferent to how my body looks normally. Like everyone, I'd like to be hot, or whatever, so I just try to eat moderately healthy and exercise occasionally so I'm not totally sedentary. But I never worried about it that much. However, while I don't worry about my physical appearance much, I do worry about how people perceive my personality. And whether you like it or not, how you appear on the outside can be a means by which people judge your inside. So when it comes to my body, I really just don't want people to get the impression that I have "let myself go," or whatever. I think I would feel embarrassed to see a friend for the first time after a long time and have gained a lot of weight.

This mentality in some ways should be alleviated with age. We all know that as you get older, your metabolism slows down. But I really hate making excuses and sometimes, the whole metabolism thing just feels like a cop out. A lot of girls I went to high school with have sort of noticeably gained weight, and as hard as I am on myself about my weight gain, I really don't judge them for it. Most of them probably have much more stressful or demanding jobs than I do. I know a lot of them deal with chronic health problems or anxiety. Those factors make weight gain easy and I get that. I feel like I don't really have those factors pressing on me, though.

And then there's the "big one." I'm getting to the point where a lot of my peers are.... Having kids. It's no secret that getting pregnant causes major changes to your body. And running around trying to take care of little ones makes it hard to prioritize one's health. So those women have the ultimate reason to have gained weight. What a wonderful blessing to have in life. Who cares if it causes you to gain 40 pounds?

Well, I don't have that blessing in my life. For almost two years now, my husband and I have battled infertility. I have never once seen a positive pregnancy test, and, as far as anyone can tell, there's no reason for it. I have regular cycles and all that. I'm a healthy weight. I take my vitamins. But none of that seems to matter.

When you struggle with infertility, you turn to all kinds of research and pseudo-science to try and take back some control of the situation. I read a book called "It Starts with the Egg," which I understand was pretty ground breaking back in the day. It outlines all the things you can do to improve your egg quality and therefore your chances of conception.

I won't go into all the details here, but one of the things that the author recommends is to cut back on certain kinds of carbohydrates. I was willing to do anything to feel like I could improve my chances of getting pregnant, so I cut back on basically all carbs. I was never full keto or anything, because the book said pretty specifically not to do that, but I wasn't eating sandwiches, pizza, white rice, etc. Of course, at the same time, I was kind of trying to lose some weight. I had started 2020 kind of chubby, bordering on overweight, and by the end of 2020 I only had about 5 pounds left to go before I reached my goal. Cutting back on carbs was pretty effective and I finally shed those final stubborn five pounds.

This led to setting a new goal weight. And the carb thing wasn't really a huge concern anymore. I still wasn't really eating them much, but it no longer was about boosting fertility. It was about weight loss only. And the biggest motivation or reason I had for wanting to lose more weight was that embarrassment and shame. The feeling of "I've never been pregnant and I probably never will be, so what's my excuse?" "If I can't be pregnant, I should at least be hot!" It kind of became this way to punish my body for not doing what I wanted it to do. The desire to have control became a big issue for me. If I can't control getting pregnant, at least I can control what I eat.

I don't want to overplay what happened there. I didn't have an eating disorder. I wasn't anorexic. I didn't get sick. But there was about a two or three week time span earlier this year where I just felt tired and nauseous all the time from my poor diet. And as much as I knew why I felt poorly, I struggled to improve my nutrition. Eventually, I just kind of snapped out of it. I was tired of feeling that way.

The experience was really a wake up call for me. I can't punish my body for not getting pregnant. That's just stupid. My body isn't some other thing outside of myself. My body is ME. If I punish my body I'm just punishing myself. And I can't help what is happening to me, no matter how few carbs I eat or how many vitamins I take.

It's basically impossible for me to "love my body" because I feel like it's failing me. Month after month after month. But I hope I can at least be reasonable with my body going forward. I know that my feelings of shame and embarrassment are still lingering under the surface, though, and they aren't likely to go away any time soon. That seems to be just the way I'm wired. But hopefully I can reach a place where I can look at myself and not be embarrassed by my appearance and that I can come to accept my life as it is without feeling like everything is out of control.

I'm not really trying to preach to anyone about body positivity or mental health or anything. If you are in the same boat as me, though, please keep an eye out for signs that you're struggling before it gets too bad. I have a new understanding for how eating disorders can develop in people and I thank God that I was spared from that this time.