Let's Talk About Pandemic Body Image
For the past year, your life has mostly taken place within the walls of your own home. Going outside wasn’t an option and felt downright scary some of the time. You stared at your own face rather than listen to one more virtual work call. You haven’t watered your plants or yourself in days. Your gym closed, and because you live with other people, it felt weird to do a full workout in your living room. Your childcare disappeared, and your priority became feeding tiny humans while you ingested half a bagel that may or may not have fallen face-down on the floor ten minutes ago. You can’t remember the last time you wore clothes that were not specifically marketed for “leisure.” In the 45 minutes you spend avoiding going to sleep at night, you scroll through countless influencer accounts of people who have managed to get in even better shape while also somehow traveling to a resort in Tulum?
How do you feel about all of this? Motivated to make any changes in your life? Blaming yourself for gaining the “quaran-fifteen”?
YOU’RE NOT ALONE
Weight gain might be one result of this pandemic year. Or maybe you used to color your hair, but the pandemic made you wary of going to the salon, and now your hair is visibly gray. Maybe wearing a mask all the time has made your acne flare up. Or maybe you look in the mirror and see a face that looks old--like you’ve managed to age 5 years in the last twelve months.
What will all of this mean when you finally go back to the office? Will your coworkers or friends still like you if you look different?
Let’s pause and remember: your body has kept you alive for over a year in an ongoing crisis situation. You have survived more than you signed up for.
Now that The World is Opening Back Up Again ™, many people are experiencing anxiety about their appearance. We’ve spent the last year staring at ourselves on Zoom meetings (seriously when have you ever looked at your own face so much in your life?) and have decided we no longer like what we see.
Plastic surgeons and aestheticians are noticing an increase in consultations for various surgeries and cosmetic treatments, many triggered by post-pandemic body image anxiety. People with a history of unproductive relationships with food, including specific eating disorders, are noticing an increase in these behaviors. There is an unspoken pressure to emerge from quarantine a new person, like a bear waking from months of fasting and hibernation after winning Fat Bear Week last fall. But most of us feel like we spent the winter getting no rest at all, much less losing all that salmon weight.
REFRAME YOUR JUDGMENTS & UNDERSTAND THE SCIENCE
If your body has changed in the past year, it is not because you’ve “let yourself go” or “didn’t use this time to the fullest.” A pandemic is not boot camp, an artist’s retreat, or a sabbatical. It is a global traumatic event that has wreaked havoc on our mental health, our connections to one another, our sense of safety, and our bodies. You may know someone who spent the last year writing their screenplay or riding their Peloton into oblivion, leaving pants sizes in the dust, but you should know that those people are not better than you. They just have different coping mechanisms for enduring prolonged stress.
Your body has just kept you alive through a year-long physical and emotional health crisis. If it looks different, fine. If it looks the same, also fine. We enjoy feeling confident about our bodies, but that’s just one part of our health.
If you had COVID-19, you may have been sick for weeks or months, and may still be experiencing symptoms. You may be unable to exercise or prepare the same meals you did before you were sick.
If you didn’t get sick (or if you had a mild case), your body has still spent a year enduring stress. Even if everything, comparatively, is fine (you didn’t lose your job or any loved ones to COVID), you still just spent the last year living in unending uncertainty, which increases your levels of cortisol, the “stress hormone.”
One of the things cortisol is designed to do is provide the body with quick energy (think: outrunning the lion). Cortisol affects your metabolism and blood sugar regulation--in effect, it stimulates the appetite. And if your cortisol levels have been high for a whole year? A year in which we spent many months in our houses? Suddenly weight gain makes more sense.
We tend to laugh off stress eating--”I was so stressed I ate the whole family-sized bag of chips”--but it has real scientific underpinnings. Be kind to yourself. Your body has spent the last year trying to keep you safe, and hormones have very little evolutionary nuance.
There is a system in your brain known as the reward system, which causes feelings of pleasure when we do things related to survival (think: eating or having sex). There are neurotransmitters (chemical messengers in your brain that zap around faster than a text message) involved in this process. One neurotransmitter is dopamine, which your brain interprets as pleasure. And great news: your brain is hard-wired to seek out things that will release dopamine and create pleasure.
Depending on what you’re doing, different amounts of dopamine are released in the brain, which is why, on a chemical level, your brain doesn’t know the difference between dopamine released from eating an apple or ice cream, or doing cocaine, or having an orgasm. What it does understand is that some things = more dopamine = more pleasure = more please!
Interestingly, this part of your brain is also linked with motivation. How often in the past year have you reached for a favorite food while also feeling highly unmotivated to do anything else? Probably most of us. Definitely me. It’s easy to do when you’re sitting 10 feet away from your snacks at all times.
In a cruel twist, the very same stress that triggers our bodies to eat more and do less can also cause us to become hyper-critical of our bodies. Anxiety and stress weaken your coping mechanisms for managing negative thoughts. So not only has the stress of the pandemic impacted how your body looks, it’s also amplified how bad you feel about it.
HOW CAN I PREPARE FOR COMMENTS ABOUT MY BODY?
My first impulse, as a therapist, is to give the (ULTRA-professional!) advice that if anyone is shaming you for how you look, they are a terrible person and/or trying to sell you something.
Perhaps more helpful: remember that your body image starts with how you think and talk about your body to yourself. This self-talk has an impact on your overall well-being – our physical health, mood, and relationships. Remind yourself that there is so much about your body that you simply can’t control--you can’t overcome your genetics or family history of serious illness. There’s very little you can do to change how stress hormones affect your individual metabolism.
If it’s hard to identify things you like about your body, start with neutral, true statements about your body. Reframe negative thoughts into statements like “my arms give comforting hugs to the people I love” or “I respect the way my body systems work together.”
As for comments from other people, you might practice a short boundary-check for when your Aunt Doreen just can’t help commenting on your second helping of fried chicken at the fourth of July picnic.
Do you really want more? You sure have filled out!
Thanks for your concern. My body has survived a global pandemic, and I am happy to be here in its current form. Please pass the potato salad.
WHAT IF MY FRIEND LOOKS DIFFERENT, TOO?
If you reunite with someone after a long time apart and they look drastically different, this isn’t any of your business. You don’t know what’s going on with their health, or what’s going on with their own mental processing about their body changing.
“Of course,” you’re thinking. “I would never tell my friend they got fat. That’s so rude.”
But consider the other side, too. If your friend has lost a lot of weight or seems more fit than before, you still should not comment. Some people’s stress response swings in the opposite direction--maybe profound grief, not an intentional lifestyle change, has caused them to drop weight. Or maybe the stress of the pandemic has caused an eating disorder or unhealthy relationship with exercise to flare up.
Even friends who you know have been deliberately trying to lose weight may not like to be complimented on it. Many people who once occupied fat bodies perceive comments on their “improved” states to mean that you thought less of them before. A comment on someone’s weight loss (You look so good!) comes with a caveat: if they re-gain the weight (which most people do--it’s how our bodies are designed), do they then look so bad?
A quick rule of thumb if you find the small-talk habit of body commentary hard to break: feel free to comment on your friend’s appearance, but only about things in their total control. Comment on your friend’s outfit, their shoes, their new pink highlights. Tell them you love their lipstick shade (or their fun fabric mask). Compliment jewelry, hairstyles, and accessories. The way we adorn ourselves (especially after such a long isolation) is meaningful to people. There is much to discuss besides body size.
IS THERE ANY GOOD NEWS?
Yes. Think back to the early days of the pandemic—every day you probably woke up and checked your phone for some kind of escalating news. Schools and daycares closed. Businesses closed. There’s no toilet paper. The virus is not in my area. It’s here. It only affects old people. No, someone I know who is young is sick. The hospitals don’t have PPE. Leave the masks for the healthcare workers. No, everyone needs a mask. What kind of mask is good enough? Isolate your Amazon boxes. Clorox your groceries. Wash your hands. No, it’s airborne. None of that matters…
One thing after another, information always changing, things getting worse and worse.
Even though the pandemic is not over and we are still experiencing stress and anxiety, for many of us, that fast-paced, in-the-moment trauma has passed. As the U.S. opens up and we inch closer to herd immunity, you may find that you are experiencing fewer “anxiety days.” Less stress and anxiety? Less cortisol in your body. More opportunity to return to healthier routines of eating and movement.
Humans are resilient, and as we adapt to non-pandemic life again, our bodies will adjust accordingly. Will you be able to fit into your old jeans again? Maybe. Our bodies are meant to adapt and change, expand and contract.
Even if you don’t “bounce back” to whatever you looked like before, living with less stress and anxiety will mean that you regain more control over your negative thoughts. Less stress and more genuine pleasure in your life (from seeing friends, satisfying, non-Zoom work, etc.) will shift your attention from body-loathing to…well, life.
And that’s a “new normal” to look forward to.
