episode 249: i never expected this to happen from a tiktok video
A 2.5-minute reel about a guy telling 18-year-old me my stomach “wasn’t his type” blew up on TikTok.
The views and follows were cool, but they were far from the best part. That goes to the women who showed up in the comments. Women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s sharing the one sentence from their parents, boyfriends, trainers and random men they dated that changed the course of their lives--and not in a good way.
In this episode, I read a few of those jaw-dropping comments, explain why these voices stick, and show you what actually changes the channel in your head (without another diet). If you’re tired of waking up hating your body and don’t know what to do next, this one’s for you.
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249
[00:00:00] Hey friends. Thanks for listening to the Diet Diaries today. I have no idea what episode, uh, number this is gonna be. Um, I wanted to talk about something kind of cool that happened. Um, last week. I, I have been struggling, um, with content lately. I create tons of content and, um, in the attention economy that is social media, it's.
Been just getting harder and harder and harder to figure out what to share that is really actually gonna help people, um, not just get your attention for three seconds, or not just say something extreme or say something polarizing. Um, say something that actually is going to benefit you. And so I decided to stop trying to get your attention in three seconds and I ended up sharing a two and a half minute story.
About, um, a guy that I met online when I was 18. Um, and when I met him in person, he told me that [00:01:00] my stomach wasn't flat enough and then that my body wasn't his type and I talked about it, um, talked about this story and, uh, how that was a huge part of, uh, the body image struggles that I, um, still, still have, still work on, but have made a ton of progress on.
I'm 45. That was at 18. And, um, I made the reel and I posted it on Instagram and. A lot of people liked it. I think like, you know, and I'm not so concerned about how many likes I get, but when something gets far more interest than other things I've been posting, I know that I've touched on a nerve and I got a lot of comments and I was like, all right, I'm almost gonna post it on TikTok.
I will double post things. I don't really use TikTok, guys, like, I just don't really spend any time on there. I don't really like under, I mean, I understand how to use it, but like I don't fully get it. I posted it and it quote unquote went viral. Now for me, I had like, I think maybe less than a hundred followers on TikTok.
[00:02:00] Um. And like barely any likes, TikTok actually measures its stuff, I guess like on likes. It's like the main metric on like your profile page. Anyway, this thing as of today, as of this morning, um, I posted it I think 48 hours ago. Is that, was that it? 48 hours ago? Um, has over for like over 50,000 views, which for me is a lot.
Right? For another creator that might be what they get on a day-to-day basis. It's all relative. Um, so you might be like, oh, it doesn't have four, 4 million views. It's not viral. Like I, I don't really care if it's called going viral. What I care about is the fact that this connected with people. And the best part about this is not the views, it's not the followers, it's not any that.
It's the fucking comments section of this post. And I encourage you to go and read it. And that is really what I'm gonna talk about today because the comments from women on this post have been just devastating. Um, heartbreaking. Invigorating, inspiring, all of the above. Um, [00:03:00] what has also blown my mind is how many women in their fifties and sixties and seventies are on TikTok.
I really had no idea. Um, you know, I, I'm gonna read you some of these comments. So many stories about, uh, parents, um, coaches, teachers, trainers, boyfriends, um, guys that people have dated comments that were made one time that literally. Change the course of a woman's life and how she feels about herself, right?
That's literally what happened to me. It wasn't just this one thing, um, because I had already been struggling with this, but it absolutely played a huge role. Um. So here's, here's a, an amazing comment that just came in this morning. I'm 65. When I was 12 or so, it was a quote thing for boys to come up behind me and quote, pinch an inch on either side of my waist.
Stomach anxiety, dominated myself image for half a century. It's part of a much bigger [00:04:00] problem of cultural acceptance of judgment. Oh, I'm trying to read the whole thing. Judgment of women's bodies being acceptable. It's as violent as anything physical could be. I've been skinny for 15 minutes. Twice in my life.
I have waged heroic battles against my genetics. 25 years ago, I was telling my doctor that it was like my body wanted me at a certain weight. Science has come to the set point. Conclusion at my set point, I can eat as much or as little as I choose. Exercise a litter or a lot, and very little changes. But I'm not at war.
I am what I am. It doesn't pervade my thoughts or devour my energy anymore. I think that unsettles people, right? There's a woman who had really been in the thick of it and did some internal work to move past it. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna keep reading some 'cause I really want you guys to hear these.
There's hundreds. My mother told me that I looked ridiculous in a pencil skirt because my stomach protruded a little, that did it for me. I'm 62 and needed to hear this today. One of the last things my mom said to me was, quote, my waist was [00:05:00] always smaller than yours. I hear you. My parents said they would buy me a new car.
If I weighed 120 pounds. I was five seven and weighed a healthy one 50. I would've been in treatment if I weighed one 20 girl. I became bulimic after a boyfriend said there was no thing as too skinny. Wow. I'm 54 and it's like you were speaking directly to me. I always hated on my stomach and feeling cursed.
It was never flat. My college boyfriend said he likes his girlfriend to be small like his mom. I mean the, like his mom thing is as alarming as anything else. I struggled with bulimia from 16 until my late forties and disordered eating compulsive dieting and exercise from the age of 11. My parents put me on countless diets and I was rewarded for weight loss.
I am 62 and recently started a new diet. I still work out at least once a day. I still feel bad about myself when I feel fat. I am 45 at parent-teacher conferences tonight, comparing myself to other moms. When will the madness end? I'm almost 70. [00:06:00] My self-worth has always been defined by how much I weigh and how clothes looked on me.
I was always the tall, thin girl. I'm sorry. I never knew who I really am. I'm pausing there because I want that one to sink in. I was always the tall, thin girl. I'm sorry. I never knew who I really am. Because everyone thinks that thinness is the thing. That that is the thing that will make you happy, because that is what society tells us we need to look like.
This is not the only story I've heard like this from a woman, woman who had society's ideal body and still struggled and it's 70 years old, doesn't know who she is because she was living under the pressure and under the microscope of being the thing that people wanted her to be, and it still wasn't good enough if hearing that.
It doesn't make you just pause for a second, a second to think, and if it's not, [00:07:00] I encourage you to think, right? Like I don't, I'm not even sure what the objective to be honest of this episode is. I wanted to share this stuff. I want to get these comments out there because I don't know who's actually going and reading them.
And they are literally the most profound moving, upsetting, emotional. Things I've I've ever read in my life, and I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that 50,000 people have seen this. To get these comments, to give people a place, to share this, to say this, and then to read through and see all these other women who have been through the same thing and know we're not alone, and to know that there are.
People out there who are still struggling. This right in the age of Ozempic, when anyone who wants to go on these meds can literally go and get them and start them to lose weight, lose a drastic amount of weight and quote unquote be thin. And to think that that fixes everything, it fucking doesn't. And I am not anti ozempic.
Just before this podcast, I just spent 45 [00:08:00] minutes talking to a current client who's been on Zet bound for a year. I fully support these medications, but I do not support them as the, as the way to be happy with your life and be happy with who you are and how your body looks. They are not the thing, and there are so many women struggling out there as.
A result of what's happening culturally, the shift. But I also think this is related, but unrelated, right? There's been this trend lately on social media of people kind of owning their stuff, of saying, yeah, I'm on ozempic. Yeah, I've had a tummy tuck. Yeah, I've had six lasers. Yeah, I do Botox every three weeks.
People owning it, which I think is great because it at least helps us know that when we see someone, we know that there has been, um, external intervention in order to get there. But I think as a result of that, there's a, a, a Darth, I have never used that word before, a huge gaping hole for people who are not doing these things, who are [00:09:00] not, um, doing kind of, in some cases, especially as it relates to like physical appearance, like extreme interventions with their bodies.
And it's like we're not seeing enough of that. Um, and I think it's deeply, deeply continuing to impact people. Um, I'm gonna read some more comments. I've thought about my weight every day since the age of 13. I'm turning 50 in January. I became obsessed with the gym, lost weight trainer. Asked us all as a group what we would eat for dinner.
We went around the room. I had gained a few pounds as I became perimenopausal, and he actually said he couldn't train me anymore because I wasn't serious enough. About keeping weight off. It messed me up so bad I couldn't go to the gym. I vowed to never let someone else train me again. People don't realize what they say stays in our heads.
I feel this in my soul. I will never be able to accept my body. It is literally something I obsess over every single day. My mother asked me if I should wear something almost [00:10:00] daily. She said other girls would be able to pull it off, but not me. No matter what it was. It sticks with you for a lifetime. I used to love my stomach.
It was my favorite part, even after three pregnancies. Then when I was 46, after my divorce, I fell in love for the first time. We dated for six years. A few months into our relationship, he would make these little comments about my stomach, teasing me about jiggly, jello belly. I got so self-conscious of something that I never had a problem with.
10 years later, I still hear his voice inside my head when I look at my stomach. Why is it so hard to get rid of that voice? I am gonna pause here and answer that because I actually answered it in the comments. We can't get rid of the voice once it's there. It's pretty much there. What we can do is we can learn how to respond to it and this, this is a huge part of what the work is.
Once we've heard these things, we can't unhear them. We can't erase them from our memories. We have to learn how to respond to [00:11:00] them, and we respond to them with the choices we make around food. We respond to them with the language we use to talk to ourselves. We respond to them with the clothes that we use to get dressed.
We respond to them with the way that we move our bodies. Um, there are many, many ways that we respond to them, and that is a skill that we learn. I have a client that I worked with, um, we worked together two times, separate times for about a year each time. She, uh, was in her mid to late fifties over the course of that time, um, and over the past couple of years, leading up to us working together had gained about 30 pounds.
This was like post COVID and was really, really struggling with it, but also knew that she could not diet, she could not, um, restrict food in order to lose weight. And so we were working on a lot of things around food, um, because she was struggling with, um. Kind of feeling hungry and snacky and having cravings and not feeling full, um, and just not always kind of feeling great after she would eat.[00:12:00]
And she was also struggling with this, this, the, the, the weight gain and being in a body that she didn't really recognize and, and wasn't familiar with. And over the time of our work together, she went from going on vacation and not going on the beach and putting on a bathing suit with her family, like literally sitting in a coverup off to the side.
To towards the end of our time together, it might even be after we finished, she sent me a message saying, I wore a bathing suit on the beach without a coverup on my family vacation. And she had not lost any weight during that time. She's in her mid to late fifties. Um, I have another client who. Kind of similar, right?
Like menopausal postmenopausal had gained weight, just feeling kind of like really outta control around sugar. Um, and in a lot of ways had, was very, um, kind of very regimented about other parts of, of her diet. And by diet I simply mean way of eating, which is ultimately, technically what a diet [00:13:00] actually means.
That meaning has just kind of been hijacked. Um. And really struggling with body image. And we uncovered so much about her relationship to clothes and what, what, how she thought about getting dressed. Um, and the way she used clothes is just like a very functional thing to basically cover her body. Um, because her family didn't wanna spend money on clothes and it was very kind of, um, very, very functional.
And she had to kind of relearn how to figure out what made her feel good, what did she like to wear? What, what, what felt good on her body? What did she like the way looked on her body to the point where she ended up sending me a message, um, where she went to a wedding and sent me this incredible text. I should really try to find it right now, um, about the dress that she wore.
In the body that she had been in and how she just felt fantastic. And it was like this form fitting dress, and she was like, I feel the best I've ever felt. And these are all women. I'm talking specifically about women in their fifties. Right. So it's, [00:14:00] I'm, I'm sharing a couple of those examples because the volume of women that commented on this post women, and I can look and I can see that the, the data is actually showing me that the more than half of the people who saw this were.
Forties, fifties and sixties, which I'm like, I'm so glad. 'cause it, it re it reached the right people. I somehow, TikTok, TikTok just showed up for me and got this in front of the people that needed to see it. And I'm not even exactly sure how that works, but I'm so, so grateful. Um, if you are out there, you are listening and you are in any, you are, if you are any age, right?
If you are any age. But especially what happens is there were so many other messages and I'll try and read a few more of people being like. It is too late, like, I'm 50, I'm 60, I'm 70. This is never gonna change for me. That is not true. That is a belief that we've been told that when we get to a certain age, we can no longer change things about ourselves.
[00:15:00] So. If you believe that, then no things are not gonna change, and things are not just going to suddenly, drastically change overnight. Like one woman said like, I'm 45, I was at my kids' back to school night last night, just comparing myself to other moms. When is the madness going to end? It's not going to just end.
Like that's the harsh reality. It's not just gonna stop. You're not just gonna wake up one day and love your body. You are not just gonna wake up one day and accept your body. You are not just gonna wake up one day and not give a shit about the stomach that has been taking up your brain space for the last four decades.
Or in one case, a woman said, half a fucking century, half a century, you guys, I can't even like, oh my God. It breaks my heart. It literally breaks my heart to think about. The misery that so many women are living with. And I was one of those women. And that's not to say that I'm all like quote unquote fixed and healed because there is no end date.
But there is. There is [00:16:00] so much that you can do at any age. And I shared the examples of those clients in their fifties, 'cause they're in their fifties and they'd been living with this for their entire lives and it wasn't too late for them. It's never too late, but it is not going to happen on its own. I didn't get to where I got, and I'm gonna share the link to the real, if you haven't seen yet.
I didn't get to a point where I stopped thinking about what he said to me, or I stopped obsessing over my stomach. It didn't just happen. It happened because I put in work. I put in a shit ton of work around food and my experience as a coach in working with. Many, many women. My own personal lived experience and the way that behavior change works and the psychology of how our brains work, this starts with food because how you feel about your body and food are inextricably linked because the way that you, [00:17:00] what you've been judged or criticized by someone else or by yourself.
About your body. The way that you have tried to fix that is by changing what you eat. And so those things cannot be separated. They cannot be, and you cannot address body image without addressing food. And for the vast majority of people. It is a lot easier to actually start with food than to start to work on some of the kind of self-talk internal dialogue skills that also need to happen.
It's a both and, but I have not ever worked with a single client for whom we did not address food first. And the reality is a lot of people come in and they don't even articulate quite like. How poor their body image is. They just know they're in like a really shitty place with food and they're dieting and they've gained weight and they've lost weight and gained a loss, and gained a [00:18:00] loss.
And they're so unhappy and they feel outta control around food and they don't like how they look. And then it starts to, as we peel back the layers, the, the unease and just utter consumption with how their body looks, starts to like really, really rise to the top. Um, but. Making changes to how you are thinking about food is the first step.
Um, two of those steps are giving yourself permission around food and starting to look at the way that you label food as good and bad. Those are kind of really the first two big places that we look at. Um, and there's a lot of skills that happen within that. But this is what I wanted to talk about, right?
I wanted to share what I heard from people so that you can feel seen so that you know that you are by far not the only one you are in as much as it breaks my heart. [00:19:00] Very, very good and wide company. Um, and to start to understand a little bit why we feel this way, right? Like so many of these comments were about things that were said to them, these women at a young age by parents.
By trainers, by boyfriends, by random one-off guys that they dated. I mean, a lot were from parents, um, but from men as well, from partners as well at different stages of life, right? That woman, instead of 46, I got divorced. I'd never thought about my stomach, and I dated a guy and like it fucked me up. And we wonder why, why, why is negative body image literally an epidemic, right?
Let's call it what it is. It's an epidemic. Well, it's because. These comments were made to us at such a young age, and we internalize them. And once you hear it, you can't unhear it. You can't, you don't forget that shit. It doesn't go away. You don't forget it. Um, and in most cases, it wasn't said just once.
We often remember the first time, but then it was repeated over and over again. Um, and even if it was [00:20:00] said just once, it's, it, it, it imprints on your brain. It carves a groove in your brain, and that groove can never be uncarved. What we have to do is carve new grooves alongside of it. That starts to slowly change the way that you think about that.
Um, but the relationship then between those comments that are made about our bodies and what we did to try and fix it, right? Because then this was, now, this was now a problem. This is a problem that has to be fixed, and how am I gonna fix it? I'm gonna, I'm gonna lose weight. How am I gonna lose weight? I'm gonna restrict food.
I'm gonna label food. I'm not gonna eat those foods. I'm gonna cut out foods. Um, and it's so interesting because I didn't really see a lot of comments about working out as part of this, although it very much is, um. Here's another one. I'm gonna read a couple more. I know we're at 20 minutes. I cannot even tell you how much I relate to this.
This has been my reality since high school, and I am now 43, a mother of three. The mental challenge is [00:21:00] just that such a challenge. It's the first thing my eyes go to when I look in the mirror. While I was with my dad on a flight, I reached up to get my overhead bag and my stomach was barely exposed. He asked quote, are those stretch marks?
My dad in front of everyone. You have two grandsons from me. Yes, I have stretch marks. I've lived most of my life like this, always obsessed with how big or small I am. I'm 37 and I'm exhausted by the hate I've always had of myself. Like, I can't, I can't even like get the words out without crying. Um, this is just one stranger on TikTok, right?
How many other millions of women? I know that you are all out there and you are feeling this way.
My mother had a full blown outburst in the middle of Sears girls' clothing department when I was eight because a coach she tried on me wouldn't close. I still hear the echoes of disgusting cow every time I look in the mirror at every weight. I'm 53.
I [00:22:00] relate so much. The day my now ex-husband asked me to go study at 16, he told me I was fat and needed to get rid of my belly. I was five seven and weighed 115 pounds. That was the theme of our marriage. I know now, of course, my belly was my little uterus. He controlled my food, not allowing me to eat if I was too heavy or make me overeat if I lost weight, and other men started looking at me.
It's taken me decades to stop obsessing about food.
Here's, here's a good one. Brava took me way too long to get there, but when I did, I exhaled and enjoyed my belly and my life. One of the first things I tell someone I'm going to date is my stomach is squished. I must tell people so I feel safe out of the gate. I can't believe how much time I spent obsessing over my weight years.
Now that I'm closing in on my fifties and I'm at my goal weight, I feel like it was such a waste of time. I don't feel more [00:23:00] free or prettier. I'm the same me. I missed out on so much good food, great restaurants, not doing something for fear of how I looked 55 and wonder if there will ever be a day I look in the mirror and like what I see.
It's horrible. 54 years old and feeling this.
As a child after dinner, my mother served cake for dessert. My father said, no one will ever love you if you eat that.
It is so exhausting to have lived like this for four decades. Finally, sort of coming out of it at 51, I, there was one that I wanted to find, but I don't know how to find it. Um, that was about being photos, not being in photos with her kids. Um. I don't know. I think I've read enough. I think you guys get the idea.
Um, my point with this is, this is an epidemic. If you are waking up every day feeling disgusted [00:24:00] by your body, hating how you look, feeling like the only way to fix that is to get smaller, but at the same time, knowing the misery of being on a diet. And restricting food and literally feeling like you don't know what else to do.
That is not the end of your story. There is so much that you can do to give yourself support, to help to shift that thinking around your body. That is. 1000% something that is entirely possible. It is entirely possible for you to get to a place where you aren't all consumed by thoughts of hating your body.
Am I gonna sit here and tell you that you're gonna love your body, that you're gonna look at your stomach covered in stretch marks and cellulite and rolling over the top of your pants and say, I love how this looks. I'm never gonna tell you that. Can I tell you that it's possible to feel all those things and [00:25:00] not have it consume your day to.
Put on clothes and actually feel good about it, to be able to eat a burger and have your stomach feel and look that way at the same time. Yes. The very last sentence of that reel was, how amazing would it be to go shopping, buy jeans you love in the size that fits, and have a burger for lunch on that same day?
Right. That kind of like captures in a nutshell, right? 'cause the whole part of what I was talking about in this reel was the fact that I went through this, this trauma of this happening and the, the, the disordered eating and the dieting and the, the, the, the self abuse to going to literally posting my body all over Instagram for people to see.
And how the fuck did I do that? How did I do that? Well, I did it by changing. How I, by changing how I thought about food, that was the first [00:26:00] step for me. The, the way that I think about my body came as a result of that. And that's why I talked about that, you know, 10, 15 minutes ago. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna put it out there.
If this is something that you want to work on because you are sick of waking up and feeling every day feeling this way about your body every day, you're in the right place. This is work that we do on coaching. Um, this is not me, like this is not an episode about me, like selling you on coaching. This is me talking about the lived experience that so many of us have been through and talking about the way that this reel that I shared clearly connected with people and I think gave space to have a voice for this and to talk about this and.
For, you know, that you, you can, you can have a voice, you can talk about this, you can share this, what you feel is justified and it makes total sense. And you are worth more than that. You deserve more than that, and that is possible for you at any age. [00:27:00] And if you want the support, I'm here. I'm the person.
This is literally what I do for a living. This is, I'm a fucking expert at this. About helping you go from hating the way that your body looks to having it take up less brain space and to actually look forward to getting dressed, to look forward to going out to parties, to look forward to feeling good about your body.
Um, and it is not because you lost 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 pounds. Um. It is because you have learned how to exist in your body and shift the way that you think about and use food and learn a new language of speaking to yourself and new ways to deal with and sit with the discomfort of all of those thoughts. All of that is as possible as it is that the sun will rise tomorrow.[00:28:00]
Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I'm feeling super emotional right now and like there's more I wanna say, but I think I've said enough so I'll be back soon.