Weight gain can be triggering when you’re healing your relationship with food – here are 7 practical tips from a disordered eating dietitian

In one beat, my heart burst from it’s ribcage prison and leaped into my throat. I felt like I was choking as I peered down at the number on the scale.

I don’t usually weigh myself. In fact, I don’t even own scales. But I happened to have some in the trunk of my car (I had needed to figure out if a client was eligible for subsided supplements), so when my son measured his height and said, “I wish I knew how much I weighed, too”, it struck me that he could stand on my scales. He was totally delighted because he’s one of those kids who just love to see how much they’re growing.

When he had finished weighing himself (big smiles and high fives for the growing boy), he implored me to do it, too. He wanted to share his joy with me (he is so untouched by diet culture). So I stepped on the little plastic box without blinking an eye. After all, it’s been what, 16, 17 years since I struggled with my relationship with my body. It’s not like a silly little number on a silly little scale would bother me, right?

Boy oh boy was I wrong. I didn’t expect to be so triggered by seeing a number higher than I expected, but it happened. This horror rose up in me like vomit and I actually struggled to maintain my composure.

Luckily, I have over a decade of work in the disordered eating field to draw upon. So I switched into professional mode and started to coach myself through it.

Here are the 7 things I did to ensure I didn’t fall into a restrict-binge trap, to make sure I protected my body image, and to allow my body to be at a comfortable weight that is healthy for me (and that I don’t struggle to maintain).

1. Caught my diet culture thoughts

Even though I spend so many of my working hours helping other people to let go of diet culture, my immediate response was still, “Oh crap! I better cut down what I’m eating.” It’s embarrassing to admit, but it’s true. Decades of diet culture thoughts don’t just disappear overnight.

But now I can recognize those thoughts for what they are (utter BS) and respond accordingly. I caught the thought as it happened. I literally pictured myself reaching out and catching hold of a little thought bubble like the ones you see in comic books. I looked at it with curiosity, told it that it wasn’t true (“You’re just marketing that I’ve grown up with”), and then I opened my hand and blew it away like dandelion fluff.

2. Said “Let Them” to the scales

I recently read Mel Robbin’s The Let Them Theory because I thought some of my clients might benefit from it (they have!) and I’ve been trying to apply to my own life as well. So as I packed away the scales and the trunk of the car clunked closed again, I thought to myself, “Let them. Let the scales show a higher number than I thought. Let the number be higher. Would I still be bothered by my weight if I didn’t know the number? 5 minutes ago I wasn’t bothered at all. Let the number be higher, it doesn’t say anything about me. I am far more than my weight.”

And I sure as heck didn’t weigh myself again.

3. Thanked my body for keeping me safe

When I was undressing that evening, I still felt a bit bothered by the number. And I felt guilty for being so bothered by it to boot! So instead of judging myself, I got curious and I got honest. The truth? I already knew that I had gained a little bit of weight. But why had I gained it? The answer was obvious – stress.

I had been to hell and back in 2024, with one thing after another slamming into our little family. Lost contracts, hospital visits, grief, you name it. And I knew that when I had been in the thick of it all, I had lost my appetite and my weight had dropped. I’m a fairly petite person so there wasn’t really any spare weight to lose, so from my body’s perspective, this had been a disaster. Remember that our bodies have evolved from times when losing weight was a sign that things were going very badly for you: famine, war, you name it.

So my body had done what any good body would do when things calmed down: it made me hungry. It made sure that I packed on a little bit extra just in case. It did the right thing from its evolutionary perspective.

Standing naked in my closet, I laid my hands on my belly and I said out loud (albeit quietly so my kids didn’t think I was a nutter), “Thank you, body. Thank you for keeping me safe the best way you knew how. Thank you for protecting me. Everything is okay now. We’re safe now.”

It’s super corny, but I promise it’s worth it. Recognizing that your body isn’t working against you, its just working with its caveman brain, is a real turning point for so many of my clients.

4. Focused on calming down my nervous system

But it’s not enough to just tell my body once that its safe now. You have to show it. Every day. Consistently.

And that is just what I did. I stopped eating on-the-go (as much as practically possible), put all of my food on a plate, sat down to eat and took several deep breaths before eating. The plate is a visual reminder that it’s time for rest-and-digest mode, sitting down reinforces it, and deep breathing stimulates the vagus nerve to enter that rest-and-digest mode. I even thought to myself, “I am safe” for good measure, too.

Even if this did absolutely nothing for me weight-wise, it so calming I would recommend it anyway. I preach this to my clients day in and day out, yet I had fallen into a habit of eating in a rushed manner. Sometimes we all need to stop, take stock, and get back to enjoying our food as much as we can.

Plus, I intentionally enjoyed cuddles with my children and partner. Hugs are immune system gold and oxytocin city – which is calming for a stressed out nervous system.

5. Went out of my way to satisfy cravings

My body is smart (and yours is, too). When I really listen to it, it tells me exactly what it needs. Instead of mindlessly grabbing the easiest thing to eat, I started to ask myself, “What do I really feel like?”

To my surprise, the answer was not Tim Tams. It had been Tim Tams for a while (when my body was still in that I better make sure we have a bit of extra padding for next time phase, but now that my stress levels were coming down, it had changed. But I had been so busy I hadn’t noticed the change.

When I tuned in, I found I wanted fresh, chopped up veggies dipped in boatloads of hummus. I wanted thick slices of cheese on salty crackers. I wanted smelly sardines in a big, fat salad.

I was craving nourishment.

Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I wanted the Tim Tams or not, so I put them on my plate anyway. This is because it’s so important to make sure you don’t fall into restriction. Restriction is another threat to the body, and the whole goal here is to be showing the body that it’s no longer under threat. Sometimes I ate the Tim Tams, sometimes I didn’t. But it felt important to me to have them visually present, so my body could see that they were there if needed. This is the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset. One is a threat, the other is safety.

6. Prioritized sleep

What makes more of a difference to our weight than diet and exercise combined? Sleep.

I knew that every night lately I had been putting my body under stress and signaling a threat to my nervous system by not getting enough sleep. I had had a low grade headache constantly for days, the bags under my eyes were dark, and I wasn’t feeling energized at all. So I put my latest show on hold and went to bed.

It wasn’t easy. Us busy mums often stay up far too late because we want a little me-time at the end of the day. But I was in sleep-debt after too many late nights and I needed to catch up.

7. Imagined I’m an 89 year old and I just got transported back into my 35 year old body

Another trick up my sleeve was my favourite body image exercise. If I ever started to ruminate on my appearance, I would imagine that I was actually 89 years old and I had just been transported back to this point in time. My 35 year old body is a dream! I can move so easily and without pain!

These 7 things aren’t just fluff that sounds good on paper. And they’re not academic waffle that doesn’t work in the real world. They are practical tools that anyone can use.

I have helped hundreds of my clients to feel better in their bodies and it’s really weird but I’m actually grateful that I had a little freak out over my own weight. Because it reminded me that I’m still not totally immune to the odd diet culture thought, and I need to continue to practice what I preach.

And I’m feeling better than ever because of it.