I've Been Mean to My Body for 49 Years

The incredible Katie Sturino showed me another way

But first, check out my piece for NY Daily News, co-written with the founder of Dads for All Justin Cohen: Child care must be No. 1 issue: NYC mayoral candidates have to push on affordability.

---

I am sitting here in the thick of perimenopause, constantly bloated, stepping on the scale every morning like it's going to tell me my worth.

Then Katie Sturino comes on My So-Called Midlife (episode out tomorrow) and says, "I am my most successful professionally at my biggest. I am my most authentic self at my biggest."

I wished we were in the same room so I could give her a giant hug. Because lately, I’ve been feeling more critical of my body—even more critical of it than I was in my 20s and 30s.

So how did she get there?

Katie told me about becoming a size 16 after her divorce and thinking it would be "the end of things." Instead, she accidentally stumbled into body acceptance. Katie had started an Instagram platform to help women her size find clothing hacks - sharing specific tips like trying shoes in the men's department at Barneys or finding oversized stretchy pieces from certain brands that would actually fit.

Then something unexpected happened: thin women started commenting on her posts saying things like, "Wow, you look great in a tank top. I wish I could wear a tank top."

"That's when I started to say, what if I just actually became okay with my body?" Katie said. "Because hold on a second, we all hate our bodies. What are we doing here?"

Katie's right. If women of all shapes and sizes all hate their bodies, then the problem isn't actually about size at all. It's that we're never good enough, that there's always another version of our body that we don't have - smaller, firmer, younger, different somehow.

Here's what Katie taught me: You can choose differently.

She told me about making a choice at 35: "Am I gonna spend the rest of my life feeling anger and disgust for this body I'm in? For what? For who?"

I sat there thinking about all the energy I've wasted — the mornings ruined by the number on a scale, the clothes I won't wear, the photos I won't take, the swimming I avoid because of how I look in a bathing suit. All of it serving absolutely no one, least of all me.

Katie's built a multi-million dollar business while living in her body exactly as it is. She's dating, traveling, taking up space, wearing whatever she wants. She's proof that the equation we've been fed—thin equals worthy—is complete nonsense.

But here's what I appreciated most about our conversation: Katie's honesty about the contradictions. She told me she's been getting Botox since she was 26, that she's "disconnected about acceptance from the neck up." She's not presenting herself as having it all figured out. She's showing us that you can be imperfect in your journey and still choose radical self-acceptance.

I've spent so much energy teaching women to be brave in their careers, to take risks, to stop playing it safe. But I haven't always applied that same energy to my relationship with my own body.

What if we redirected all that self-criticism into something useful? What if instead of spending mental energy on whether our jeans fit the same way they did last month, we focused on what our bodies can do? What if we stopped waiting to live our lives until we hit some arbitrary number?

Katie said something that's been rattling around in my head: "Just do whatever you want. Let's just stop talking about our bodies and appearances as much as we do."

So here's my challenge to you (and to myself): What would you do if you stopped waiting to be smaller? What trip would you take? What photo would you post? What clothes would you wear? What joy are you denying yourself while you wait to be "fixed"?

Because here's the thing—and Katie proved this to me—you're not broken. You never were.

With love (and a little less self-criticism),

Reshma

P.S. You can listen to my full conversation with Katie on tomorrow's episode of My So-Called Midlife.