When I was little I had a big round tummy (didn’t everyone?). My dad used to ask me if I was hiding a watermelon in there. As I got a little bit older I, along with the rest of my class, was always being told by my ballet teacher to pull my tummy in. When I was in my early 20s someone told me to remember to suck my tummy in when I was having my photo taken. I took all of those things to mean I had a big, fat, ugly mid-section. No one ever said that to me but that was how I interpreted the data.

By the time I got to my mid 30s, my endometriosis was constantly bloating my stomach in a really big way. I often looked multiple months pregnant (at least that’s what I thought) so getting a thinner stomach became an obsession. And the 90s and 2000s were a terrible time for body image for us all! I started counting calories, weighing myself daily, constantly pulling my top up in front of a mirror to see how fat I looked and thinking about my weight, body and food for a lot more of each day than was healthy. Although I was never diagnosed with an eating disorder, I definitely displayed many symptoms of having one.

Luckily for me, my hysterectomy and subsequent early menopause at 43 were the catalyst for change. I decided it was time to love my body and myself the way I am and take care of myself with compassion and kindness. I say this was lucky, because I have since gained weight as many menopausal women do, and if I hadn’t done the self-love work I’ve done, I could have easily tipped back into eating disorder territory, because many women do at this stage of life.

As the National Eating Disorders Association in the US says, “Some older adults who suffer from an eating disorder have struggled since youth and have never recovered; others have recovered at some point then relapsed later in life. Some have had food and body image issues for years but were never incapacitated by them until now. While others, faced with the challenges of aging in our youth-obsessed world, develop rituals related to diet, exercise, and appearance for the first time in their lives, which can lead down the slippery slope of an eating disorder.”

Stress, body composition changes, hormonal changes and menopause related depression can all be triggers for eating disorders in midlife. Eating disorders are serious and should be treated as such.

At my recent Menopause Health Talk we briefly touched on eating disorders because a lot of women can start to take drastic measures to lose weight during the menopause transition. This can include long bouts of fasting, extreme exercise habits and a preoccupation with health.

If you are spending a big chunk of your day thinking about food or your body, you may want to check out this screening tool and the information for getting help.

P.S. I looked up some photos to illustrate my round tummy as a kid and I couldn’t find one. But this pic is pretty cute.

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