What else I lost when I lost weight

A video of me, for you.

2016 me on stage in Philly.

I write helpful guides to feeling better in and about your body + body culture essays like this one that has over 78,000 views. If you throw me $4.17/month for an annual subscription you’ll get access to everything and will support more of my kickass work. Please consider upgrading:

In “dog ate my homework” mode this week: I owe you the movement/exercise installment of the Take Your Body Back Initiative today — if you don’t know what I’m talking about, read the post below — but I need more time. I’ve been working on a freelance reporting story and on getting a draft of my book to test readers (!!!) and frankly I assume/hope you all will be more understanding of a blown deadline than a legacy media publication and a book publisher would. (If you’re a paid reader, you got this Body Culture Bulletin this month. Still getting your money’s worth!)

When that post is ready, it’ll be my magnum opus re: how to align your lifestyle and habits around starting to exercise, no matter how broke/tired/confused/scared you are. Been there. Thanks for your patience.

Take your body back with me

In the meantime I thought I’d give you a little something else. Fun fact: I sometimes do live storytelling shows. That’s where people go onstage to tell true stories from their lives, usually based on a show’s specific theme. Sometimes anyone randomly selected from the audience can tell a story (as is the case for The Moth, a storytelling org you’ve maybe heard of), sometimes the shows are more curated and storytellers are determined ahead of time.

I’ve twice produced my own storytelling show in the D.C. Capital Fringe Festival¹ about bodies and body image, and each time was a highlight of my creative life (it also sold out all eight performances and was a top-rated show in the festival, tyvm). This time last summer I was in full show production mode, but this summer I’m in full book mode. That has me thinking about the history of this work I do about body-related stuff.

The first time I ever spoke publicly about the complexities of my significant body change and my binge eating disorder was in a 2016 storytelling show with First Person Arts in Philadelphia, the theme of which was the word “Lost.” I wouldn’t start this newsletter or dive into the body beat more seriously until 2021, but I’ve realized that this story really was the genesis of my niche. It’s where I attempt to be honest, warts and all, about how weird it is to lose a lot of weight (something I never heard anyone talk about at that point) and how hard it is to have a body, period.

There’s some stuff in this story I wouldn’t say now, and I cringe a little at my stumbles and yammerings and lines that don’t land², but I love this video anyway because it represents the same truth this newsletter does: The business of the physical self is tricky, often infuriating, and for too many years I struggled through it entirely on my own. I realized I’d have a better time trying to process the agony and the ecstasy of my bodily history, and trying to feel better in and about my body, if I engaged in conversation with other people who wanted to do the same thing. I’m really glad that’s what I do now.

I sent these messages to my now-husband (we lived in two different cities at the time) after the show. I love that our chats are a record of my emotional reaction to everything that happened to me that year 🥹

Please let me know if it gives you something to think about. Thanks for watching and for being a Body Type reader. If you like my stuff, please like, restack, and otherwise share it :) More good stuff coming your way soon!

1. RIP!

2. I didn’t win that night, but two of the three judges gave me 9+/10 scores and one gave me a 7.2 or something, which made the audience boo and the host say to him, “Could you not hear her over there?” Lol. Where is that guy? How did I wrong him?? And later, someone from First Person Arts asked me to write something for their contact at This American Life, which was doing an episode on weight loss. Nothing came of that but looking back, I think it sparked my confidence that anyone would care to hear more about the kind of stuff I was saying. Let me put “circle back to TAL” on the 2026 vision board…