Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 38 What My Husband REALLY Thought About My Weight Gain
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: But before we get into today's episode, I want to let you know that in a few weeks, starting in early September 2026, I'll be opening registration for the next round of my Body Peace Small Group Coaching. If you've been listening to this podcast and have already made some progress feeling more peaceful in your body, but you're ready to go deeper, we'll work with practical tools you can actually use when old thoughts and patterns show up, while doing this alongside four to six other women who get it. Especially when you may be the only one you know in your life not dieting or using GLP ones. If you're ready for more body peace and self-trust and want support putting it into practice, join the Priority Interest list through the link in the description. You'll be the first to receive the details and application when registration opens. Now, on to today's episode. What happens to your relationship when you stop dieting and gain weight? What does your partner think? What is their experience of watching your body change? Those are questions a lot of women secretly have. And so I thought I'd go to the source and bring onto the show the one person who went through it all with me, my husband John. When we met, I was thin and conventionally beautiful, but consumed with my weight and how I looked. He watched me stop dieting, gain weight, struggle with my changing body, and eventually make peace with it. And there was a point when he actually wasn't as physically attracted to me. But what happened after that is the part I think you're really gonna want to hear. So today, you're gonna listen to my husband talk candidly about what it was like to be my partner through this entire journey and what he saw change in me, in himself and our relationship. Let's dive in. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right, and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural worth, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. Hi, husband. Hi, wife. This completely natural representation of abnormal interactions every day. Thanks for agreeing to be on the podcast and talking about this. You're welcome. So I think a lot of people are really excited to hear this conversation because there's a lot of women who are going through the process of stopping dieting or are thinking about it and either their partners aren't really on board with it, they don't really understand what they're doing, or they may just be really afraid that their partners aren't gonna find them attractive anymore and want to be with them if they gain weight. We were together when I was dieting. So you were there for when I was really at the worst of it because it it like it peaked before I decided to stop. So you were living with me, we were together. We weren't married yet, but we were together when that was going on. And then you were with me for the entire process of letting go of dieting and to where I am today. So if you can think back to the years when I was deeply into dieting, what do you remember about like what that time was like? What it was like for me, for you, and for our relationship. Okay. ⁓ this may sound super obvious, but let me just preface it by saying this is my own experience. And to anybody who's going through these changes, I'm not sure whether their husband or partner will have the same or similar experiences than I did, but I can just give my two cents with what I experienced. Just for a little context, I came to Canada and moved in with you, right? So this is my first time living with a partner. But I have been in other relationships before. And if it It helps with the context. I've been in relationships with with women that have been like model thin and other women's that were bigger as well. And I I guess when you were when you were in the thick of it, it was a tense time. ⁓ what I mostly remember is the experience of like walking on eggshells because your mood was just so flip floppity, you know. For example, you would go to work and you would come home and the the agreement we had is I I would take care of the chores of the house because I had no way of working at that point. I I was here in a visitor's visa and I would do my best to cook something for when you came from work. In some sense, then it would not be ready when you came home from work like late at night and you just wanted to eat and just chill. And while that may be frustrating for anybody, like your mood would just go like, This is it, we're done. a relationship is done, everything is like black or white like that. Like everything was so extreme in your moods. You know? And why do you think that was? I think honestly you were just starving. It wasn't just because I was upset that you didn't have dinner rather than I was home. I think you were actually starving and so you wanted to eat. It wasn't like that with absolutely everything. It was like especially around food. For example, you used to weigh yourself every morning. I don't know if if if you remember that I do. It was a moment in the morning where it was like a tense situation because if the scale didn't say what you wanted it to say, you would come out of the bathroom like if your face was just and I knew I also felt like let's just give her wide berth, but you know, if if The scale didn't say what you wanted was it toss all the dice how the rest of the day was gonna go. Yeah. And what was that like for you? Well, I was honestly very nervous. I really liked you and I've been with you when you're in good moods and and happy, but when you were like depriving yourself, it was it was ninety percent you were in a bad mood. And it was intense. I'm like ⁓ You know, we'll see where this goes. I it's also a new experience for you, for me to be here. We were kinda getting used to each other. So I wasn't like ready to pack it in, but but it was definitely stressful. L let's put it this way. I was not very comfortable in the situation, you know. Yeah. What did you think was going on for me at the time? And was there anything that you understand differently now? Honestly It seemed like you were so caught up in this world of wanting to be a certain way. And if you were not achieving that, it's like everything was going wrong. I noticed that there was a disproportionate amount of time ⁓ spent all in focusing on food and in like your looks. But then again, I never knew you without dieting. So I was like, ⁓ maybe this is normal for her. How Much would you say your attraction to me and interest in me was based on the way that I looked? Well this is a little bit a little bit embarrassing. not a lot. I don't know if you people know this, but we met at a at a workshop in California. A nine day workshop. I didn't notice her at all. ⁓ She came to talk to me on when the workshop ended on the last day. ⁓ to kind of chat and be like, Hey, how are you? How was the workshop for you? And and we exchanged contact information and I didn't really think anything about it. We started Skyping a little bit, ⁓ to do the exercises in the workshop and these conversations ended up getting longer and longer and longer and we like at one point we ended up like talking five hours or something ridiculous like that. And and I started kind of falling in love with you in terms of your personality and and your fun and more of a of of a sense of who you were, like personality wise, than physically. Like I did notice that physically you looked attractive, but it wasn't the thing that I was like, she's hot, let me just go talk to her, you know. Which it has happened to me before with Ask girlfriends being like, ⁓ I noticed she's hot, let me go talk to her. But it wasn't that way with you at first. Yeah. And I think that that's also good to hear because a lot of the fears that women have are if I lose attractiveness in my appearance, a potential partner won't find me attractive because I'm not as good looking. And yet you were saying that my looks didn't even really factor into it, even when I was considered, you know, more beautiful or hot according to the typical beauty standard. Yeah. That didn't factor in. for you. No, no, not at first. And and like I said, it did factor in with past girlfriends. Some men that are driven by that, like more which is like the most important thing, they'll probably won't approach as much. But then again, you know, trade-offs. I've been with women that were like that beauty standard and ended up being terrible relationships. And so I was a little bit sounds like a harsh word, but I was a little bit cured beauty because I was like that doesn't make For a good partner, for a good relationship, for a happy life. Yeah. It has nothing to do with it. So I was not, you know, I was not a teenager looking to to get a conquest of somebody that looks beautiful so I can show off to my friends. Yeah. I find an interesting way to put it. Like that is almost a immature way of looking at partnership, like to show off to somebody else. And something I've always said is that looks will only get you so far in a relationship. Really, when you're with somebody for any length of time, it just becomes normal. Even that initial attraction starts to fade because you just, well, you're with them every day now. So you it's be goes beyond that. Yeah, for sure. And it doesn't take long. It doesn't take long to happen either. So when I decided to stop dieting and let my body change, what went through your mind? Honestly, at first I was like, good. Because you were clearly starving yourself. And when you were doing this, I was I was there also listening to you come to these realizations around food is actually for nourishment. Like it's not about keeping myself small and I've been doing this and I've been like limiting the amount of, you know, ⁓ sugars and carbohydrates that that my body needs. I've been really depleted and tired and I've been over exercising. And so when you were starting to get these realizations and I was there listening to you understand these these things, I was understanding them too. I was like, ⁓ okay. So I'm I was happy that all these mood changes and like more often bad moods that you were having are gonna decrease now. That this is a good step to get ⁓ in in a relationship with somebody who's happy and who's like satisfied and not starving all the time. ⁓ you were honestly so thin at that point. I wasn't I wasn't thinking about how your body will change so much. When your body started changing, I was like, ⁓ I see it. But honestly the first thing was like great, her moods are gonna stabilize, she's gonna be happier. You know, that that was the first thing. Yeah, and and it's funny because in our culture dieting is just How did it be like this healthy thing that you're supposed to do and everybody should be doing it? There's real mental emotional negative effects that come from dieting. I mean, you joke about diets that people are put on, put people into that state consistently. Like you're not emotionally balanced and you're in a very stressed state. And so I think that's actually having more of an impact on relationships than we may even realize. So as I went through the transition from stopping dieting to making peace. What was your experience through the time of me going through that transition? It was a time of some instability because as you were trying to figure out your own eating, it also meant a lot of like emotional stuff was going on at the same time. Because of course it wasn't just like eating. It was also tied to your self image and to this idea of being like thin and beautiful. And so my experience of it at that time as you were going through the process, one of like, okay, she has she's going through this transformation. What is my role here? What am what am I doing? How can I support her? And so for me it was mostly just listening. But you could see the like I could see the light at the end of the tunnel being like, Okay, when once this is figured out, there'll be a lot more stability and it will be stable in a good place instead of just the pendulum swinging back and forth. Because during that time, like you had periods where like you stopped dieting altogether and you would eat ice cream for for two weeks and then you would be like, No, I have to go back. I have to go back. And you would try it for one day and you'd be like, I can't. I just can't do it again. But you would swing back and forth. And so for me, it was kinda a a period of kind of like weathering the storm in a way. But it wasn't wasn't without like it was a different type of storm. than it was at first. Because at first it was more like like, is this the way she is? You know? But now I was like, okay. Like I I see the woman that I fell in love with ⁓ on the other side of this ⁓ back and forth pendulum. Because you were you were more happier more of the time and more ⁓ yourself, more joyful and more like, you know, you have this energy about you. And you were like that more of the time, I was like, okay, I see where where this is going. And I learned very fast that giving advice, even though you ask for advice sometimes is not a good idea. But yeah, that was ⁓ it was and also also being quiet is not a good idea. So listen I cannot be quiet and I cannot give advice. So if you ⁓ you guys if there's any men out there listening to this conversation, if you can figure that one out. But yeah, it it was ⁓ it was a it was a period of a lot ⁓ more lightness, but also some swings to the other side. I felt like, okay, I I need to hold hold this steady. And you know, when you wanted to go back, and it usually never lasted a day or two, I was like, okay, you go back because I already knew what was gonna happen. And because you'd done it before, where you just go back and just go hardcore and you throw everything out of the fridge and I'm like, ⁓ we're gonna have to buy all this in a couple of days. Again. So but yeah, that kind of stuff. I was like, okay, I'll just be as supportive as I can without kind of pushing one way or the other. ⁓ Yeah. It's something that stood out to me when you're talking about that because it's like when we got to know each other, it was over a long distance. I wasn't in that really heightened, hangry, emotionally unstable time over Skype. And so I'm realizing it was when you moved in, and that brought a whole level of pressure. It was because there was this extra stress that was applied that I think it was like I wasn't able to handle that stress because I was just always on the wire. And so the emotional instability, it's like you could maybe restrictive diet and live most of your life okay, but as soon as any sort of pressure comes in. It's like you're just ready to crack. Yeah. Because you've got nothing in the tank. Yeah. And so that made sense why you were like walking on eggshells when you moved in with me versus how you didn't see that when we were initially like dating over Skype, essentially. Yeah. And and I don't I don't remember you when in that time or when we're dating over Skype just calling me when you were hangry. Like you would usually be like, Okay, I need to go eat something or I need to go do something take care of myself and and we would hang up, you know, and you'd call me again later. So at any point did you ever start to have any sort of concern or feel a little bit apprehensive about my body changing? Not really. I feel like if I remember, you had said that there was one point where you started to feel like I wasn't as attractive anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So can you talk about that a little bit? Wasn't at to the point where I felt like our relationship was at risk in any way. You know? It was more like I was not as sexually attracted as I once was. But that changed also very quickly. So talk about that because this is a huge area of fear for a lot of women. So even you just saying like, ⁓ yeah, no, there was a point where I wasn't as attracted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that that's enough to have women be like, ⁓ can't do this. Red alert. So there was a point in your in your change where you started gaining a lot of weight really fast. And you were in a really bad mood about it as well. Like again, you were really happy most of the time, but then you would have some swings where you were like grabbing your belly and being like, ⁓ I don't like this, you know, it's too much. I can't bend over. You were like feeling uncomfortable in your body because you were doing yoga at the time as well. And so hearing you say those things also had a big impact in me kinda noticing that. You know, you were not wearing things that made you feel attractive anymore as well. You were starting to wear more like baggy clothes. And I didn't find those as attractive. So I feel like I I not to put it on you, but I I almost like picked up that message of like, ⁓ now I'm less attractive. I don't know how it would have gone if you were like feeling more attractive as your body grew. There was a there was a time where I was like, Is is her body changing to a point where like I'm incapable of feeling attracted, sexually attracted to her. But that lasted very, very little, like a matter of like maybe a week or two weeks. Because then I started finding like the things that I really enjoyed and this is kinda weird because I don't I don't know how much to talk about this. Let's put it this way. I I found a new appreciation for your body. I started finding things sexy that I didn't think would be sexy before ⁓ your body was bigger. I guess the best way I could put it is because the way I felt about you and our relationship, like you emotionally and and my attraction to you was not only a physical thing. It felt almost like the physical changes you went through and the way I was attracted to you physically kind of rode on the coattails of everything else I loved about you. And so it was almost like like my mind kind of shifted so that I would find your new body sexy as well. You know? Yeah. I feel like that's the best way I can put it. Yeah. That's yeah. That's really interesting. Because This is this was something that came up in a session with a client. She kind of made this realization herself that the times that she was not feeling confident in herself, it she wouldn't put herself out there. Like she wouldn't be talking to people. She would hide and then would attribute that to how she looked and say, Well, people aren't engaging with me or they're not finding me attractive because of how I look, because I'm too fat and I'm I'm ugly. But then she made that connection and said, but If I felt better about myself, I would go up and be more open and talking to people. And and I think they would find that more attractive. So that is what stood out to me when you were talking about how it wasn't even so much that my body changed, but that I changed. Like my confidence went down. I was hiding my body. And that gave off the feeling of I'm not as attractive anymore. Like you almost Hecked up on that because I was feeling that way. That's that's not to say I don't want to discount like that if men have a certain ⁓ look that they think it's sexy in their mind, that that doesn't exist. Like it does exist. But we are emotional energetic creatures. You can have somebody who's very physically attractive in in the in the traditional sense, like very thin motto-like. But they don't feel attractive and their attractiveness will decrease in the minds of those that are looking at her. So how much would you say that you were influenced initially by societal beauty expectations? Like I said, I at first, and this is from my history before you, I was influenced like anybody else, I guess. ⁓ I'm Argentinian. We we pride ourselves in having the most beautiful women in the world. One of the supermarket chains. ⁓ when I was a kid had a was given out magnets and one of the magnets said Argentinian women are the most beautiful in the world. This is like a like a supermarket change. It's like so I was influenced as much as anybody else growing up there. You had said that even in the beginning of us getting to know each other, it wasn't primarily physical. And so you were saying that all of a sudden you shifted what you found attractive. So all of a sudden the larger body became attractive, whereas before it wasn't because there was a why why do you think that is? And l let me put it this way, for example. I I feel like this will be a little bit easier to understand, kind of like the mental shift that happened within me at that time. When we started dating and you were smaller, I felt some physical attraction. Of course, that's not what our relationship was built on, because we were online dating. But then when your body started changing, there was a period of time, like a couple weeks, where my mindset kind of had to shift to be like the body of this woman that I love is changing in this way. I couldn't hold on in my mind to this idea of the body you had, because my mind would compare and be like, ⁓ no, you know, like I don't I don't feel attraction towards this body. I would feel attraction to that body. But once I let go of this idea of like you have this body, And I actually paid attention to the body you actually had, then the attraction came back. But that's kind of like the shift that I needed to make in my mind. Kind of letting go of the body you had in a way. And and that's something that which is the struggle for women going through this. So not only does the partner have the idea, but that is the big struggle is letting go of this attachment and the idea of what does it mean if I have. this smaller body versus if I have this larger body. Now it sounds like for you, you didn't have as much meaning attached to it. No. No, no, no. Like I said, I like my past relationships, because I dated women who were on both kind of ends of the spectrum, I knew that the body didn't mean anything. Like it didn't signify anything about the success of the relationship. That short relationship I had with with this model like ⁓ lady was just not a good relationship. And I'm glad it was so short. When it comes to actual relationships, there's a lot more than the physical. I feel like the physical may play a disproportionate percentage when it comes to meeting new people. So when you don't know them at all, the physical attraction means a lot more when you have nothing else to go on. But once you get to know the person and you actually fall in love with them and not just want to have sex with them, then It's a different thing. Like it's it's one thing of many. And it may not even become the primary thing. When I look at how we met at the workshop was a very specific kind of workshop that meant the type of people coming to it, we were going to be aligned in some way, shape, or form in our values and our beliefs and our interests. I've often said that The attraction level can decrease or increase based on the attractive factors beyond appearance. Appearance may initially draw you in, but that attraction level can go down or it can go up just based on when you get to know the person. And you are a great case in point too for me, because I as we know your attraction just kept going down and down. I was not as initially attracted to you physically. And point blank said that to you. That's how that's how I knew you could you could take me was I was you could handle my bluntness. But by the end of us spending time together, you grew more attractive in my eyes. And I and I've had the opposite happen where I was initially attracted to somebody who would have been, quote unquote, stereotypically attractive, but then their level of attraction decreased as I got to know them because I didn't like Their personality or who they were. So the main takeaway from all of this is that the attractive factor does not go away if a body size increases, especially when the personality gets better. So I have one final question before we wrap up. Yes. I guess it's I guess it's sort of a two-part question, but what would you say you have learned about how to support someone who is healing their relationship with food in their body. Like if you could offer support to a partner who is helping someone go through this, what would you say? And maybe like what you would wish other like partners would understand about this journey. That's a complex one. Yeah. I guess for the first part, I would say my own experience was that you have no idea what's gonna help. And a good starting point is always just listening. So being there as a sounding board. so that your partner can process things and then seeing if there is anything required after that. So something that comes up for some women who are wanting to let go of dieting and start this body peace journey is their partners who maybe don't have any understanding of the non-diet approach or maybe they've never read the book or heard about health at every size. And they're thinking, well, this is unhealthy. Like you have to be watching your weight. You can't stop dieting. So what would you say to partners who maybe have no idea about what this is all about? They're coming from a very conventional mindset around health and and body image. Well, let me just address the the the he the health piece first. What I would say based on my own experience is Some of the things that your partner might want to eat after they stop dieting, yeah, they may not be the most healthy foods. And that's okay. Trust in the wisdom of the body. Even when things are overly sweet, if you eat like ice cream every day for two weeks, it just won't feel good. And at one point you'll be s they'll be sick of it. So trust in the wisdom of that. So don't worry about them eating overly unhealthy foods for a long time because that won't last and the trade off is definitely worth it, which is being more healthy up here. The body is is very smart and will self-regulate in a in a place where it feels good for them. What about the attraction piece? I would say start from where you are. So if the reality of where you are mentally and emotionally is that you don't feel as attractive or as attracted to them, accept that, you know. Settle into that and relax with it. And what you'll find is that as you relax your hold on those ideas, then the attraction might come back and probably will. Again, I cannot speak for everybody. I can only speak for myself. But what I can say is if I held on to those ideas of like, ⁓ this is the body that she had that I find beautiful, this new body that is manifesting is not what I find beautiful. If I held on to that, then my I would be having to constantly compare that body, nothing good ever comes of that kind of comparison. It's not because one body is better than the other. It's just if I compare any part of my life with any other thing that is not reality, it's always gonna cost suffering. Like I'm always gonna feel uncomfortable. So if you don't feel attracted towards your partner, okay, start there and relax. Breathe into it and just then look at her and maybe you'll see things that you do find attractive. You know, but but you cannot find things that are attractive where where she is now if you're holding on to things that you thought were attractive before. What I would say, and it's easy for me to say this, this journey of body peace, do it for yourself, honestly. You would say it's definitely better on the other side than at the beginning. Honestly, like I I told you this before. We've been together for almost eleven years now. Married for the last almost seven. If you have not changed Like when you were dieting and obsessed about food and always on edge, like I could not have lived, not even two years with that person, you know, let alone eleven. It's just so much better on the other side. So much better. Yeah. I was gonna say it's like the the cost benefit for women, it feels like this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to me is to gain weight. And yet when you really look at it from everything that you're actually gaining when you let go of the restriction. It's so much more. And it it's like that that fear just kind of gets in the way of of actually what truly I think matters. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't don't really know until you go through it. Like it's it's really hard to kind of put yourself in the position of like, ⁓ imagine I have mental peace around this because it's it's kind of hard to imagine, you know, especially if your la whole life revolves around it. But but if you could For Saga and Imagine It. So worth it. So worth it. Well, thank you so much, husband. Well, thank you, wife. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. I love you. I love you too. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved, leave a rating and review. It will help the show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember You're already everything you've been trying to become. Enough, worthy, and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.