What You Don’t See in the Before Photo

The photo I’m sharing with you today might look like a celebration. A milestone. A moment of pride. And in some ways, it was, I'd just finished my Mental Health Nursing degree, and I was smiling. But what you don’t see in that photo is the cost of the body I was living in.

That version of me had just finished one of the most restrictive diets I’d ever been on (and trust me, there have been many). It was sold to me by an influencer who marketed it as a “healthy lifestyle,” but it came with a list of rules longer than my arm.

No oils.
No processed food whatsoever.
No flexibility.
And my day started with seeds. SEEDS.
Not because I loved them, but because that’s what the rules said.

The thing about that diet, and every other restrictive one I’ve tried—is that it didn't make me healthier. It made me smaller. And the world loves smaller.

I’ve never received more compliments than I did at that time. People praised my discipline, my “glow,” my commitment. But what they were really praising was the visible evidence of self-denial. Of me trying to disappear.

Here’s the truth: every single time I shrank myself through restriction, people noticed. They celebrated me. And each time, I felt a little further away from myself.

What most didn’t see was the exhaustion, the obsession, the shame cycle of restriction and inevitable bingeing. The metabolic and hormonal chaos it caused. The numbness. The fact that I'd stopped being able to trust my own hunger cues. Or my joy.

I don’t remember all the rules of that diet now, I’ve dissociated from many of them. But I do remember how hollow I felt, even when I looked “well.”

Today, I’m not smaller. I’m not as lean. I’m not following anyone’s food rules. But I am free.

And let me tell you: I am fucking awesome at my current weight. I no longer measure my worth by the size of my jeans, or the approval in other people’s eyes. I was always bloody amazing. I just couldn’t see it back then.

If you’ve ever been praised for losing weight while quietly falling apart inside, I see you.

We need to ask ourselves, both as individuals and as a wider culture, why we feel compelled to compliment weight loss. What does that say about us? What does it reinforce?

We're not immune to these messages. The praise we receive in smaller bodies can feel like a drug. And with the rise of medications like GLP-1s being hailed as solutions, it’s easy to forget that eating disorders don’t occur in a vacuum. They are deeply political, social, and justice-related.

Bodies don’t exist in isolation. Neither do eating disorders. Recovery is not just about food—it’s about unlearning systems that taught us to equate thinness with worth.

So today, I’m sharing both photos: the “before,” and the now. Not as a glow-up. But as a reclamation. Of space. Of self. Of freedom.