Why I never know how I'm going to feel in my body until I get there

Four years after quitting diets, I've realized my body image has surprisingly little to do with my body and a lot to do with where I am.

After four years of not dieting, I’ve noticed something interesting. I can go weeks, sometimes months, feeling pretty okay in my body (and I consider “pretty okay” a win). But as a trip gets closer, there’s a shift.

It’s not that I suddenly become unhappy with my body, it’s that uncertainty creeps in. A kind of anticipatory anxiety. What’s going to come up for me this time? Am I going to spend the week surrounded by impossibly thin people, comparing myself? Will I feel at home in my body, or like I don’t belong in it?

Travel has a way of stirring up the body image stuff.

I’ve come to expect it now, and in a weird way, expecting it helps me deal with it. Sometimes I feel completely at home in my body (hello, Grenada). Sometimes I’m filled with fears that turn out to be unfounded (Paris). Sometimes a trip starts badly but works itself out in the end (Maui).

The view from Huckleberry Point in the Catskills this spring

One thing has become clear: not all places are created equal when it comes to body image.

Of course, we bring our own baggage. Some of us start worrying before we’ve even started packing the suitcase. That’s often what triggers the urge to diet in the first place. We imagine ourselves in swimsuits, sundresses, and vacation snaps, and the worrying begins.

My first few vacations after giving up diets, I had a whole new set of fears. There were the practical ones. Will the ski pants, the ones I haven’t worn in a couple of years, still fit? What about the bikini? (Yes, no matter my size, I’m still wearing one.)

Then there were the fears I hadn’t anticipated: airplane seats that felt snugger than I remembered, seatbelts that came a little too close to the end, and an irrational fear that I would never stop growing now that I was giving my body permission to eat.

I also wasn’t sure what I was capable of in this new body. My husband and I are active travelers, the kind of people who come home from vacation exhausted. One of our first trips in my post-diet body was a steep, slippery jungle hike in Costa Rica that ended with us pulling ourselves against a current along a rope through a narrow slot canyon. I was in my head the whole time, worrying over whether I’d be able to tackle the terrain like everyone else.

Entering the slot canyon to La Leona waterfall in Costa Rica

It all worked out fine. Gradually with time and new territory, I got to know this new old body and learned to trust what it was capable of, which turned out to be pretty much everything the old one was.

I stopped wondering whether I could do the hike or make the climb. Yes, I still have days when I get in my head, when I’m breathing extra hard or it’s taking me longer than I’m expecting it to, and I start going into negative self-talk—if you were just thinner, you wouldn’t be struggling as much—but I can usually work my way out of it.

What still surprises me is how much where I’m at influences how I feel about myself.

I still have scars from Kaanapali.

I arrived on Maui with almost a year of intuitive eating under my belt. I honestly thought I’d made it through the worst of the body image stuff (ha!). Then I found myself on a postcard-perfect stretch of sand lined with beautiful resorts and what felt like an endless parade of impossibly fit vacationers. Young families everywhere. Moms and dads chasing toddlers through the surf with the kind of bodies that looked like they’d been cast for a resort commercial.

For days, I trudged that beach feeling terrible in my body. It didn’t help that I’d packed a swimsuit that was too big and a swim shirt I didn’t feel like myself in. I searched for better options, but practically everything in the shops was made for bodies much smaller than mine. Every time I caught a glimpse of myself, I became more aware of what I was wearing than what I was there to see.

Then, on our last day before heading to Hana, my daughter and I were walking back along the beach when she admitted she’d been struggling with body image all week too.

“It’s like we’re surrounded by the most perfect people on the planet.”

My daughter has lived her entire life in a teeny body. And yet there she was, playing the very same comparison game. On the one hand it was comforting to hear I wasn’t totally out of my mind, we were in some kind of Twilight Zone for beautiful people, but it was also heartbreaking. I hated to hear my daughter was struggling because of it. It also just made no sense. How is it that we can fit the thin ideal and still feel like complete shit about ourselves?

That’s when it clicked. Sometimes it has nothing to do with our actual bodies. My guess is it has nothing to do with our actual bodies most of the time. Certainly not in this instance.

It wasn’t like our bodies had changed as soon as we landed in Kaanapali. But somehow that shift in scenery had the power to summon our inner body demons.

Here’s what I know now: Body image is fluid. Relational. It’s less about how our bodies actually are and more about how we feel in them. And those feelings are shaped by the people around us and the places we inhabit. At home, we’re largely in our routines, but when we travel, it’s like taking a magnifying glass to ourselves and everyone we encounter. Sometimes we feel welcomed; sometimes we feel more exposed.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a pattern. I feel most at home in my body in places where there’s more diversity—not just in body size, but in age, race, ability. Places where Western beauty standards don’t seem quite so entrenched.

Even in places where I’m often the largest woman around me, if the culture feels less preoccupied with appearance and more grounded in everyday living, I feel more at ease than I do in destinations where everyone seems to be there to see and be seen. I’m not knocking every pool deck in the latest “it” destination, but these are often the places where I expect to be triggered.

National parks. Small towns. Hiking trails. Places where everyone is moving their bodies instead of looking at them. These are the places I feel most at home in my body.

I still have moments when I can get in my head. A wrong day, an ill-fitting outfit, feeling fat or playing too much of the comparison game, and I can still get down on myself. But nature has a way of pulling me out of my head and back into my senses. I take in all the shades of green, hear the leaves shimmering in the breeze and feel the temperature of the air on my skin. My body stops being something to critique and instead something that helps me experience.

Movement is also healing. Hiking through a forest, climbing to a gorgeous waterfall, or swimming through swift water reminds me what my body is for. When I’m moving, I’m rarely thinking about how I look and instead focusing on what my body is allowing me to do.

These days, when body image flares up on a trip, I don’t immediately assume I’ve failed recovery. I get curious instead. What is it about this place that’s making comparison feel so loud? What would help me reconnect with myself instead of spinning out?

I’ve lived through enough of these moments now to know there’s nothing wrong with me when they show up. In a culture that’s constantly pressuring us to improve our bodies, they’re an understandable response. And they don’t last.

Now it’s your turn.

Have you noticed certain places make you feel more at home in your body than others? Maybe it’s a city. A beach. A hiking trail. Or maybe there’s a place that always seems to stir up comparison, no matter how good you’ve been feeling before you arrived.

What kinds of places help you breathe easier in your body, and which ones make body image feel louder?

I’d love to hear your take.