This is a really beautiful share. My own journey with my body was that I grew up in environments where thick was celebrated so I never had the desire to be skinny and happened to live in a household where we were a struggling little family with two full-time hard-working, exhausted parents and two younger brothers that needed more food than I did so I rarely ate leftovers of the boxed meal dinners or Taco Bell payday nights out that were our weekly traditions so I stayed fairly “healthy” in weight but definitely had no connection to real food or exercise for health. When I became an adult and started supporting myself I went crazy eating any and everything. The gym and movement were sloppy and sporadic because it wasn’t a base of my social group especially my relationship of my 20s where we were young and immature leading to toxicity but food was the spot of connection. We ate. A lot. And I gained. A lot. After that relationship ended, I would have ups and downs in the moments of discipline but food chatter ALWAYS won-out. It was the dopamine offering that made me feel safe inside of chaos. In my mid-40s I was blessed to enter the high protein/low carb arena and, for the first time, I was able to impact my inflammation quickly and while feeling full. And it felt so good. 55 pounds down with ease in a year and a half and within a community where dopamine hits were fed as all my closest friends did it together. And I was able to eat as much as I wanted but in a specific way? Lean, lean, balanced protein. It was such a powerful experience. And then something shifted in the midst of COVID and suddenly weight gain kept coming and coming alongside a ton of other symptoms. Perimenopause had arrived, but I also know now that my body didn't have the capacity to fully heal from having COVID, so pile these on top of each other and I was the perfect storm for collapse. Confused AF. Scared AF. Exhausted AF. I felt trapped with no way out and the support I was accessing was adding to the collapse because it just wasn't the place I was meant to get support.