Body and Soul
After using the past year to reassess, refocus and take up running, Meg Honigmann finally learns to love herself
There was a time when my body seemed so unlike my own that I’d move an arm or a leg and feel nothing as I watched it slowly slice through the air; when I would glance at the reflection of a figure in a shop window and realise to my shock that the unrecognisable shadow was actually me.
Like many other women, my relationship with my body, starting from my early teens, has never good. But it was after a breakup a few years ago that my self-worth truly plummeted. The distance between my mind and body grew, and so did I, gaining weight rapidly over six months. At first, it felt like protection from getting hurt again, a barrier to the outside world. Then, tiny battle wounds started to appear on my body, like the red lightning of a stretch mark on my lower stomach—I was attacking myself from the inside out. Where once I had never thought about my appearance, it now consumed me.
No one said anything explicit and I certainly never spoke about it. I just started buying clothes that hid me more and more. At the height of summer, I’d wear large black blazers and every time someone said I must be boiling, I’d feel sick, as though they were trying to expose my not-so-secret weight gain.
By February of last year, I had reached breaking point —how I felt and moved took up every waking thought. So when the world suddenly went into lockdown, I made a pact with myself to change, albeit without any optimism that I had the mental or physical strength to follow through. I printed for myself an ambitious chart lined with neat rows of numbers from one to 50: the amount of weight I wanted to lose. I found that keeping a tally helped me to focus and stay excited for what lay ahead. The world had ground to a halt, but I felt as though I was still moving—forward, closer to where I wanted to be. Losing weight may have been my surface aim, but reconnecting with my body was what underpinned every choice I made. Of course, I ate carefully—no alcohol, no sugar (which sounds obvious, but is in practice so much harder)—but most importantly, I started running every single day, even when the cold numbed my hands and each icy breath in my chest made my mouth taste metallic. I started small, covering just one or two kilometres, and gradually increased this to five and then eight. Each day, it got a tiny bit easier—I ran with strength, and I ran for all the versions of my past self, who I wished had run sooner.
To my complete surprise, this routine became a joy— something I would actively look forward to. I loved that feeling of both being totally unaware of my body as it moved so fast it almost felt like flying, and the mental space it freed up, the stresses of the day left by the roadside as I whizzed by.
As the months wore on, the landscape changed along with my body. The tiny woodland paths by the river near my parents’ house came to life—stems unfurling and pollen hanging in the air like glitter. The days stretched longer too, and the air grew warmer, the hedges turning green and the sunlight becoming brighter. During that time, I saw almost no one except my family and a handful of close friends. The strangest thing about losing weight is that you barely notice it each day, but every once in a while, you stop and really look at the space you inhabit, the body you live inside.
My own journey may have involved weight loss, but it was never about being thin; rather, I needed to learn how to accept myself. I now appreciate that softness is good—that the way the skin curves and dapples is a sign of strength, not weakness. My body feels like mine once more and while I sadly don’t think this means I’ll never be scathing about it again, I do now look after it, knowing how far it has come and what we’ve achieved together. Over the past year, we’ve all had to confront
ourselves in new ways, slow down and reflect as our lives changed. And though I’ve felt the distance—as we all have— between me and those I so desperately want to hug and kiss and hold, I’ve never felt closer to myself.