When My Body Shrinks but My Pain Grows
Am Not Losing Weight, I Am Losing Pieces of Myself
Fibromyalgia and losing weight is not a glow up.
It is not discipline.
It is not a secret routine I want to share.
People catch me on my best days.
The days where my face doesn’t show the war.
They say, “You look so good, what are you doing?”
And I swallow the truth and answer,
“I’m trying my best.”
What I don’t say is that my nights are loud with pain.
That sleep slips through my fingers while my joints scream.
That some mornings my body feels like it belongs to someone twice my age
and someone else entirely.
They know my diagnosis.
They know my symptoms.
And still, they expect more of me.
As if knowing cancels out suffering.
As if invisible pain should still perform.
In less than three months, my body disappeared in ways I never asked for.
The scale became an enemy,
a reminder that sickness is applauded when it looks like thinness.
I would choose soft and healthy over skinny and sick every time.
But healthy people don’t understand grieving a body
while being told you look “better.”
This weight loss was not intentional.
No medication.
No miracle plan.
Just a nervous system in survival mode.
Just a body burning through itself trying to stay alive.
I write everything down.
Symptoms. Changes. Patterns.
Because when no one can see your pain,
you learn to witness yourself.
Eating is a battle I fight daily.
Food is not comfort, it’s negotiation.
There are so few things my body allows
and every meal comes with consequences.
Nourishment shouldn’t feel like a gamble,
but here I am, rolling the dice anyway.
Exercise is supposed to help.
For me, it often hurts.
Flares arrive uninvited, unapologetic.
Still, I stretch.
Morning and night.
Gentle yoga, slow breaths.
My body is flexible, yes,
but flexibility does not mean safe.
One wrong position,
and my rib pressed into my hip,
turning my skin blue.
Even stillness leaves marks.
This is fibromyalgia.
Quiet. Relentless.
A thousand small losses no one claps for.
It’s choosing rest and being judged for it.
It’s mourning who you were
while learning how to survive as who you are now.
So when they say I look good,
I remind myself that looking okay
is not the same as being okay.
Trying my best looks like this.
And this is enough.
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