Gretchen Holmes shares how she discovered the importance of self-love and self-compassion during her weight loss journey.
Gretchen Holmes was 57 years old and a three-time cancer survivor when she learned that she had diabetes in 2021. She knew that making changes to her eating habits and weight would be an important part of managing the condition. Losing weight when you have overweight or obesity can help lower blood sugar levels, as well as blood pressure and cholesterol.
“I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life. I grew up overweight and became an obese adult. I tried to lose weight a hundred times,” Gretchen told Healthline. “My doctor had said, ‘how can I help you?’ and I wasn’t ready to really talk about it then. But when I got my diabetes diagnosis, that was it. This mind shift happened.”
Gretchen’s younger brother had developed diabetes years before and was living with complications of the condition. She was afraid that diabetes would affect her in similar ways if she didn’t take steps to manage it.
After her initial feelings of fear, she found herself buoyed by hope.
She realized that she had time to make changes.
“All the other times I had tried to lose weight, I did it from a place of feeling sorry for myself, of punishment, of anger, of fear — and you can’t sustain that,” she said. “This time, I went at it from a place of hope: This is a gift. I have time. Use it wisely.”
Healthline spoke with Gretchen to learn more about her weight loss experiences. Read on to learn what she had to say.
After receiving the diabetes diagnosis, Gretchen signed up for Weight Watchers and began to track the foods she ate. This helped her develop a more intentional approach to eating and portion control. “So much eating I was doing was mindless,” she said.
Along with her new food-tracking habits, she also focused on changing her mindset.
“Anything we want to change starts with how we talk to ourselves and the self-limiting beliefs that we have,” she said. “Intellectually, we know that self-worth shouldn’t be tied to a number on a scale — but it’s really hard for many of us to understand that we’re worthy as we are.”
Gretchen said we can’t wait until we reach a certain size before we feel worthy of love and respect. Instead, she has focused on cultivating self-worth at whatever point she is at and encourages others to do the same. She’s found this shift in attitude has made it easier to pursue her health goals and make changes that matter to her.
“I have come around to believing that the way to good health is to love yourself harder,” she said. “It completely changed my mindset from this place of anger and punishment to, ‘You deserve to live healthfully.‘”
Approaching weight management as an act of self-love and self-care has helped Gretchen manage the process with more patience, self-compassion, and even joy. The time and effort she spends preparing nutritious food feel very meaningful now.
“I really enjoy preparing my meals. It became this ritual that was very visible to me of how I was taking care of myself,” she said. “It reinforced that I was worth it. I was worth taking time out of my schedule, and it didn’t matter to me if anybody else ate what I was preparing. I was doing this for me.”
She also found she was more willing to advocate for her needs and goals, for example, by suggesting a change in restaurants when she was eating out with friends.
“I realized that my entire life, I had put more effort and energy into helping other people achieve their goals than I had ever put into my own because I didn’t think I was worth it,” she said.
“I didn’t think I was worthy of saying: ‘I’d rather not eat at this restaurant because they don’t have choices that I’m comfortable with. Let’s try to find a different option.’ I would never have said before.”
People may eat more calories than their body needs for several reasons. In her case, Gretchen came to recognize the role that “emotional eating” had been playing in her relationship with food.
“I came from an alcoholic home, which is probably where I got my eating habits from — you can only feel so scared or uncertain or anxious before you have to make yourself feel better, and I self-soothe with food,” she explained. “If I’m self-soothing with food, there’s something I’m avoiding, or uncomfortable with, or upset about.”
Gretchen began to see a therapist who helped her recognize and work through feelings of anger, guilt, and grief that she’d been carrying around with her.
She also developed other strategies for managing difficult emotions or experiences. Some examples include going for walks or talking through her feelings with her husband.
“My first instinct when I get upset is still to get something to eat because that pathway in my brain is pretty well dug,” she said. “But at least now I can say: ‘Gretchen, you’re not hungry, you’re upset. What’s going on?’”
Gretchen’s weight has fluctuated since she started her weight loss journey, and when she gains weight, she feels familiar feelings of self-doubt and shame creep in.
“It’s a difficult cycle to get out of. We beat ourselves up, we feel bad, we feel like we’ve let ourselves down, and the world is reinforcing all that,” she said. “People feel very comfortable commenting on weight. A lot of people think that pointing it out, often in very negative, nasty, hurtful ways, is going to motivate us to do something — but it makes us feel worse, and when we feel worse, we often eat.”
This perspective is backed by research on weight bias and stigma. A
People with obesity may encounter weight bias or stigma from healthcare professionals, as well as from other community members.
“Many of us have had negative encounters going through the healthcare system. We go in for a cold, we go in for a sprained ankle, and everything becomes about our weight, which doesn’t help,” Gretchen said. “They can’t shame me into doing something. I can’t shame me into doing something. I need a partner.”
“I think that healthcare providers can be our partners in this, but all I ask is that they not do any additional damage,” she continued. “When I got my diabetes diagnosis, I had one of the most amazing family medicine providers I’ve ever dealt with. He was patient, he was kind, he was compassionate, and at no point did I ever feel judged.”
Gretchen emphasized the importance of self-compassion for managing weight bias, weight stigma, and the frustrations that can arise during a weight loss or weight management journey.
“When my weight is up, my instinct is to disappear and hide. My instinct is to say to myself: ‘What’s your problem? I can’t believe you let yourself go up a size!’ It’s so easy to fall back into those negative patterns,” she said.
“Then I stop myself and say, ‘Now listen, something’s going on, so let’s treat yourself with the compassion that you’d treat a friend,’” she continued.
Treating herself with compassion helps her address the challenges she’s facing while staying motivated in the face of setbacks or disappointments. She believes such challenges are part of any person’s story — no matter what goals they’re pursuing.
“We all love transformational stories, where you have the before picture and the after picture. We don’t tend to focus as much on the in-between work because it’s really hard,” she explained.
“But when all we see is the happy stuff, then when people struggle, they feel like they’re failing. So let’s be really honest about some of the challenges that we have and put the focus where it needs to be, on loving ourselves harder,” she said.
Gretchen Holmes, PhD, serves as the Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education and DIO for Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. She is also a motivational speaker, author of the book, The Work in Between: A Memoir About Stepping Out of My Shadows, and host of the podcast, The Work in Between, which focuses on the behaviors and actions needed to achieve our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health goals.