Have you ever found an old piece of clothing, slipped it on, and felt a wave of sadness when it no longer fit? That’s body grief—the longing for a past version of yourself and the struggle to accept where you are now. In this episode, I sit down with Body Peace coach Nina Manolson to unpack why these moments hit so hard and how to navigate them with more kindness and less self-judgment.

We dive into the emotional weight of body changes, why comparison keeps us stuck, and how shifting from body shame to body peace is a practice—not a destination. Nina shares powerful insights (and a beautiful poem) to help you stop fighting your body and start feeling at home in it, no matter your size or stage of life. If you’ve ever wrestled with body image in midlife, this conversation is for you.

Connect with Nina
The Website: https://ninamanolson.com/
Instagram: @ninamanolson
✍🏽 Grab the Body Peace Journal

Links Mentioned:

EP 47: Why Changing Your Body Isn't the Body Image Fix You're Looking For with Kristina Bruce

EP 134: What Every Woman Needs to Know About Body Image in Midlife with Summer Innanen

EP 135: How to Turn Your Body Image Inside Out with Deb Schachtner & Whitney Otto

---

TRANSCRIPT

Jenn Salib Huber: 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I'm your host, Dr Jenn Salib-Huber. I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor, and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules. Come to my table, listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you. Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife. And if you're looking for more information about menopause, nutrition and intuitive eating, check out the Midlife Feast Community, my monthly membership that combines my no-nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community, so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife.

Jenn Salib Huber: 0:51

Come with me as I dig into the back of my closet and find an old jean jacket Not just any old jean jacket the jean jacket that I wore for years in my 20s and early 30s, that I loved. It was my go-to. I always felt like it fit just right, no matter what I was wearing, no matter the time of year even. But this time, when I find it buried in a box and pull it out to try it on, it doesn't even come close to fitting and in that moment I get swept into the trap door that is grieving for my younger body, the body that I used to have, that fit this jean jacket perfectly. And so, even though seconds before I was probably feeling okay in my body, that moment, that experience catapulted me into what we call body grief.

Jenn Salib Huber: 1:43

So if you can relate to that and I'm sure there are lots of you who can you will really enjoy this conversation with Nina Manelson, who is a body piece and really body grief and just body talk expert and coach. Nina and I have, you know, kind of conversed on Instagram over the years a few times and I was thrilled when she accepted my invitation to dig a little bit deeper into body grief what it is, what it isn't and what you can do about it in those moments. So what do you do when that wave of grief washes over you? We have lots of examples talking about reunions and coats that don't fit and pictures, and so definitely give this one a listen. I think that it will bring you a lot of peace. Welcome, nina, to the Midlife Feast.

Nina Manolson: 2:32

Jen, thank you, it's a delight to be here with you.

Jenn Salib Huber: 2:36

This is going to be a really warm and cozy conversation. Before we started recording, we were talking about kids and universities and our love of Canada and all that kind of stuff, and I know that what we're going to be talking about is going to be relatable to everyone, which is body grief. But before we get into that, please introduce yourself to the audience.

Why Midlife Brings a New Kind of Body Grief (And How to Handle It)

Nina Manolson: 3:00

So my name is Nina Manelson and I have worked with women and their relationship with their body for about 30 years and I started because I was an expert in body hate. So my work is called Body Peace, but it started really out of body hate because that's where I was personally. I was deep in the. My body's not okay. I need to fix it, I need to manage it, I need to turn myself into a pretzel and so that I have this culturally idealized version of beauty that shows up as my body. So I came from a place of pain with my body and my work started actually because I was a body worker. I was a massage therapist. I had my hands on women's bodies all day for years and I heard women's body stories and I heard them talk about their body grief. I heard them talk about their journey, their body story, and from that I became a therapist and then from that I went into nutrition and from that got into this work of really the relationship we have with our body.

Jenn Salib Huber: 4:15

Wow, that must have been really interesting being on the other side of the table, as it were, but having your hands on people's bodies and feeling their bodies as they're talking about their story, because it is an emotional experience.

Nina Manolson: 4:32

It is a very emotional experience. There's a lot of levels to it, right, because there's the emotional experience of here's somebody who's been through a journey, and the grief that's held, the anger that's held, the injury that's held, the trauma that's held right, all the feelings that are held in the body, and how often we cope with that by shutting the whole thing down. So I have somebody, I know her still and she often, whenever she sees me, she says Do you remember a gazillion years ago when you put your hands on my body and you said, so, what do you feel? And I said what do you mean? And then she said you said to me like Well, what do you feel in your body? And she was like I'm not sure what you mean. I feel your hands on my shoulder. That's where I started. I feel your hands on my shoulder, that's where I started.

Nina Manolson: 5:29

Like what body? How could I be in this body? There was too much pain in this body. There was too much loss in this body. It was much easier. She was brilliant, you know, very like high achiever in the world. She had chosen to just live neck up and so her journey in the work that we did together was really, how do I be in my body, how do I feel into my body, how do I have a conversation with my body? How do I make space for all these feelings and desires and experiences? It's a lot to be a human.

Jenn Salib Huber: 6:02

It's a lot to be a human, and it's a lot to be a human in this day and age. Yeah, you know, because my audience and I'm in midlife, but you know we're midlifers and so you know people. I'd say somewhere anyone north of 40 can really relate to having been immersed in diet culture, immersed in the belief that your body has to or should look a certain way and that there's a moral obligation to keep trying, even if diets aren't working. Even if you're giving 110%, it's not working. It's maybe even hurting you but you should keep trying.

Acceptance vs. Resignation: The Key to Healing Body Image Struggles

Jenn Salib Huber: 6:44

So often where I meet people is in this messy middle of. I know diets don't work and I don't want to be dieting anymore, and yet I also don't know what else to do. And what I have observed and what I often point out to people is that they're I don't want to say you're focused on the wrong thing, but their version of acceptance is actually more like resignation.

So they're trying to learn to be okay with hating their body, and that's never going to be possible because we don't like uncomfortable feelings, and so your body is always going to say run away from that, do whatever you can, do not sit in this place of hating your body. But acceptance gets held back because of the quicksand that I well, I call that quicksand grief of grieving the body that you have been trying to find your way, to find your way back to, or even just the grief of the memory of how you felt in a smaller body.

Jenn Salib Huber: 7:52

And until we can move past that, any real work of acceptance or any real undieting weight, neutral, intuitive eating work is going to be much harder. So that's why I wanted to talk to you today, because you do so much around grief.

Why Body Grief Never Fully Goes Away—And That’s Okay

Nina Manolson: 8:10

Yeah, and I actually I want to put on the table sort of an old way that we used to think about grief. So Kubler-Ross, amazing woman who created this model around grief, talked about denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Right, these were the stages of grief, and what we have found over the last 10-20 years is that's not actually how it works. We don't actually go through stages, we don't actually get to this other side. What we have to do instead is learn how to walk with grief. This idea that we get through something, I think is another expectation that our culture has. That is unrealistic.

That, oh my gosh. And now I feel a loss again, because you know it was COVID and my body changed because in midlife and my waist has changed because I tripped on the ice and I sprained my ankle, and my body's mobility has changed, and that we're supposed to get to this place of like. Okay, I'm okay with that, but really every time the weather goes a little funny and my ankle gets a little achy, I'm like bummer.

Jenn Salib Huber: 9:31

Really.

Nina Manolson: 9:32

I'm still feeling that little ache that shows up. Right, I still wear a different size. That idea that we're just supposed to leap into or evolve into or do enough heavy digging with our grief, that suddenly we're at acceptance, I think, is another expectation that our society puts on us. That is unrealistic, and what's much more powerful than that is to actually learn how to walk with grief. How do we do life with grief? And I want you to think about a really terrible example, a heartbreaking example a mother who loses a child. They don't get over it.

No one expects them to get over it. We don't. You know, it's been a while. Just get used to it. This is the new normal. They're always carrying their child, they're always thinking of their child and there are some days where it's very hard, right. There's days where it's their birthday, it's a family holiday, right, they drive by their school and suddenly the grief is there.

Nina Manolson: 10:46

So a more powerful metaphor or analogy that I love to think about it's a visual analogy is this grief in a box? Lauren Herschel wrote about this and she talks about think of a box. This is our life. Is the box right and there's a button, there's like a red button in the box and in the beginning the grief is big right, oh my gosh, I just went through midlife. Everything's changed. My sleep is wonky, my skin is different, my weight is different, I just. What is going on? This is too hard to cope right.

Nina Manolson: 11:28

And it's a big ball in the middle of the box and it keeps pressing on that red button, going ouch, ouch, ouch. Everywhere you turn, there's a mirror. Ouch, you go shopping for new clothes. Ouch, right, maybe years go by and you're like, oh, you know, not such a big deal. But suddenly, and so the ball shrinks in the box. It doesn't press on that ball, that button, the pain button, as often. But suddenly you're in the attic and you find some really cute coat you had when you were 30. You're like, oh my gosh, I forgot about that coat. I love that coat, I'm gonna put that coat on. You put that coat on. It doesn't even fit around your rib cage. You're like, what the heck? And suddenly the ball of grief has hit the button again.

Jenn Salib Huber: 12:16

Yeah, that's a really great way of thinking about it.

The Many Bodies We’ve Had: Embracing Change Instead of Fighting It

Nina Manolson: 12:20

So, shifting from this idea that we're supposed to evolve through and process through grief and get to the other side, ta-da, I have done it. It's a perfect gymnast. Landing and I never go back into feeling the losses that have happened in my body is unrealistic and it's not human right. It's not being in the flow of every day versus here's this ball and sometimes it hits. I love that. I love analogies.

Jenn Salib Huber: 12:52

Anybody who listens to the it hits. I love that. I love analogies. Anybody who listens to the podcast knows that I love analogies because visualizing that is so relatable. It does really help us to see that, and especially the example of the coat, because I think that's happened to everyone, where you're digging things out and you find something that you love and you expect it to feel the same way. Yeah, and it's that feeling of it, doesn't? That makes us feel like we've done something wrong.

Nina Manolson: 13:23

Yeah and Jen, part of what goes on in all of this grief, especially around our body, is the fact that we do have different bodies, that we change. That. Body change is a really normal part of being a human being. And if I may, if it's okay with you, I write body piece poems. I write about women's relationships with their bodies, and there's one poem that I would love to share. That's really about this concept that our bodies are always changing. All right, so I wrote this.

Nina Manolson: 13:57

It was right after COVID, when everybody was coming to me and going do something, my COVID body. I can't stand it. Do something about this, right? So this is called my COVID Body. I've had so many. My COVID body padded for survival. My summer body, strong from swimming. My mom stretched from growing a person. My wedding body, small from photo fear. My injured body, mobile from pain. My surgery body scarred from fighting. My winter body, soft from hibernating. My 20s body, fearless in motion. My teen body, heavy with shame. Every day a different body adapting to this one precious life. How many bodies have you had?

Jenn Salib Huber: 14:57

Oh my gosh, I have goosebumps. That was beautiful and so true. How many bodies have we had and how many more will we have, Hopefully right.

Nina Manolson: 15:07

Hopefully that's an important thing. Where we go, I want to have the body that I had. Well, you did and you will, and, if you're very lucky, you will have many more.

How to Be Present in Your Body Instead of Longing for the Past

Jenn Salib Huber: 15:20

Yeah, that's, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I was gonna say. What I try and remind people and even myself sometimes, when we're stuck in looking back is remind people and even myself sometimes, when we're stuck in looking back is don't forget to give the future as much time as you give the past.

Jenn Salib Huber: 15:40

And so if you're always thinking, oh, I wish that I could wear this because I wore it then, or I wish I looked like, then really trying to counter that as like a counterbalance, right, Okay. Well, what about the future? What do you want in the future? Not so much. What can I try and get back? Because we can't get it back?

Nina Manolson: 16:04

Yeah, I've coined a phrase that I call being body current, and what happens is in our culture as women. Generally I don't know a lot, I only work with women, so I don't know a lot about men and body image, but I know a lot about women and body image. So what happens for women is we look back right, how I wish I was, and we look forward. I want to fit into that dress for the wedding I am going to, a reunion. I want to fit into the thing that I wore. So we're either in a past body or a future body. What's most powerful in terms of having us be in connection with our body and her and care for her is being in our current body. So I call it being body current and it's a practice, right? Just like I always talk about body peace is a practice.

Nina Manolson: 16:57

Being current in our body is a practice because culturally we're pulled both ways. So what it requires is wait a second. What's happening in this moment for me? What is this body saying right now? What's happening in my current experience and how can I support myself best?

And being body current takes like. It requires us to invite ourselves into this moment, because when we're in our current body, we are much kinder to ourselves. When we're in our past body, we get critical. When we're in our future body we get aspirational and not necessarily realistic and a bit pressureful, and when we're body current we actually can bring our compassion to the table. Oh, I love that.

Triggers & Body Grief: How to Handle Clothing, Photos, and Reunions

Jenn Salib Huber: 17:49

It's very much like it's a form of mindfulness, really, and being present in the here and now my body today how can I?

Jenn Salib Huber: 17:57

take care of my body today yeah, yeah so, for even when people are working on that though, you know, and and a lot of the people who are listening are in some stage of working on that there are these trap doors that just sweep us back into grief. Old photos, clothing, seeing reunions are a big one, and in the moment, how do we recover from those really, really big waves of grief that can come at different times?

Nina Manolson: 18:31

Yeah, yeah, so your question had the answer in it, right, it's a big wave, it's a really big wave, and what do we want to do? We actually want to ride that wave. So there was a wonderful woman. I lived for many years in an intentional community called Kripalu in the 90s, and there was a wonderful woman who lived there, sandra Shear, who's no longer alive, and I just like saying her name because she was such a contribution in so many ways and she created a sort of a way of thinking about how do you ride these waves, how do you ride these big waves of feelings, how do you be in these moments where it's like whoa, hold on.

Maybe I need to I don't know go back on some diet. Maybe I should get surgery. Maybe I should write these big waves that hit us, the feel like, nope, I'm doing it all wrong and I should really switch gears and start being really aggressive with myself. And she came up with an acronym. It's a very bad acronym but it really works BRFWA breathe, relax, feel, watch and allow.

Nina Manolson: 19:38

So I get this invitation to a reunion and I go oh gosh, how, what? But I'm heavier. What am I going to wear? How's this going to work. Is she going to be the same size? Am I going to compare myself to her? How's it like?

Nina Manolson: 19:55

The comparison is flying high, right, it just gets to be this stressful experience. So we breathe and we notice, wow, there's a lot going on. And instead of tightening around that, we allow, right, breathe, relax and we feel it. Relax and we feel it. Oh, this is stressful for me. We allow it, breathe, relax, feel, watch and allow. We just let it be there and name it right. That's what feeling it is.

Nina Manolson: 20:30

Wow, I am really scared. I'm scared people aren't going to like me anymore. I'm scared I'm going to be judged. I'm scared, I'm not enough.

Right, really feel it. All of that breathing, relax, feel, watch and allow is all about being into the soup of that wave of grief and letting us be there, because when we jump over it, we get into this aggressive experience with ourselves where we've taken a big bunch of feelings, this giant wave. It's like taking a whole tsunami and going, ah, no, thanks, let's just put that in the closet there and I'm going to close that door and that door is going to definitely hold that tsunami in, right. And then everybody comes home from dinner and you're making dinner and somebody says something and suddenly the tsunami and you're like really irritable and you don't know why. Well, the tsunami's been sitting in the closet, waiting for any moment to come pouring back out. So we want to make space for the waves.

Jenn Salib Huber: 21:38

I love that and that really ties in with emotional regulation right, absolutely, in that if you're just trying to keep the emotions out, it's going to take a lot of energy to maintain that and eventually you're going to lose that fight right, yeah. Yeah.

Nina Manolson: 21:57

My favorite analogy for emotional regulation is the beach ball one right. I got a nice floaty beach ball right and constantly trying to keep it under the water. It doesn't work. It just keeps popping up somewhere, so we have to be with it.

Toxic Comparison: Breaking Free from the “Am I Bigger Than Her?” Mindset

Jenn Salib Huber: 22:13

That's some really great, great analogies and great advice. What else would you like people to know about body peace and body grief? And because I feel like body talk is happening more, which I think is good, and we're not just talking about body positivity, we're talking about body neutrality more, and body acceptance and body appreciation. What is body peace?

Nina Manolson: 22:40

Such a love that body peace is feeling like you are at home in your body. And it doesn't mean I'm like ooey gooey in love, everything about my body I love. It's about being with, being connected, it's having the conversation, it's being in a positive, caring, supportive, nourishing, compassionate, current, actual relationship. Versus the like yay, versus the like yay, like I. This is just my personal, you know. Pet peeve around the body positivity movement is, I just think it's aspirational and the body love movement it's aspirational.

We're human. We don't wake up every morning going. I feel positive. Every morning. I love my body. Any of us who have been in any partnered relationship or had a kid or a pet, any relationship, we know that not every moment is oh, it's the best right. We have natural waves in our relationship and so body peace is being able to navigate that. How do you navigate a real relationship? You have tools, you have relationship tools, and so that's what you, that's what we need. And, jen, one other thing I want to share, because I just can't get it out of my mind, is when we were talking about comparison right In reunions.

Nina Manolson: 24:11

And there's one other poem that I'm wondering if I can share with you because I think it'll, it'll relate. It's called Am I Bigger Than Her? Yeah, am I bigger than her? I asked my husband as a woman passes on the street. Am I bigger than her? I asked myself as I walk into the room, measuring up all the women Am I bigger than her? I look at a picture of younger me, a memory on Facebook from years ago. Am I bigger than her, I'm asking.

Am I less attractive, less powerful, less likable, less worthy than her? Comparing myself to her size and her size and her size? If I'm bigger than her and her size and her size, if I'm bigger than her, then I'm less than her. If I'm smaller than her, then I'm more than her and her size and her size and her size. My self-worth going up and down with each comparison, scoring points in a game against myself. There's always someone bigger and always someone smaller. There's no winning this game. It's just reducing women to their size. Aren't we bigger than that?

Jenn Salib Huber: 25:27

Oh, that's beautiful.

Nina Manolson: 25:30

You write beautiful poetry, thank you for sharing that with me. Thank you too. I thought of that one because, you know, when we go back and we see that picture on Facebook, right, there's grief and we want to be in that wave, but we also want to hold the perspective that that's comparison. Part woven into the grief is comparison with ourselves, and so we have to look at what's the toxicity comparison in our system.

Jenn Salib Huber: 26:02

Yeah, and it is toxic comparison. You know, no good ever comes of it right? Nobody wins.

Nina Manolson: 26:10

No, yeah, compare and despair.

Jenn Salib Huber: 26:14

Yeah, it's a hard thing to understand and I love that you, I love that you introduced us to that poem and and hopefully the listeners will all leave with with the belief that we are bigger than that, that we don't have to compare ourselves. Nina, thank you so much for this conversation. It has been, it has been beautiful and I've really enjoyed it. But I have one last question for you what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife?

The Missing Ingredient in Midlife: Why Pleasure Matters

Nina Manolson: 26:49

Pleasure.

Jenn Salib Huber: 26:51

Pleasure. I love that. It's a whole other podcast.

Nina Manolson: 26:55

I love that yeah.

Jenn Salib Huber: 26:56

That's a whole other podcast, so believe it or not. So this is this is going to be close to, I think, 140. You'll be. I think around that Episode two was called is pleasure, the missing ingredient in midlife. Well, there you go. So I think it is has been a theme, and I agree that it's a missing ingredient and it's one that we need more of. So where can people learn about you and learn more about the body piece method and what you do?

Nina Manolson: 27:27

Yeah. So first of all, Jen, thank you so much for having me. It's so fun to talk to you. Where you can find me is NinaMantelsoncom or BodyPeaceWithNnina all one wordcom, and there's two really valuable resources there. One, and they're both free One is a practicing body piece journal and in it has some of my body piece poems and 20 questions that I think are important as we engage in our relationship with our body, and the other is a body piece master class that really gets into the different kinds of relationships that most women have with their body and the missing relationships that most women never learned about.

How to Cultivate Body Peace: Resources & Final Takeaways 

Jenn Salib Huber: 28:06

Amazing. Thank you so much. We'll have all those links in the show notes too. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast. For more non-diet, health, hormone and general midlife support, click the link in the show notes to learn how you can work and learn from me, and if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please consider leaving a review or subscribing, because it helps other women just like you find us and feel supported in midlife. You.