Trigger Warning: This conversation contains discussion of eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and weight loss drugs. There is a lot of nuance in our conversation around cultural conditioning of weight gain stigma and the stigma of weight loss drugs. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.
Everyone please welcome my dear friend and fellow actor Kacie Patricia to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Kacie and I met at Crash Acting and instantly hit it off. She’s an insanely talented actor, a sweet angel of a human being, and I can’t wait for you to hear her story.
In our conversation, Kacie opens up about her body image story and how seeking weight loss drugs pulled her out of a toxic, all-or-nothing body image cycle. Her vulnerability to share about her journey was so brave, and I feel so grateful to have a space where my guests feel safe enough to open up about some really tough topics. Kacie walked us through her story from when she was young until now. She shares about how her all-or-nothing mentality sabotaged how she’s previously tried to care for her body, and she opens up about how her past silent suffering, shame cycles, and how her journey of seeking weight loss medication has forced her to open up and talk about her body image struggles.
Kacie’s vulnerability opened my eyes and my heart, and I hope hearing her story does the same for you.
“ All we can do is just keep talking about it and just trying to change it and giving ourselves safe spaces to talk to each other about it. Because it’s felt really, really, really healing for me, this conversation specifically, but just this past year in therapy and the journey that I've gone on. I healed a part of myself that I did not know needed to be healed, or I started to at least. We’re never fully healed. But those insecurities will always be there.”
- Kacie Patricia
Kacie Patricia: When I think about my body image, the word impossible comes up. I feel like I've had an impossible relationship with my body for literally as long as I can remember. I probably wanna say it started in middle school, even before. But when I think about it, it's interesting because I'm like, well, I never had anybody tell me that I was fat or looked different. It's society that makes you feel that way. It's like I was never told or felt a certain way, you know? I don't know. I'm trying to pinpoint in my mind the moment where I was like, “Oh, I don't feel good about myself,” or “I don't look like my friends,” or “I don't look like this person,” or “How do I look like this person?” and there really isn't a moment, but there’s obviously magazines and TV and all the girls that I looked up to as a kid and friends.
And so, when I think about when I was younger, some of the big moments that stand out were my mom would always look at herself in the mirror and grab her stomach or the sides of her body and be like, “Oh my god, I'm so fat. Oh my god, I'm so fat.” And I would see that and I never said anything. I never really said anything until I was older. But that was really detrimental to the way that I was thinking about myself as a tween.
Megan Gill: Like the witnessing of that over and over again.
Kacie Patricia: The witnessing of that.
Megan Gill: Of what it subconsciously does to you kind of thing?
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, exactly. And I remember my best friend in middle school had a really, really, really intense relationship with her body. And she would not eat for days, and she would go to the gym and run on the treadmill for hours and burn thousands of calories at a time. And she would go to these really, really extreme lengths for days at a time to try to achieve this body. And she always talked about how she thought she was so fat or she can't eat this today, or she can eat this next week or not today. And I just remember I personally never felt like I wanted to do those things to myself. But seeing how intense it got for her, I was like, “Oh my God. If she feels this way about herself, how should I be feeling about myself? Oh my God. Something is going on here.” But also we were kids, so it was just like we weren't thinking about it that deeply, you know? It was just kind of like, “This is intense, but, you know, we're in middle school, so.”
But yeah, it was really, really, really intense. And she was my closest friend from like seventh, eighth, ninth grade. And then I remember kind of realizing as we got older that she was just bigger boned, you know? Her body wasn't made to be so tiny, and she was working towards this body that she was never gonna be able to achieve most likely without starving herself and making herself sick. And it was really, really sad to see. Looking back, I haven't thought about this in like a really long time, actually. I hope she's doing well, and I hope that she's worked on that relationship and it's really, really sad to think about how intense she was feeling and these extreme lengths she was going to at such a young age. We were, like, 12, 13 years old. I think I remember telling my mom about it and my mom feeling really bad, but it definitely started making me think about myself more.
I remember she was just a little bit bigger than me. She was taller than me. She always had a flat stomach and a proportionate body. It was just like her legs were a little bit bigger and her shoulders were a little bit broader. She was just a little bit bigger. That was it. And I think I always was smaller, and maybe she thought she was trying to achieve the way I looked or our other friends looked, when it was just like never gonna happen for her. And it was just really, really, really sad to think that was happening at such a young age.
Kacie Patricia: But for me, I think the biggest issues for me have always been I’ve never had a flat stomach my entire life.
Megan Gill: Girl, can I relate with you on that?
Kacie Patricia: Never, and I've always thought, “Okay, there's something wrong with me. Everything else looks okay. But this is a part of me that I just cannot figure out.”
Megan Gill: Yeah. Right, “Why me? Why do I have this bump when all my friends –.” Ever since I was a kid, ever since I was a child I've always had it. It's always been with me, and looking at my friends’ stomachs and being like, “Well, wait. I don’t get it! The math isn’t mathing!”
Kacie Patricia: Yes. Right. The math isn't math thing at all. Yeah, now I'm thinking about things that I haven't thought about in a while that I guess I did go to some extreme lengths starting in, like, eighth grade, freshman year of high school.
I remember when this friend specifically, we were starting to talk to boys. It was when I had my first kiss that summer, and then all of a sudden we were like going to each other's lake houses and like wearing bikinis, but I didn't feel comfortable in a bikini, and I was like, “Okay, now I have to do something about this.” My body was starting to form and fill out, and then all of a sudden I wanted to look good for boys and whatever.
And I remember the summer going into freshman year of high school, I decided that I wasn't going to eat and that I was gonna come home off the bus and run, like, a mile before my parents got home, so they didn't know that I was doing it. For me, it was always silent suffering. It was like nobody could know that I felt this way about myself. That's literally how it's been up until this year of my life, to be honest. It's like nobody could know that I'm insecure about this. If I never talk about it, nobody will ever know. Nobody will ever think anything.
Megan Gill: And it'll just magically change and then that’s that.
Kacie Patricia: Exactly. Yeah, and in a way, the silent suffering was just a way of pretending it wasn't really there and not acknowledging it. And so, I didn't realize how much it was really affecting me until much later in life.
But yeah, I remember this one summer I was not eating and running when I got home from school, and then that was not working for me. I literally maybe did a couple days, and then I was like, “I can't do this anymore. This is not sustainable,” and then I would go right back to just regular life. And that was kind of a cycle that went on for the next five/ten years of my life. It was just like something would make me feel really bad about myself, and then that day I would decide, “Okay, I'm not gonna eat,” or “I'm going to eat just one thing, and then I'm gonna exercise so much, and I'm gonna do that for the next however long it takes, and if I just do that, then I'll be good. Then I’ll be good.”
Megan Gill: “Then I'll like my body, and I'll like the way I look, and I will be better and therefore worthy.” Like, all of those types of thoughts that pop up for you?
Kacie Patricia: Mm-hmm. Yes. “If I could just do this one thing, then everything would be better, and then I'll feel good about myself, and I won't have to worry about it,” thinking it was so simple. It was never sustainable for me. I never was able to commit to doing anything like that for longer than, like, a day or two. Yeah, never longer than that. And for that reason, I think I always told myself, “You're fine. You don't have an eating disorder. You don't have these things. Think about people who are starving themselves and making themselves throw up all the time. You've never done that, so you're just like everybody else.”
And so, I think I like sort of gaslit myself into thinking that this was just normal behavior and normal thoughts to have. And that it wasn't actually that bad, even though it was–
Megan Gill: That it wasn't actually affecting you in the ways that it actually was, yeah.
Kacie Patricia: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking because I wasn't going too extreme, so I couldn't keep up with it for more than a day, that it wasn't really that extreme for me.
Megan Gill: Right. That it wasn't an actual disordered eating pattern, ir that it wasn't deemed worthy of an actual diagnosis, per se?
Kacie Patricia: Yeah.
Megan Gill: I can relate with you on that as well. It wasn't until much later in life that I realized that I truly, really was struggling with some semblance of an eating disorder, and I never thought for one second – I just thought that it was, oh, I was dieting, and I was in control of what I was eating and how much I was exercising, and I was in control of my body.
Kacie Patricia:Right.
Megan Gill: And therefore this isn't not an eating disorder because I'm not purging or I'm not, for lack of a better term, starving myself. I'm not going to such extreme lengths, and therefore I don't have a problem.
Kacie Patricia: Exactly.
Megan Gill: But in reality it's wild how I feel like it's very downplayed societally, these like little tendencies that can really fuck a person up, coupled with seeing celebrities in magazines and the way women's bodies are spoken about on social media and in the media. It's like we're receiving all these messages and, yeah, I think it's so normalized that we are like, “Okay, this is fine. Everyone's doing it.” At least at that point in my life, it was kind of like that for me.
I didn't mean to jump in there, but it's like, oh, my god, I can very much relate with that. And I love the way that you said you gaslit yourself because same.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, yeah. Right, it felt like, “Well, I don't have anorexia or bulimia, so therefore I don't have an eating disorder.” And then just because I'm having these thoughts, you know, doesn't mean that I'm sick or have some sort of diagnosis. That's how it felt. It was like, “If I'm not doing these two things, then I'm good.”
Megan Gill: Right. I’m in the clear. I’m okay. Yeah.
Kacie Patricia: Right. But yeah, going back to what you're saying about magazines and shows and movies and music and everything that we see growing up, it's like, while I was never told, “You are bigger. You need to lose weight,” it was like I've never been told that by anybody in my life - not my mom, not my family, not my friends. I've never felt anybody has ever made a comment to me, that I know of, that's about my weight or how I look. It doesn't matter at all. It's society, the things that we're seeing when we grow up that shape our brains and how we think about ourselves that are doing the damage.
Megan Gill: Yeah, that piece right there, I'm sitting here going, “Thank goodness no one ever commented on your body in those ways.”
Kacie Patricia: Right. Imagine what that could have done on top of everything else if that had happened.
Megan Gill: Right. A lot of times people discount people in bigger bodies for having an eating disorder, when it's like, in reality, you can be in a bigger body and have an eating disorder. That is such a thing, and it's wild to think that anyone would ever discount that. And just with that piece of info being said, so many people of so many different body types from so many different backgrounds, so many people struggle with this because of society. And then, like you said, coupled on top of their own personal experiences socially, relationally, in educational systems, with whatever conditioning they've been fed and the messaging they've grown up hearing and continue to hear, it's just such a systemic issue. It's so, so deep and runs so deep that everyone – it's very interesting because I truly believe everyone has a body image story to tell.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, 100%.
Megan Gill: No matter who you are, no matter what you look like. You know, because society likes to be like, “Oh, you look like that so you're “perfect.”” But it's like, “Mm, what is “perfect”? I’m sorry, what?
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, or even if you are “perfect” or you've always been thinner, it doesn't mean that you haven't struggled with things. It's really insane to think that just because somebody looks like something – we're looking at somebody and thinking, “They look this way. They can't ever have thought bad about themselves,” that's insane to think.
Megan Gill: It's so unfair.
Kacie Patricia: It really is.
Megan Gill: It’s so unfair.
Kacie Patricia: So right now I feel like I'm in high school and, you know, I feel like I've had this stomach my whole life, and, you know, this was the part of me that I just couldn't figure out. Everything else I kind of liked about myself. I always felt like I was proportionate. I liked the size of my boobs. I liked my butt. I always thought my thighs were a little fat, but that was something we could work on. This was also the Tumblr era, like 2013/2014, Tumblr, thigh-gap era. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Megan Gill: I don’t know the Tumblr piece of that, but I do know the thigh gap.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember the thigh gap era of life?
Megan Gill: Trigger warning, the thigh gap. Yeah, yeah. yeah.
Kacie Patricia: Oh, my god, that was crazy. It was like Ariana Grande, like I remember photos of her on Instagram and Tumblr in 2014. She was so tiny, and then everybody was replicating this photo of the thigh gap.
Megan Gill: Oh, my gosh.
Kacie Patricia: And then I was like, “Oh my God, I don't have that…”
Megan Gill: It means something’s wrong with me.
Kacie Patricia: It's crazy. Like what the fuck? So I remember, yeah, that was when I started to, I don't know, I just really wanted to wear a bikini. I remember I was actually coming to LA in 2014 for my cousin's wedding, and I remember I really wanted to look good in this dress that I was wearing. And I was so excited to come to LA because I'd never been here before and this was like such a dream. This is what I wanted to do when I grew up. I wanted to move here so badly, and I wanted to look good.
I remember going to the gym with my mom, like, every day for maybe a month. We went to this all-women's gym together. But what she didn't know was that I was not eating lunch at school. I was coming home, and I was eating a bowl of cereal, and then that was it. And I would skip dinner and go to the gym with her and do that for, like, a month. Maybe I lost a couple pounds from doing this, but ultimately that was not sustainable at all. I didn't achieve the body that I was reaching for. I still don't have it. Nothing has ever really worked for me in the way that I've hoped.
Yeah, I've always had this all-or-nothing mentality. Always, always, always. Like, “We're gonna not eat, and we're gonna go to the gym,” or “We're gonna eat whatever we want, and not go to the gym.” There's never been a balance.
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Kacie Patricia: I was now single in LA trying to pursue an acting career.
Megan Gill: Not trying – you were totally pursuing it .
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, and here comes all of those things like I am trying to date, and now I'm insecure because I've never been with anybody except my boyfriend. I don't know what other men think about me or my body, or they don't wanna see me again because I was too big or I was too fat, those kinds of things. And I think the comparison to other women was larger than anything else for me. I was constantly seeing other women around in public, on social media around my age trying to pursue acting too, and thinking, “Oh, well, they're skinnier. I'm not gonna get anything until I look like that.”
And this was again like a silent sufferer for me. I've always had these thoughts, I've just never talked about them. I’ve never told anybody about them. I started discussing it in therapy last year.
Megan Gill: Amazing.
Kacie Patricia: And yeah. I've never told a friend about it or anything. And to be honest, I don't know that I would've been comfortable sharing this stuff until this past year. I don't think that I was at a place that I was – because I really didn't realize how much I was thinking about it and suffering through it until I talked about it in therapy.
And so, yeah, those were some really rough years, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 specifically. It was really rough. To go along with body image issues, I felt like I was in such a victim mentality, and also the state of the industry really sucked too. And I always felt like, “When is something gonna happen for me? When is something gonna happen to me?” I was in such a, “When is something gonna work out for me?” You know, like just kind of waiting, whether that be acting work or for a boyfriend, a relationship, or just something. I was so angry. Yeah, this is something I've been talking about in therapy lately. I was in such a victim mentality, and I had so much built up anger for just everything going on in my life.
I was moving around. I had all these different apartments and like no stability. I kept having to move out of my apartments for reasons that were outta my control. Dating sucked for me. I was going on tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of dates, not realizing that something was going on with me. I shouldn't have really been doing that. I was seeking validation, not realizing what was happening. And I hadn't started acting class yet. I hadn't figured out the industry stuff. I just thought, you know, “I have headshots and a reel. When am I gonna get an agent? When is this gonna happen for me?” or “I have an agent now. Now we just wait.” I just was misinformed, hadn't gained enough knowledge or information about anything, really. And yeah, I felt like such a victim, such a victim. I was really suffering and not really realizing it.
And then 2023, I had a really rough year, and I remember going to the doctor and finding out how much weight I had gained. I accepted it at that point, or I was starting to. I was like, “Wow, okay, I’ve got to do something about this. This is not okay. I'm never gonna get anywhere, book anything if I don't…”
Megan Gill: Ugh. God, but those thoughts.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, that's how I felt.
Megan Gill: Agh.
Kacie Patricia: And so, I wasn't sure that I was going to share this, but I feel like it's really important to, so I'm going to. This was back in 2023 when I went to the doctor. I really loved my doctor, and I felt like I could ask her this and she. I had done some research before, and I was like, “Can you prescribe me weight loss medication? Is that a thing?” And she was like, “I'm happy to write you a prescription, but I will tell you right now, it's probably not gonna get approved by insurance. But yeah, it works, and I can absolutely write you a prescription.” And so, I thought, “Yeah, just write it and we'll see what happens.”
And so, it didn't get approved. So at first it didn't, and then at that same doctor's appointment I had routine blood work, and I have high cholesterol in my family (my mom, my dad, grandparents), and so, mine was high. And my BMI was at a number that just met the threshold for drugs. And if you have that and then you also have another condition, you can get it approved.
So I then was like, “Hey, my cholesterol meets the requirement. Do you think you could submit it again?” And I got it approved. And so, starting in June 2024, I have been on Wegovy, which is weight loss drugs. And this is something I have started telling people, but also I feel really, really, really, really weird about it. But I just think that it's important to share everything that's going on. It’s been really strange to tell people because I thought, “I'm just gonna lose a little bit of weight. Nobody will notice. Nobody will know. I won't tell anybody. I won’t tell my mom. I won’t tell my family. I won’t tell my friends.”
Megan Gill: Kind of like the same mentality you'd kinda been living in.
Kacie Patricia: Right. Exactly, nobody's gonna know. Exactly. And then I started losing weight, and then I started telling people, and then I started talking about it in therapy, and then I started realizing how much I had been suffering.
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Kacie Patricia: I feel so weird talking about it because I'm not proud of it, but I am proud of myself for getting to a point where I feel good about myself and I did it in a way that works for me and there's such a stigma around these drugs. But, ultimately, I got it approved for reasons – I met the threshold for that. And I think as much as we are really working to accept our bodies as they are and working to, you know, really try to fix society and really, really work on these things, you can still lose weight, and you can still change yourself and feel good about yourself and do things. As much as you are totally fine the way that you are at all times, you can still change and you can still do things. We don't want to encourage either way. We just want to be okay and neutral about it and not feel like anybody needs to change, except if you want to do it for yourself.
Megan Gill: Absolutely. That is like the mic-drop moment right there. And I just so appreciate you sharing this and being so open because you're also making me open my eyes a little bit and learn from you. And I'm just so grateful for you sharing, and I do think that that is what it comes back to is doing it for yourself and finding what works for you, because just like body's different – everybody has a different body, (shape, size, this, that, whatever) everybody's approach to how you care for your own body is so different as well. And what works for one person might not work for someone else. And I think it really is all about tuning into yourself.
And honestly, the older I get – I know I'm only in my thirties – but the more I'm really out here looking at my blood work and really trying to genuinely take care of my overall health and wellbeing and really care for my body and like really try not to break a bone and really try not to pull a muscle because this is all we got. It is really important to look at those numbers, and I think that like for such a long time that's something that I wasn't doing, that I wasn't paying attention to in my twenties. I was like, “Oh, I'm fine? Okay!”
Kacie Patricia: Right, you think you're so indestructible in your twenties or thirties, you really do. But I also think that for me, I was really suffering so silently and never talking about it, and it wouldn't have come out in this way, I wouldn't have talked about it ever, maybe, because I was just pretending like it didn't exist, if this sort of transformation hadn't happened. And even now just telling you about it, it's crazy to think I was never planning on telling anybody ever that I was doing this. I was thinking that it wasn't ever gonna be a noticeable difference, but when it started to be it was like, “Oh, okay, maybe, maybe I don't have to feel so bad about this. Maybe I can start telling people about it. What's really so bad? I'm doing something that works for me, and it's given me so much more confidence in myself, as an actor, as a human. Just in all aspects of life, I feel so much more confident in myself, and I'm really, really grateful for that because I don't know what would've happened. I think I just would've continued on this path. I never would've been able to talk about it with you, I never would've been able to talk about it in therapy if I didn't really start to look at the way that I was thinking about myself. So thank you.
Megan Gill: Thank you. And I also just wanna point out that, everything aside, whatever anyone wants to think about these types of drugs, these types of weight loss drugs, and whatever anyone wants to place judgment on or applaud you for, at the end of the day, I think the real takeaway here, like as I'm listening to you talk, is that you are now voicing this and you are now able to sit here with me today and share your true body image story and like look at your self and your relationship to your body and really examine that. And I think that that's so, so, so, so, so important that you're no longer silent suffering because agh.
Kacie Patricia: And let me just say one more thing. I still have a stomach. I lost 50 pounds, but I still have a stomach. I still have a belly, and that's not going anywhere.
Megan Gill: High five, girl. This is the radical acceptance piece!
Kacie Patricia: This is just to say you can go through a transformation, I guess, as big as I did and still have that thing that you're insecure about. It might not go away.
Megan Gill: Oh, my god, I just got like literal chills hearing you share that. I'm cradling my belly at the moment.
Kacie Patricia: It’s still there, and it has not gone away. It's lessened, but it's still there. It’s still there in the ways that I thought it wouldn't be.
I do think that this conversation right now is making me realize like, oh, this was really, really, really important to talk about. I had been seeing my therapist for about a year before I brought up the body image thing, and it wasn't until I was starting the medication that I decided to talk about it and start really looking at it and seeing what was going on.
Megan Gill: Kind of allowing yourself to zoom out and have like an out-of-body experience, in a sense?
Kacie Patricia: Yes, for sure. It wasn't until then that I was really able to look at it and see and understand how much was really going on.
I was gonna say about the medication and stuff and the judgment and the shame that we might have about it, I think ultimately I was in a place where I was able to get it for health-related reasons and that I met the requirement, and that is true for so many people. But it's also being abused in ways where people don't necessarily need it but are getting their hands on it because they have the money. And that's happening here in Hollywood all the time, of course. But I think it's important to remember that those people have a story too, to tell. Those people are also going through it. Those people are probably also going through the same shit we are going through. And yeah, it's just important to remember that these drugs are helping so many people. And if you're using them in a safe way – like for me, I've been lucky to not have many side effects and stay pretty healthy throughout it. And I think if you use them in those ways, then they can work for you. And there shouldn't be so much judgment around them. But there are a lot of people who aren't using them in safe ways, and I think we just need to remind ourselves and have empathy that there's a bigger cause and there's like a bigger root of the issue, and people are using them because society is still trying to fit us into these boxes. And that's why this conversation is important. That's why what you're doing is so important because we are trying to change that. Yeah, it's really important to talk about this specifically because this is something that's going on right now. It hasn't been going on forever. So yeah, thank you for giving me a place to share it. I wasn't sure when I was driving here, I like wasn't sure that I was gonna talk about it. I really wasn't sure and I'm really glad that I did.
Megan Gill: I'm really glad you did too. Truly, thank you. And you've opened my eyes and my heart, and I'm just so grateful for you and for your vulnerability.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, thank you.
Megan Gill: Thank you!
Kacie Patricia: Some actor things that have come up for me is that I've always felt like there is no place in this business for like a regular fucking body. There's no place in this business for somebody who's five three and size six or eight. There was nothing wrong with me the way that I was before, but I do think it's really important that you have to get to a place where you're comfortable and you're cool talking about it and seek therapy if you're feeling these things. And I really, really, really feel for everybody who's like suffering in silence or just suffering at all about these kinds of things because, especially with this career, I don't think that you're gonna be able to bring your full self to it until you are comfortable and that you might not ever be fully comfortable. You're always gonna have thoughts and feelings about it, but I don't know. I don't think that I was really able to fully give myself over to this pursuit at that time. I don't know, because those thoughts were always just in the back of my mind of like, “I'm not gonna book this. Somebody skinnier than me is gonna book this.”
Megan Gill: It’s almost like it was distracting you from doing the actual work.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, it was distracting me from really giving it my full attention, my full work, to think about the work outside of my appearance. But it seems like there's really not much of a place for somebody who is a normal size.
Megan Gill: Who's just an average woman existing in an average body.
Kacie Patricia: There seems to be the spectrum of larger people and skinny people, and you're type-cast as the larger, funny friend or whatever, or you're the skinny lead.
Megan Gill: Do you know what's very oddly interesting? That's how it was in the theater world 10 to 15 years ago when I was starting college. That's how you were categorized. Either you were the fat, funny friend, or you were the leading lady. There was no in-between. Talk about like black-and-white thinking. Talk about all or nothing, oh, my god. And you had to somehow fit yourself into a category, and I feel like part of my mission now as an actor, even just like as an indie filmmaker making my own projects, is there has to be a space for the average female in the average female body in this industry. We have to almost change our mentality around it because we belong here. We are real people with real stories to tell. I believe that. I don't know if I'm delulu in believing that, because I'm like, “I have to believe that because that's who I am, and I belong here and so do all my friends that look like me too,” you know?
Kacie Patricia: Totally, and I'm thinking as we're talking about this and thinking of all the shows and movies I watched recently, I can't think of anybody like that looks like a regular body. I really can't. It's really hard. I'm gonna specifically look out for that in the stuff that I watch from here on out. But there really isn't a place, and it really sucks.
Megan Gill: I hear you. I'm thinking, “What am I watching right now?” Running Time. Kate Hudson, she's a babe. And I'm like, “I want to see your belly roll. I wanna see your arm flab.” Okay. White Lotus, everyone's hot, right? Everyone, and of course the men are the ones that can get away with being a little “not the hottest.” And it’s frustrating! Sorry, I just wanna throw that in there.
Kacie Patricia: It’s true! It's so fucking frustrating. And so, so real and so true. And I think this is also a thought and fear that I had before too that I didn't want to admit to myself. That was just kind of like a fear that lived in the silent and suffering. Like, “There's no place for me, so I must mask this. I must make myself look this like a skinny version of myself. I must put this illusion on. I have to fit into that category. There is no place for me as I am. I have to make myself look that way.”
Megan Gill: Do you feel like that dissociated you from your body even further? Before it, then, like now brought you back into your body in a way?
Kacie Patricia: Yeah. For sure. And when I was at my heaviest a couple years ago, I remember that was when I really mostly disassociated. I remember I wouldn't even look in the mirror. I would never look at my body in the mirror. Maybe like from here up.
Megan Gill: Wow.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah. I only wore baggy clothing, oversized clothing, and I was just doing all of these things and not realizing that's what was going on.
Megan Gill: It was very subconscious.
Kacie Patricia: I was just not acknowledging what was really happening. So yeah, I really, really disassociated and disconnected from myself and my body for sure. But I also wanna talk about how now being a much smaller version of myself, the insecurities haven't really gone away. I do feel more confident in myself. I feel more like myself, I guess, if that makes sense.
Megan Gill: Do you think that’s because you’re feeling more connected to your body because of this whole transformation?
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, it could be. Yeah, I do think so. I think what has happened is that I look in the mirror and I see the version of myself that I thought that I looked like, if that makes sense. I looked in the mirror and rejected what I looked like for so long, and now I'm looking in the mirror and I see what I wanted to look like and I see what I thought that I looked like, or I was telling myself that I looked alike, but I didn't really look like that.
Wait, this is wild. Because to me this almost feels like reverse body dysmorphia. Whoa.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah. Literally, yeah. This is what I thought I looked like at that time, what I was trying to tell myself that I looked like at that time in order to make myself feel better. But that wasn't really true. And looking back at photos of myself from that time, I have empathy and compassion for myself at that time. And again, like this goes along with not telling anybody, not thinking that I was ever gonna look that much different. I was just gonna lose a little bit of weight. I really was downplaying the fuck out of it. I really, really, really rejected every part of being insecure and being unhappy with the way that I looked. I'm so glad that this conversation happened. It would not have happened had I not gone through this. It’s really important.
Megan Gill: It’s so important. And I, too, am so glad that you're here sharing all of this, because I think it's also just so important to note like just you sitting here and saying, “Wow, the insecurities are just, in a sense, still with me.”
Kacie Patricia: Yeah. The thing that I have been insecure about my whole life, my stomach, is still with me, and it's the same. I don't think it's really – that specific insecurity has not lessened.
Megan Gill: I’m only laughing because I know from experience. There comes a point where – I don't know when it happened. I think it might've been, kinda like you were saying, I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when I started realizing that I had body image issues I don't know the exact moment when I started relating better to my belly, but slowly over time, I am able to look at her in the mirror and be like, “I see you girl. You're good. You’re okay.”
Kacie Patricia: She has organs in there. That’s where we carry our uterus, which holds a child. It's housing our reproductive organs. Men could never.
Megan Gill: And how could we not look at ourselves in the mirror and have compassion for that part of our body? It makes me so sad that our society has conditioned us to look at whatever part of your body it is for you (for us, it's our tummies), to look at our tummy in the mirror and not want to see her. For me for a long time it was like if I could feel my stomach on the other part of my stomach, like my roll, if I could feel my roll on my legs or touching my other roll, like it would literally give me anxiety. I would start to stress out. Or if I could feel my boobs like sagging and touching my belly, I was like, “Ew, this is disgusting.” What? What the F? Those feelings didn't come out of thin air. Hmm, where do you think I learned that this visual that I had that I was feeling in my body was “bad” or “disgusting”?
Kacie Patricia: We just grew up never seeing anybody that looked like us on TV doing the things that we wanted to do. We grew up with Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. It's like who's really to blame? Who's really to blame? All we can do is just keep talking about it and just trying to change it and giving ourselves safe spaces to talk to each other about it because this has felt really, really, really healing for me, this conversation specifically, but just this past year in therapy and the journey that I've gone on. I healed a part of myself that I did not know needed to be healed, or I started to at least. We’re never fully healed. But those insecurities will always be there, right?
Megan Gill: Always, and it's like how we approach handling them and how we approach the self-talk when they come up and how we work with ourselves and our mental health, really, to support ourselves and support each other through these really tough things that are never probably gonna go away.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, I think for me, like the tummy thing has always been there. That was my first insecurity for as long as I can remember, going back to like fifth, sixth grade when I started to have body image issues. That was the first thing. And so I've had it for as long as I can remember.
I remember as a kid, from like 10, 11, 12, I was small. I was skinny as a child. But I still had it, in my eyes at least. I still had it, so it's been there my whole entire life. So it's just meant to be a part of me. It's always been there. It's always meant to be a part of me. It’s always been there. Even now, at the weight that I'm at, where I'm at, it's still there. It hasn't gone anywhere. It's just gonna be a part of me. And I have tried for so long to try to figure it out like, “What can I do about this? How do I get this to go somewhere else? Why is it there? Why is everything else okay in proportion, but this is just like there? What do I do?” But it's just my body. That's just the way that my body was made. It's just the way that it's made. I have a really small waist, but my belly goes over the waistline, so it's like the waist is small, but the belly goes over, and that's just the way that it is. That's just how I was born. That's just how my body is meant to be. Yeah, that's just our genetic makeup.
I'm sure I'm always gonna be insecure about the things that I'm insecure about, but all we can do is just keep talking about it and keep making it okay to talk about it. Because that is how we keep a good relationship with our bodies is to keep talking about it.
Megan Gill: Absolutely, and having those safe spaces and having those supports and having people to turn to if you're struggling or like going through it.
Kacie Patricia: Even to speak more about the transformation too, I think I thought that I was gonna feel so much more different. I definitely feel much more different in ways that I wasn't really expecting, like the confidence to talk about this kind of stuff and confidence in my work or just in myself as a human being. I feel more like, “This is me!” I'm not hiding so much anymore. I think I was hiding a lot, like I said before. Yeah, I was hiding myself physically. But you're also hiding mentally a lot. You're hiding a piece of yourself because you don't want people to see a certain part of yourself.
Megan Gill: I also think that presence pulls us out of those cycles and pulls us out of that, how you were saying you were like silently suffering. It pulls us out of silently suffering and forces us to be present, be in the moment, open up to people that we love and trust and that care about us. And that I really believe is like where the real, true healing and transformation happens.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, and when I started noticing that clothes weren't fitting, they were getting too big on me, blah, blah, blah, it's funny, there are two completely opposite sides of the spectrum about clothes. When I started to notice that they were getting too big on me, I was like, “Why am I not more excited? This is what I've dreamed of for as long as I can remember. Why am I not feeling differently about this?” It's like you can do all this work, and you still are gonna feel this way sometimes about yourself. I'm thankful for the changes that have happened because they've been really important, but it hasn't been like a, “Oh my god, thank god I finally looked this way!” There hasn't been that big moment of like, “Well, now I can finally do this and that and book work!” No, that hasn't happened.
Megan Gill: Thank you for sharing that. I think that's so important to talk about also.
Kacie Patricia: Yeah, that feeling never came to me. It's like, was it nice? Sure. It was nice to go down a few sizes and see that it was working, but those body image issues are at such a core belief that doing all this work is not gonna make them go away and changing in such a significant way is not gonna make them go away, most likely.
“ For me, it was always silent suffering. It was like nobody could know that I felt this way about myself. That's literally how it's been up until this year of my life, to be honest. And as much as you are totally fine the way that you are at all times, you can still change and you can still do things. We don't want to encourage either way. We just want to be okay and neutral about it and not feel like anybody needs to change, except if you want to do it for yourself.”
- Kacie Patricia
Kacie is a New England native who has spent the last six years in Los Angeles pursuing her acting career. Throughout her career, she has navigated the complexities of body image, a topic that once made her uncomfortable. Though significant life changes in recent years have transformed her perspective, allowing her to embrace her own experiences and foster a deep empathy for others facing similar struggles. Keep an eye out for a play Kacie is producing coming to Crash Acting fall of 2025!
Email: kacieellegood@gmail.com
IMDb: www.imdb.com/name/nm11202500/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/_kaciepatricia
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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
