Not to nitpick (feeble attempt at politeness while leading in to a nitpick), but I’m having trouble seeing how the phenomenon you describe is a feedback loop, as opposed to just a trend fatward. Weight/clothes fit is a product of diet, metabolism, and exercise. I get that you’re older now, which means that your metabolism is slower, and you have more demands on your time, and you exercise less. Seems like this would produce a relatively stable body type, at least until you get older or your lifestyle changes again.

The part about “The body changes more…” just seems like a natural aging process, rather than a response to an earlier step in the loop.

So the feedback part must be in the final part, about “Maybe you stop looking in the mirror and/or weighing yourself .” And so you eat more or exercise less because you care less, as you adjust to your new body?

Leave it to me to focus on the details of a post at the expense of the overall message, but sometimes it’s the only way I can understand things. This still seems like a “lack of feedback” loop rather than a feedback loop. If I’m getting it, in your younger days you would have looked at yourself in the mirror and decided to lose weight, but now you don’t. So how is this different from you just eating what you want and exercising at a level that seems right, without feeling compelled to look skinny? Where’s the feedback and the loop? I mean, it’s not like you look at yourself in the mirror and say “I’m going to go out and eat a pizza right now!”

I’m also reading this wondering what it says about agency. The most common message from society is “you make yourself into what you are. If you’re thin, it’s because you are virtuous and vigilant. If you are fat, it’s because you lack the willpower to eat right and exercise.” But we also know that people just have different bodies, and some are easy to keep thin, while others are not. And age affects this too. For the most part, your post seems consistent with the truth about weight, which is that it’s a combination of lifestyle and biology, part within our control and part out of our control. But I guess what bugs me about calling it a “feedback loop” makes it sound so out of control, and minimizes the role of choice. Being 10 pounds over fitted tops size does not make it inevitable that you will be in a moo-moo next year. You’d have to start eating more and exercising less.

Right now, you’re in a state of caring less about how your body looks than you did when you were younger. To be bound for Muu-Muu Land, you’d have to not care at all. Not saying you should or you shouldn’t but it doesn’t seem like where you are now, or where you’re likely to be any time soon. Which is to say, the end of your post sounds very different from a feedback loop.

Thank you.

Despite my very active lifestyle, it is time to get serious and hit the gym.

Have you ever noticed that the truly remarkable, interesting, and loving women wear muumuus?