I hate my body more than ever before

I’ve always struggled with body image, ever since I was a little girl. I worked hard to always stay in decent shape, eat well, but have had my bouts with anorexia, at a couple of points in my life wreaking havoc on my GI system. Obviously as we all get older, metabolisms slow down, and gaining weight gets easier no matter what it seems.

But now after pregnancy, I hate my body more than ever. I held on to 8-10 lbs even after weaning so I’m overall heavier and even just watching what I eat and doing some regular exercise doesn’t seem to budge it. When I was pregnant was surprisingly one of the only times recently I was ok with my body image, and with a 3rd trimester over a hot summer and a stressful job I indulged in some ice cream like every other day and now I fully regret that. Like why did I let myself do that?

Now it’s even harder for me to have some sort of control because I’m also newly pregnant (towards end of 1st trimester) and my body is already retaining more with water, bloat etc and I feel like a whale. I try to not overeat/eat healthfully but I’m so damn hungry almost all the time and with pregnancy hunger I can’t just ignore it like I used to, I need something to eat otherwise I really do start feeling ill. I don’t know what to do. I want to take this opportunity to lose some of that extra weight I was hanging onto (burning a little more when pregnant, but sticking to reasonable healthy eating habits should work) but can’t seem to do that either.