It was difficult for me to wrap my head around this but doing it is what ultimately set me free. Ask yourself what is the problem here. Is it really your body? Your clothes? Your weight? The way you eat? And what is the solution? A new diet? More restriction? Worsening health? Giving up?
When you stay stuck in that "it's my body" line of thinking and those "must fix myself" or "must accept the unacceptable" solutions, you just go around and around and never get anywhere. It all changed for me when I realized that all the pain, all the struggle came from my own thinking. It was the cause of the suffering, and it was the way out. Not weight loss. Not controlling my food. Not trying to control other people's perceptions.
It sounds like crazy talk, but we are the only ones who can make ourselves feel self-conscious and awful. It's the thoughts flying around between our ears. It's latching onto painful ones and letting them drag us for awhile rather than questioning them right away. What does it mean that people notice your weight? In my mind now, it means nothing, but boy did I have some stories to go with it before. If I gain weight and people notice, it means: I hate myself. I'm a joke. No one loves me. I'm worthless and weak. I'm a fraud. I'm a failure. I can't do anything right. I'm hopeless. I'm ashamed. I'm out of control. I deserve to be punished.
Whoa!! WTF? Right? But that's what made any comment about my body or observation about my eating so painful. There was this mind swamp that needed draining before I could react like a rational person instead of just kicking myself and restricting my food.
Is it true? I won't go through the whole questioning process again here, but the bottom line is that none of my fearful, emotional, heightened craziness was rooted in what I ate, how I looked, or what other people thought. As long as I kept the focus on those three things, I suffered. It became so important when I felt "triggered" to not go down the default thought trail, but to stop and ask, "Ok, what story am I telling myself that makes it feel like I just got stabbed?"
Just some thoughts to consider. You're already one up by realizing that this feeling (any feeling) isn't your new permanent state. It will pass. The sooner you let go of a painful story, the less you're dragged.