It is time to touch upon a very close to my heart topic, body weight, and few things I came to understand and accept after almost a decade long of struggles in achieving my perfect body weight. I’ve been “thin” and I’ve been “overweight”, and each time I was at either end of the scales, I was still not satisfied with my body. Later, I discovered the importance of confidence, which would be touched upon later in the article. Also, let’s keep in mind the subjectivity of the “perfect body” and how differently each one of us perceives the perfect body to be. For me, the “perfect body” is the one YOU feel comfortable and confident in.
A bit of personal background; I first put on extra weight when I was around 9 or 10 years old and by the time I was 14 I was already on my first “diet”; got rid of a few pounds which I ended up putting back on as soon as I stopped “dieting”. And the story kept on repeating for some years, losing weight and then putting it back on. The least I weighed was 59kg during my first year at the university. Do you know what is the part that frustrates me to this day? I wasn’t satisfied with being 59kg and thought I was “fat”.
There is no such thing as “Dieting”
Last June, after reaching 87kg with only 1.60cm height, I was fed up with my unhealthy habits and went back to “dieting”, once again. I lost a bit over 20kg, and a year later, I managed to maintain my weight, more or less. For the first time, after almost 10 years since the first time I went on a diet, I realised that diets do not work, because being healthy and maintaining normal body weight is a way of life. Definitely, diets would help to lose weight, but they won’t help you to maintain it. You need to learn what food is healthy and what food has an unnecessary amount of calories; what food you can allow yourself to eat daily, and what food needs to be consumed only once in a while. Staying healthy is a conscious daily decision, not a few months of sacrifices and then back to having McDonald’s breakfast. Diets will help you to achieve a short term goal of losing weight, but changing your mindset and carefully choosing to eat healthy on a daily basis, is the winning formula for the long term race. It is not easy, and it is humanly to be constantly tempted by cheat meals or snacks. If you set your mind on it though, you can achieve it.
Never being satisfied
As I mentioned earlier, even when I was 59 kg, I was still not satisfied with myself; I would look at myself in the mirror and would see a fat girl. However, when I put on an extreme amount of weight the following year, I was feeling incredibly confident. My weight never stopped me from wearing the dresses I wanted, going on dates, and living a life of no regrets and no shame. Thus, confidence needs to be cultivated separately from your body weight. Do not fall into the trap that you would be confident in your body, once you would reach the desired weight. That is not the way to gain self-confidence. You need to start putting yourself out there into the world now, even if you feel like you do not have your desired body weight. Start doing activities and going places that make you feel uncomfortable. That’s how you would learn to be comfortable with yourself, by being uncomfortable at the beginning. It would get better eventually, I promise you. Start loving your wonderful body now, and be proud of it. I decided to lose weight because I was feeling the extra weight affecting my health. I did not lose weight because of anyone but myself. I did it for me and my health. While I was changing my old eating habits, I found pleasure in eating vegetables and fruits instead of sweets and take-aways. Of course, I still spoil myself with cheeky take-aways and my own baked cakes, but I learned to do it with a merit that does not ruin the hard work I put into losing weight.
Start loving your outer self now, as you are, with your cellulite, love handles, and the extra fat. If you want to start a healthy lifestyle, do it for yourself and yourself only. Make it part of your daily life and you would see changes. But do not forget to accept your body as it is now, because even when the scales would be lighter, the body confidence would not appear magically out of the blue. Be confident in your body today.
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