Love yourself, modifying your lifestyle.
Female, 30's, single, Asia
More fortunate people than me? Absolutely.
Less fortunate people than me? For sure.
It is difficult to focus on the latter when you are facing or struggling with a personal issue. It is sometimes annoying to hear all this ‘positive affirmation’ that everything will be better or it is not so bad, because, well, it is definitely not good right now and I can’t imagine it being worse! I wish I could just sleep and wake up when it is all over!
Hmm, I don’t know how to break this to you, but sorry, it doesn’t work like that. For anyone.
I once read a quote somewhere ‘Your problems are big, because they are yours.’ These days when I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders and nobody understands just how serious this is and whenever they tell me of someone else who have it worse and for the life of me I just can’t help feeling that my situation is the worst, this quote helps me feel slightly more hopeful.
The truth is, everybody has their own battles. And everybody doubts themselves more often than some would like to admit whether they can pull through. Yet, a lot of us manage to get on and live to face more challenges. Because that is all they are, challenges. You can choose to do something about them, or you can try to push them under the rug and hope it does not create a lump that will trip you after a while.
Me, I am more of the ‘bury my head under the sand because if I can’t solve it myself than there is no use worrying about it’ and ‘live like it is your last day’ kind of girl. This was also how I used to think about my weight problem, a.k.a. eating habit and lifestyle challenge. Like every girl/woman I know, I think parts of me are ugly, fat, too short, too long, too little, too big…or at least, I tend to focus on those bits when I think about how I look.
I wish I could tell you that I have found a perfect solution that will work for all of you if you would just follow these steps. Nope, sorry, not even Nobel Prize winners have ever come up with that. Seriously, anyone who does, should win one of those because they would undoubtedly support world peace, at least on a collective individual basis, meaning that every woman and man who struggle with their weight/body image challenges will have peace of mind at last, and maybe even ultimately support the world economy.
But, no. I, myself, am still facing this challenge every day. My friends, who I think look awesome (especially in comparison to me), have similar complaints too. I grew up in a culture where girls have to be thin and tall to be considered beautiful. The last time I was thin was when I was 8 and just recovering from a nasty disease. Since then I had been gradually gaining weight, and finally becoming rounder as I stopped growing at 151cm tall when I was 12. Luckily, I was a good student in school, so when people talk about me and my best friend at the time, they used to say she was the pretty one and I was the smart one. She got all the attention from boys, but they came to me when they needed help with their homework. Even the older people in my family agreed.
Now that I am older, I can appreciate that this was how they thought they could push me to be ‘better’. Through no fault of their own, I have to say, as this was how they were brought up too. You need to achieve a lot to earn a small compliment, but a minor fault deserves repetitive, if not constant, criticism or snide remarks.
So, anyway, to be honest, I was not that fat. I saw there were heavier uglier girls (hey, we are all critics). But still, I want people to say that I am smart and pretty too! I decided to try a very strict diet (I was starving all the time) and followed my mom to her rigorous aerobics classes. It worked, I was happy to lose almost 10kgs in 2 months. But then, of course, I stopped everything because I could not love under all that restrictions longer, plus look at all that delicious food and snacks and sweet drinks! Please do give me that free extra squirt of butter on my popcorn! And the weight of course, came all back.
Long story short, this happened time and time again, every time I promised myself to eat as little as possible and exercise.
I still do. Not to that extent, fortunately, though. The first time I realized I could lose weight and maintain it so that it does not get as bad or at least lower it again before it gets out of control, was when I decided to allow myself small pleasures, while sticking to a combination of food I love that has healthy nutrients and food I used to hate but helps to keep me full with less calories. Basically, I had to learn to eat vegetables and love it and consume less and lesser sweet stuff, not fun at all.
After a while it got easier to live with this new habit. Obviously I lapse for some time, even months. But I learn to forgive myself when I eat a burger and fries and those wonderful pralines… And when I do start feeling uncomfortable with myself, i.e. my jeans’ button starts to burst and I keep buying a bigger size of clothes, then I go back to I know what works for me until I feel good about myself again.
I think, That, I can live with. Trying different methods until I find what I am capable of and help me to achieve my personal definition of ‘feeling good about myself’. It is a combination of knowing your abilities and your limitations. Plus, outgrowing my teenage-young adult insecurities helped me realize, although this may be a cliché, that beauty and health are very much how you feel. It is too frustrating and tiring to have impossible (for myself) goals, and especially when somebody tells me to.
Maybe some people would say that I am underachieving, underestimating my potential, bla..bla.. but I honestly don’t care as long as I don’t have any life-threatening eating tendencies. I can say now that: I am smart and, while there are far prettier women than me, I look pretty good too, or at least I know I can when I put myself into it.