Summary

The author recounts their personal struggle with body image and weight, emphasizing the shift from seeking external validation to pursuing health and self-love for personal fulfillment.

Abstract

The author, once weighing 207 pounds at 5'3", shares their journey of dealing with internalized body shaming from a young age, perpetuated by family and partners under the guise of love. They detail the damaging effects of this shaming, including poor self-image and binge eating disorder, and how it led to a quest for external validation that was both sought after and uncomfortable. The turning point came when the author decided to focus on health and well-being for themselves, rather than to meet others' expectations, leading to a more authentic and fulfilling pursuit of weight loss and self-acceptance.

Opinions

The author believes that the shaming they experienced was counterproductive and harmful, despite being motivated by love.
They suggest that the love from family and partners should be unconditional, not tied to physical appearance or adherence to beauty standards.
The author's self-worth is not contingent on their weight or others' opinions, and they reject the idea of transactional love.
The decision to lose weight was driven by a desire for personal health and well-being, not for societal approval or attractiveness.
The author has come to understand that true health encompasses both physical and mental well-being, including shedding the emotional weight of others' negative opinions.

Being Called Fat Never Helped Me Lose Any Weight

On internalized body shaming

I used to weigh 207 pounds.

I’m 5'3".

In other words, I was overweight.

According to several of the charts you can find online, I should have weighed 140 pounds tops. Clearly, I was far from that goal.

Backstory

I was a fat kid.

I know this because my parents told me, as well as a couple of my teachers. I was known as “the chubby one” in my household, although my father ended up creating more imaginative nicknames for me.

I have thought long and hard as to why the grown-ups who were supposed to provide me with unconditional love put so much effort into shaming me for my weight. Since this story repeated itself with one of my boyfriends and, eventually, with my partner, finding an answer became crucial to me.

Turns out, it was out of love.

Sick

That’s what all of those people told themselves: that they loved me and, therefore, they had to help me be a better version of myself. However, their methods were, for lack of a better word, sickening.

They involved shaming me, breaking me into tiny little pieces to see if that prompted me to change.

They were partially successful: they did break me.

My self-image is very poor. Yes, I’m using the present tense. And I constantly look for external validation while, at the same time, rejecting it. It looks a little bit like this:

Me, feeling insecure AF: What do you think of this outfit? Person: Oh, you look so nice in it! Me, feeling uncomfortable AF: Thanks, but it makes my belly look too big.

Crazy, huh?

Oh, by the way, a bit of advice. If you love someone, make sure they know you love them now, not if…trust me, it will make a huge difference.

Dieting

During high school, I flirted with extreme dieting, although a few friends' interventions helped me deal with that before I took it too far. Later on in life, I fell prey to binge eating disorder.

I suppose you could say I deal with it still.

As a consequence, I gained a lot of weight and developed an even poorer self-image. In my mind, all I ever wanted was to look like a normal woman. The extra weight was a burden not just on my body but on my soul. I just knew that as long as I remained fat, I would never be happy.

This, of course, begs the question: if I was so miserably with the way my body looked, why didn’t I just do something about it? I mean, everybody kept telling me to and clearly, this was the thing holding back my joy.

Why didn’t I just stop eating and got to do a ton of exercise?

Motivation

That’s the big question, isn’t it? How come overweight people don’t get their shit together and just do what they have to do to lose those extra pounds?

The more I think about it, the more I realize it is about motivation. The problem is we look for it in the wrong places.

When I finally lost the extra weight, it wasn’t so other people would think I was hot. It was because I wanted to feel healthy. That was it. I wanted the bloating to stop and to gain focus. When I looked at the days ahead and how I wanted my body to change, that influenced my decisions regarding the food I ate and my level of physical activity.

In other words, I did it because of me. Thinking of other people only made me sad because I knew their love was transactional. It was tied to me behaving in a certain way or fulfilling specific beauty standards. I don’t want that kind of “love,” not even if it comes from my parents or my life partner.

I deserve more.

Health

I deserve to be a healthy person, in body and mind. Therefore, I have decided I will take the necessary steps to achieve that goal. I will keep on learning the best way to feed myself and the training programs that benefit me the most.

That is my purpose.

And, as part of it, I have to get rid of the burden I have carried for so many years, namely, the opinions of those who tried to make me feel worthless because I did not look a certain way. That’s what has dragged me down for decades. In my quest for actual health, I say goodbye to it.

See? Now I have truly lost the extra weight in my life.