In love with the shape of you !

Half of my twenties had gone struggling with my weight. There was a time when I was 43 Kgs and then there were years when I was at my highest which is 69. ‘A bit thinner’ was all I wanted to be. But then I never really did anything about it. Weight was an important issue only in my head as career; friends and experiences seemed to be priority, not exactly in that same order. Roaming around with friends and eating at different places was equivalent to happiness (still is). Actually, I was never the kinds to experience the inner happiness. I had never been in that state of absolute happiness hence looked for it in people, places and of course food. Life was okayish until my late twenties when I had to come back to this place called ‘home’.

I don’t even want to recall that time, it was horrible beyond time. I was jobless, I had no life and needless to say, my confidence level was nowhere to be found. I was depressed to the point of committing suicide; I even slashed my wrist once.  And where would I find my solace ?  Well, no brownie points for guessing that. Food.

Making plans to eat out with handful of friends left in the city had become my full time job.  Those few minutes of hogging were my only happy minutes. When I was working, I was always surrounded with people who loved their food and discussed world cuisine like their life depended on it.  The concept of ‘body shaming’ was alien to me, I wasn’t even aware of the term. All I knew that people shouldn’t be judged by their looks or body. You might not be ‘beautiful’ as per the standards set by the society but if you are good to me and people in general, I love you. Besides, you don’t have to be thin to be lovable. I remember talking to this friend about weight and all that jazz and she told me it was after she started losing the weight, people started telling her how she looked different. “People noticed when I started losing the weight and not when I gained because people take offence when they are told they have gained,” she said.

Yes that’s true. Nobody likes being called ‘ Fat’ besides people particularly women gain weight due to many reasons. Hormonal, thyroid, depression and you name it. It’s a struggle to love your body when the world is continuously telling you that fat can never be beautiful. Yes I am talking about TV ads selling gadgets and tea that promise to make you skinny, your relatives and ‘well wisher who have got nothing to do with your happiness, those magazines and at times, those salespersons behind the counter too. And when the closed ones make you feel the same, you just tend to accept that something is indeed wrong with your body.  The motive behind reminding that the fat doesn’t suit you might be as noble as it could be but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. “ I am not commenting on your body, I am just suggesting you as a well wisher,” How often do we here it ?

No matter how noble the intentions are it is always going to hurt. You are a friend; they put their trust in you and needless to say you are the last person on earth they expect to hear this from. And how do you know they are not trying to slim down?  I know of one girl with thyroid who wakes up early in the morning and walks for 45 minutes every day without fail, eats egg whites for breakfast and she can’t even remember what toasted butter with bread tasted like. Rice is a complete no no , so is milk. She looked really upset when I last met her and when I asked why she told me that she was body shammed by her friend. “She said my legs are too fat to see day of light,” my friend told me with a long face. Now this really made me upset, poor girl stays away from every food item that she likes only to hear this? And doesn’t that friend know what Thyroid is?

There is another fried who started hogging after she lost her husband to cancer.  “ I was addicted to calorie-laden food. I used to eat all the time because that gave me some temporary relief from my grief,” she said.  She was obese and that lead her to diabetes. “ I have a child to look after, I had no choice but to lose weight,” she said further. She lost 40 kgs in two months and her rigorous diet is on till date. She has completely given up on burger, fries and everything nice and home cooked dal sabzi is her meal for life. And yet she gets body shammed. There is no dearth of people telling her how fat she is. At times she takes it sportingly and at times it really hurts her. “ Am I not trying” she wonders.

And then there’s me. I don’t munch on Bhujiya and biscuits, the way I used to a year back. I don’t eat outside as much as I want to. I walk as much as I can. I don’t eat bread or anything made up of Maida. In short, I follow Rujata Diwakar- Daal Chawal, Roti Sabzi and Ghee. As a result, I have lost 6kgs and I want to lose more and I get annoyed to the core when I am told by people if I lost weight I will get attention from men.  I do understand the good intention behind those hurtful words but then it hurts means it hurts. If you are really my well wisher just let me be me. Appreciate me the way I am, help me embracing my body. So everybody reading this, please make a pledge not to ‘suggest’ anybody to lose weight. Chances are there, they are already trying to. Maybe they have completely given up on the food they love or maybe they are slogging their asses out in the gym. Imagine how it would feel to know that all their efforts are completely wasted. Let them be, just let them be.