About weight and self-love

 No, this post is not about a health and an incredible weight-loss journey that I have been through, telling you that all the suffering is so worth it because now I feel incredible about myself and I feel perfect... 

The only time in my life when I was truly skinny, the type that is portrayed in the movies and posters all over the place, was about 20 years ago. Back then I was 11 and I didn't even really care much for my weight to be honest. I didn't care much about my looks either, I was me, kind of a tomboy girl with mostly second-hand clothes from my sister or the cheap stores from the Hungarian town we lived in. Back then I never looked at other girls, wishing I would look like them or have their clothes. 

The first time I really had a thought about my weight was around the age of 13 when the girls in my class started to say they were fat. Constantly... there was nothing else they would talk about every time we changed our clothes before PE lessons and I started to look a them and then me, noticing differences and thinking about what is considered skinny and fat. I didn't feel fat but, like they did, I started to say strange things about myself. Like them, I would exclaim before PE class (in a funny way) 'Oh I look like a whale' and then they would say 'Oh no, I look like an elephant'. We were 13...

When I moved to Belgium, I remember that I really hated the idea of moving away (but that's an entirely different story) and one time I said to my classmates: 'It's okay, at least I will be super stressed out and then I always lose weight'. I was 14, seeing one of the most traumatizing events in my life as a way to reduce the size of my body. It breaks my heart thinking about my younger self now. 

Jump forward about 10 years, my body image completely distorted, throughout the years I was constantly feeling fat and overweight, and just to put this in perspective, I was 170 cm tall and +/-67 kg for most of those years. Even my BMI, which is considered (in my opinion wrongly) as a base for healthy weight, was well in the healthy range. And still, all I could see was that my body was not like my high school classmates, at least not like the skinny ones. So I got in the habit of covering it up, being conscientious about all my flaws, all bulks, my funny teeth, my way of walking, everything. 

At my 24th I had the mental and physical space in my life to start and sport every single day, eat very limited calories and lose weight. I kept it going for months, being super 'healthy' and concentrating on my weight 16 hours a day, the rest I spent sleeping. I lost about 5 kg... 5... all that work, all that sacrifice and I did feel different, but my weight did not budge below 62 kg. That is when I went back to my normal life, eating healthy but not constantly counting my calories, sporting but not sacrificing everything so that I could get the workout done. My weight of course went back up and I was pivoting around the 70 kg again. 

Fast-forward 6 years and not a moment went by when I felt good about me and about how I looked. It was stressful to look in the mirror, I was always unhappy with what I saw, gaining weight and losing it, never achieving what I needed 'to be happy' with myself. I was 29 when I had a re-defining moment in my life, which made me question who I wanted to be and what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to be strong, independent, healthy, loved and confident. But guess who I didn't want to be... I didn't want to be the woman, standing on the side-lines, waiting for permission to do something. I wanted to define who I was and not wait for others to do it for me. 

A few months later, working hard on this mindset, I saw a post of my old high school classmate, who gave birth some time ago, showing photos of her body, talking about how she felt bad about it and that she will start a programme to lose her fat and feel good again. An let me tell you... her body after birth was like mine at that moment. This made me so furious... how does anyone have the right to tell me I am fat? I was not mad a at her, I was mad at the world for making her feel like the extra kilos on her body were a sin (especially after giving birth?? WTF???). 

It suddenly dawned down on me how much I have been thinking about this subject in my life. How much time I wasted on thinking bad about the body that has carried me forward, helped me run, climb, eat, feel... This body has been mine from the start and for the past 20 years I only criticised it and had no appreciation of the amazing things it can do. At this point I started to work on being thankful for my body, my bulks, my funny teeth. Instead of hating the mirror, I started to look into it and say nice things to myself about how good I looked today. I started to treat myself like I would treat a good friend. You have to spend a lifetime with your body, so why do you treat it like garbage? If you would never tell someone 'you are ugly', 'you are fat', 'you don't deserve attention and love', why would you say such things to the one person you have to spend your entire life with? 

After this epiphany it was time for me to work on self-love. There were many teachers on the way, mostly women, who taught me about unconditionally loving yourself, being me without compromise and seeing the good in myself, independently of how society might view me. A few honorable mentions are: Lizzo (my forever queen of self-confidence), Megan Jayne Crabbe (aka Bodyposipanda, the incredible author of Body positive power), Celeste Barber (the queen of body-real comedy) and last but not least Taryn Brumfitt (a true example of how to love your body, founder of the Body image movement). I still have a long way to go and there are many set-backs on the way to loving and accepting myself the way I aspire to. But I look so much forward to where life will bring me now, that I am learning to love that fabulous woman in the mirror.