Illness isn’t easy to deal with. It takes a toll on you, be it mental or physical. It affects you in ways that hamper and disrupt your everyday life, your routine life. And I recently had a tumultuous phase in my life where I suffered from physical illnesses for 4 and a half months. It turned my life around. I was bed ridden for almost the entire period and I even had to drop a semester in college. Those were dark times for my family and I. Yet, society seemed to find a way to lighten my mood and lift it up. Except they didn’t succeed much. You see, twisted notions of body image can never be the grounding factor to boost self esteem. I’ve lost more than ten kilos due to my illness. I’ve gone from being a size 8 to a size 2. It has scared me, it has shocked me. It’s not easy getting used to this body that feels alien to me because mind you, I was very content with the body I had. Those extra fat rolls never bothered me. What mattered to me was being healthy.
As I’m finally on the path to good health, various people I know have repeatedly told me, “You’re so lucky you got thin!”, “I wish I’d been sick.”, “I’m so jealous you lost so much weight.” People have actually expressed that they’re envious of me because my sickness made me loose weight. My sickness also gave me substantial body ache, skin problems like eczema, extreme discomfort, vomiting, and a lot more other problems. Is that the way you wish to encourage young people to lose weight? And why even encourage them to lose weight if they’re perfectly content with whatever their body weight may be? I was happy with the body I had before I had this phase of sickness. It’s taken me a while but I’m again happy with the body I now have after the sickness. I’ve learnt to accept it and maybe even love it.
But it’s not easy when there’s people telling me I should be thankful for the sickness I had. That is so insensitive and toxic. An unhealthy way to lose weight is nothing to be proud or happy about. It’s something I’ve embraced to be comfortable in my own skin now, but I will never wish to get sick to lose weight on myself or anybody else. It’s dangerous. This is what breeds eating disorders. It’s such a dialogue that promotes an unhealthy body image amongst young people wherein they think it’s acceptable for them to become sick and sacrifice their good health just to achieve a particular body type. It’s very harmful!
Let’s encourage people to love themselves in the skin they’re in because as long as they’re healthy, that’s all that matters.
Health comes before size. Size isn’t of any importance, health and happiness is. Don’t encourage that toxic thin obsession where you promote eating disorders and unhealthy ways to get thin. Be as body positive as you possibly can be. Please society, it’s time we stopped putting thinness before everything else in life.
Learn to love yourself and let people love themselves. Let people be healthy. Let people be happy. Let people be.
