Fathoming ourselves

This post has been marinating in my head over the last couple of days. I am still debating the wisdom of posting it here—wondering, whether what I am about to say is counter productive to the expressed objective of this blog. But then, most of you guys who know me well, know how difficult it is for me to think one thing and then not immediately say it. So forgive me my lack of restraint.

It’s just that every time someone advocates weight loss, my guards go up. Please don’t get me wrong, I am with you on the need for motivation to tackle weight loss thing. And I do agree that weight can, and does effect your health. But over the last days, I’ve heard food being referred to as the evil enemy, being a foodie referred to as something you need to “quit”, 50 kilos being referred to as fat, and this, has been making me deeply discomfited.

Living in a (rather skewed) culture that places unimaginably high and undue premium on the skinny ideal, to hear friends talk like this, somehow is hitting too close home, I guess.

I’ve pretty much always been seen as fat. And I say seen, because in all the years of relatives, friends, and many time, entirely random strangers, telling me to lose weight, never once has what I think of my own body mattered. I was fat, and so I needed to lose weight, because it is not healthy to not to. And of course, I resented it. More because I didn’t get it. You see, the strange bit here is that I have as many skinny friends as the next person. But standing next to them, I never felt particularly unhealthy, or even less healthy. Of course, I was far from what was the “ideal weight” that was predetermined for me. Even so, I’ve often had more stamina, more energy and fewer health problems that most of them. So I never understood the lose-weight-get-healthy thing, even as doctors have blamed my weight for everything from my headaches to dandruff (I kid you not.). 

And then one day, one doc called it for what it is. When I shrugged at her weight loss talk she said, “Don’t you want to lose weight, be aesthetically pleasing for others to look at?” Aesthetically pleasing.

And therein lies my problem with the whole weightloss rigmarole—the idea that skinny is pretty, pretty is healthy, so shed those tires fatso, so that we can look at you. I think this thinking needs to go—this whole wrapping a deep-seated preference for a body image in the shiny coat of healthy and selling it as concern. I am not saying overweight is healthy, but that we need to stop pretending there is an absolute co-relation between weight and health, because that does not always tick. Our bodies are different, and what works for one should not be the median that the rest of us try to follow. We need to better understand our body, what it is capable of and with how much.

I decided to lose weight when I felt my weight was physically coming in the way of me doing all the everything I wanted to do. And I decided to do it on my own terms—by being in control of what and how much I eat, how much activity I get. I didn’t want to punish my body into submission, I wanted to work with it. And no, I am not losing weight overnight, but I am feeling better about myself.

I think as women, as friends, we need to encourage and inspire each other to get more in control over how we perceive ourselves, and what we make our bodies go through and why. We need to learn, not to hate food and our bodies, warts and all, but to continue to love, but learn to be more in control of both. To not give up on what we love, but to make healthy choices while not beating ourselves up too much for indulging ourselves. Most importantly, to concentrate on how we feel, what we think of ourselves not how we look and how others want to see us. I hope we can all get to healthy—whichever side of the weight spectrum that falls at, without losing our sanity, our loves, or our selves.