No right way to have a body

“Everybody has this concept of what body type we should have and what weight we should aim for. I gained weight when I was 8 years old because I was on steroids due to a sinus problem. A couple of years down the line I began to feel the pressure that people put on me concerning my weight. As a result, I joined a gym when I was 12, weighed 60 kgs then. My parents put me there hoping it would help lose weight. I didn't do weights in the gym but I had to do a lot of cardio. Along with this I also went to a dietitian. Since that day, till date, I have had a dietitian. However, the gym didn't work out. Aerobics and gymnastics didn't either. Overexerting my body from such a young age messed up my menstrual cycle so bad that one time my cycle lasted 60 days. So my doctor advised me not to perform any hardcore exercises.

By the time I was 16 I weighed 85 kgs. My body had gone through a lot of stress during those years. However, the social part of it was persistent. When I stopped exercising during my board exams people said that I should do something about my weight. So I signed up for a protein shake program which again caused a lot of problems. There came a point when I was tired of it. I would exercise but I couldn't do it just for the sake of looking good. I realised that whatever people had been telling me about my weight and how I should look was absolutely irrelevant. If only I had been left alone when I was younger, I would have been an average sized yet happy girl.

I used to write a journal when I was in the 6th grade. Every other page was about how much I hated myself for being fat. Only once have I written about myself with pride because I had managed to starve myself for one whole day. That's what I was proud of when I was a little girl. My relatives’ comments didn't help much. They always had a hint of “concern”. They would say, “You look so pretty, if only you could lose your weight”. In college, this changed. My friends were supportive and I, too, was in a better frame of mind. Today, I am confident in my skin and comfortable being who I am. I pretty much am over the bad phase. But there are instances when people still nag me about losing weight so that I can find a man but that is not the purpose of my existence. I don't bother myself with such assumptions. I focus on working on my body purely to stay FIT mentally and physically. There are days of downward spiral. But for the most part I have good days now.”