Body Image

This was what I tweeted on Twitlonger on the 10th of May -

Ok so, no one will probably read this, but I have a lot that needs to be said about something. Over the past few weeks, I've learnt a lot about my body image and myself. As anyone who's seen my tweets can probably tell, I've been OBSESSED with my weight and how I look. I didn't see it like that at the time, but I was. I don't know what it was, but after a short period in my life where I didn't care so much about what my body looked like, I suddenly did. Something triggered it, I don't know what, but it just happened. I suddenly became depressed about my body image again and developed negative thoughts about every single imperfection on my body. Of course, at first, I went the wrong way about it, tried starving myself (which I've tried stupidly in the past when I was younger) and deprived myself of food even when I was hungry. This eventually backfired and I ended up probably over-eating again due to the lack of food I'd eaten, to try and make up for it. Then, once I'd started taking some new medication for other health reasons, after about a month or two, my weight rocketed, and this scared the shit out of me. I didn't realise it was the medication doing this at the time so I was worried, thought I was eating too much and so on. So I tried a different approach which I'd never done before - a diet, but not one replacing junk foods with healthy foods, just cutting out the bad stuff and keeping an eye on my calorie intake to try and lose the weight. I was honestly only able to do this for about 5 days, I was struggling, but the main reason I gave up with it is because I weighed myself on the 5th day and I hadn't lost anything - it was a horrible feeling because it felt like all my effort did nothing. I started exercising 3 times a week as well, weeks before that, and it seemed to do nothing at all. So then again, I probably over-ate to try and make up for the food I hadn't eaten, and that backfired even worse - I ended up putting on even more weight, and it's only up until tonight that that's been depressing me so much. It's been hard trying to accept myself as this new weight, even though I don't look that much different, but I felt so much fatter.

Only recently I was able to remember that one of the side effects of taking my medication was weight gain. I went to the doctor's on Monday and they said that it can happen - she also weighed me, and tonight I realised that the number that was on those scales appeared to show that I have lost a bit of weight again. It just made me think - what the hell was I worrying about? While I'm on this my weight will constantly be just up and down, and it will be impossible trying to control it. So from now on, I'm just letting it go. My weight will drop again once I come off this medication, but it all just got me thinking about the reasons I've been so desperate to lose weight and so scared to begin with.

I'll get to the point of what this tweet was going to be about - I wanted to say that I am so sick of the way society and the media portrays that if you aren't stick thin, you won't be considered attractive. Like if you don't have a flat stomach, or a gap between your thighs, or a tiny bum, then you're basically fat.

And you know what I say to that? Bullshit. The reason for MY insecurities and for thinking that MY body isn't good enough the way it is is because of them. People have constantly told me that I'm not fat and that I don't need to lose weight, but I think the media tells us otherwise and causes us to doubt ourselves. It makes us pick out things that we think are wrong with our body, and we constantly compare it to other 'idealistic' but unrealistic figures represented in the media. I have been trying to achieve a 'perfect body' but the truth is, it doesn't exist. The reason I've never been satisfied with how I look is because I've constantly compared myself to slimmer individuals because we've been taught to believe that that is the 'ideal body image' and most desirable, when really, that isn't true, and I think I speak for most girls when I say all this.

It's obviously a matter of opinion, but we shouldn't be made to believe that if we don't look like that, then we're ugly. 

Honestly, I'm proud to not be 'skinny'. I would rather have a more womanly figure than look like a child with no hips, no thighs, no bum, and no boobs any day!! As long as I'm a healthy weight, that's all that matters, because I know I'm not 'fat' and I don't need to worry about it.