Fat ≠ Miserable

There I am, just having a cheeky browse on Twitter when this link to a post pops up promising me I can see pictures of celebrities now that they've lost loads of weight. Immediately I'm like "skinny Rebel Wilson?!" and click on it. I realise this is one of those slideshow things pretty quick, so I trail through 50 Cent, Zach Galifanakis, Raven Symone... where is Rebel?! I keep clicking and before long I've clicked 'Next Page' maybe thirty or forty times.

I see a lot of people who must've worked so hard for what the body they have now, and good on 'em. Seriously. But do any of them love themselves? Is weight loss acting here as a form of pressure in the industry? Or are these people doing it for themselves? Did they want to do it? Was their heart in danger? Oh the questions.

In the past I've lost three stone in less than two years through sheer willpower and exercise. I ate right and went to the gym three or four times a week. I really did feel bloody fantastic... sometimes. Really though, I felt like I wasn't enough. I didn't actually like anything about my soft and natural body. I felt so unbelievably guilty when I didn't exercise for a couple of days. It got to the point where I wouldn't even touch a jar of Nutella. It got a bit weird. As happy as I was with the way I was starting to look, I got into the whole thing because I wasn't happy in the slightest. I became obsessed.

And guess what? I wasn't ever going to be fully happy this way. So I quit the gym and I started eating chocolate again. I stopped eating meat even though I screamed what about the protein?! in my head about a million times. I gained two thirds of the weight back in a couple of months. Then I decided to try a vegan lifestyle. And only then I started to realise that I am in charge of how, why, and when, food gets to dictate my life.

Initially losing weight made me happy-ish, and exercise released those all important endorphins. But that wasn't the type of happiness I craved. What I wanted was something flexible but constant, and that is what I have now - satisfaction. For the longest time I thought as the weight dropped off, my smile would grow. It did, but my anxiety grew too.

I've learned now that fat and happy are not mutually exclusive. I can be chubby, happy, and healthy. I could do with getting some cardio in, but pshh, who couldn't?

Oh, and fuck the media.