Why I Decided to Lose Weight and How I Did It

Like many other girls, I’ve struggled with my body image since I was very young. The picture on the left shows me at age eleven. As I look at the young girl in this picture, I can’t help but feel a tweak of sadness and frustration because I can’t understand how this size was considered by some people that I knew as “big”. Around this age in fourth grade, a classmate had wrapped her fingers around my wrist, smiled up at me and unabashedly said, “Chubby.” In fact, she would constantly refer to me as her “chubby, chubby friend.”

I wish I could stop at that one incident but throughout my childhood, many people constantly made statements about my size.

In sixth grade, some of my classmates’ parents would come up to me, pinch my cheeks or size up my body and say with a disappointed/condescending tone, “You’re getting fatter!”

In freshman year, friends would tell me they overheard people talking about how fat I was.

When I was 16, someone had told me that they thought the dress I was wearing at the time was going to burst onstage.

In a way, I feel embarrassed to even mention these people or blame them for my insecurities. After all, it wasn’t them that decided I should finish several bags of chips a day. It wasn’t them that coaxed me to get another healthy serving of rice. Being overweight in many cases is a result of some level of irresponsibility on the individual’s part. And who knows, maybe I was just too sensitive.

However, receiving those comments from other people affected me negatively in significant ways. And up to this day, I never really quite understood why some people feel the need to say such things in the first place. All I know is that it didn’t come across as encouragement for me to take better care of myself; it just felt like they badly wanted to make me feel bad. And it worked.

For years, even at a healthy size, I remained painfully insecure. Even as the obnoxious yet subtle remarks from other people became much less infrequent, the idea that I am pretty much unattractive and “fat” was seared into my brain, even when none of those things were probably true.

For some reason, these comments from other people actually made me care less about my body. I developed a habit of binge-eating candies (I was notorious for this in my family) and chips (just ask my roommates in Hong Kong) and naturally, this led to me gaining a lot of weight. The more weight I gained, the less self-esteem I had. I think this is partly because I know of many people who would comment on my weight before they made any mention of any of my achievements.

Looking back, I think I definitely gained the most weight in Hong Kong. I don’t have a specific number exactly because I never weighed myself, but judging by the changes in my appearance and the extremely unhealthy habits that I had (which included regular trips to McDonald’s, a Japanese ice cream stall, and a dessert place for chocolate lava cake), it definitely would have amounted to a lot. Eating was just my go-to activity. Watching the new episode of Jane the Virgin? Lemme get some chips and ice cream for that. Finished a boring Economics IA? Lava cake tiiiime! Homesick? I’m gonna stop at the wet market to get some Filipino snacks.  Eating was not just a way to “reward” myself, or to cope with challenging emotions, it was a pastime of its own.

I was pretty depressed for a time when I was there in Hong Kong despite the many passionate groups I was part of. As my two years were ending, I felt like I had “lost so much and gained so little.” With the exception of my weight that is, but I can’t say that’s a good thing. (Admittedly, I was being a tad overdramatic at the time I wrote that excerpt from my journal because the boarding school experience was overall positively impactful for me).

During my stay there, I had stopped caring about my appearance. In addition to my constant need to snack on something, I wore the absolute sloppiest clothes – a typical outfit involved a pair of basketball shorts and some souvenir shirts from places I’d never been to. I had convinced myself that I didn’t want to look good because it was shallow and yaaaay body positivitayyy, even though very, very deep inside, and this is embarrassing to admit, I felt very disappointed with the consequences of my failure to take care of myself.

When I went to the U.S. for university, I was thankful for the fresh start. I wanted everything to be better. I wanted a more positive mindset, a more honest approach to interacting with people, and a healthier body. To be honest, I didn’t really know how to start going about losing weight. My beginnings were very slow and I was always a little reluctant. It started off with me dragging myself to the Hip-hop Fitness classes two of my friends liked to go to. I remember my knees hurting quite a bit for days after that %$#@.

This lazy start comprised of slowly phasing out some of the junk I ate, spending thirty minutes on the elliptical, and still the occasional hip-hop fitness (which isn’t really much of hip-hop to be honest). Through all of this, I absolutely refused to check my weight. So to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what my starting weight was. (I estimate it to around ~185 lbs in August though.)

I could lie and tell you that it was simply because I was extremely stingy with money at the time and refused to buy a weighing scale, but the thing is I could have borrowed someone else’s. The main reason I didn’t want to weigh myself at the start was because part of me was afraid that I would pour in a lot of effort into losing weight, and not get any results.

I know, I know…that doesn’t really make any sense, I know that now. All I know is at that time, I felt this fear of failing…and it’s not the nonchalant kind of feeling I get when I anticipate not being able to follow through with my ambitious New Year’s Resolutions (Shut up, you suck at it too).

Let me admit this: I was lucky. I was extremely confused at the time and my motivation was hindered by anxiety, but I knew special people who were proactive with their own health and fitness and people who just wanted me to be happier with myself. Thank you, Paige, Victoria, Erika, Kenneth, and Ange. With your constant encouragement, endless supply of compliments, and for some of you, your willingness to be my occasional gym buddy (lol), I was motivated to increase my progress.

Eventually, I started spending an hour total every day in the gym as an elliptical regular and slowly conquered my irrational fear of treadmills. I bought nicer gym outfits to motivate myself to go. I have forbidden myself from consuming sodas (one year in August!). For breakfast I would have either oatmeal, yogurt, or cereal, paired with fruit. I ate salad for lunch and really, really forced myself to not have a small platter filled with cookies after every meal.

I am currently at ~149 lbs, meaning I’ve lost about 35 lbs. Well, it would have been closer to 40 now but I’ve been slacking off recently and may have gained some weight back…

So yes, admittedly, I’m not the best at losing weight, so don’t think I’m the best at this. I sometimes still indulge and have my moments of weakness. As I said, I’ve gained around 3-4 lbs since coming back to the Philippines for the summer (minor setback, it’s been ~a year since I’ve had these Filipino dishes and snacks so shut up) but I still exercise self-control in some way to make sure I don’t gain all the weight back.

Nevertheless, I’m aiming to lose some more weight and to gain strength. I know that many people will reassure me that I looked just fine when I was at ~185, and I appreciate all of those that actually mean it. But the truth is, I just didn’t feel good about myself. I ran out of breath even when simply walking. I knew that I was more vulnerable to illnesses. I worried about my attractiveness. These are real problems that have gnawed on my self-esteem and no words of reassurance can convince me. And I can’t be appeased when I know that there is still more room for improvement. Put simply, working hard to see these changes in my body is more empowering to me than trying to convince myself that I am happy with being overweight.

I am confident that I will be able to reach a healthy weight and size with the proper diet and exercise. More importantly, I want to rid of the cancerous things people have said to me when I was younger and see them for what they really are – shallow, inconsequential remarks. Many times, when I remember particularly painful memories, I still get a heavy, embarrassed feeling. I also wonder if it’s worth losing weight at all since even when I was at a size that was healthy, people called me fat. Many of those comments were from kids though and I can excuse that. And to be fair, I doubt that that girl in fourth grade would dare say anything like that to me anymore. I do wonder what excuse the older people could have though.

If I could give any advice for Ferna in September 2016, it’s to not underestimate herself. I watched Youtube videos where overweight girls lost 30-60 lbs in various periods of time and I doubted that I could achieve the same for myself. If you reading this are someone who has those same doubts, trust me when I say that discipline does give results. I don’t get super breathless when I speed-walk to class anymore and I feel more confident about myself. I also feel like I’m a lot less sensitive to people’s remarks. Honestly, if someone has something to say to me about my weight, I’d probably be less affected, especially since I’ve come to terms with the fact that losing weight takes time. Additionally, I don’t have to wait until I reach my weight goal to act confidently. Although when that time comes, oh boyyy, y’all ain’t ready.

I know this was an insanely long post, but I honestly feel like I have even more to talk about in greater detail. Thank you to those of you who patiently read every word. Be sure to stay tuned because I’ll be updating you with my progress. And trust me, there will be lots more of it.

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