Weight has always been an issue, no problem… actually, I have no words actually for what I have because it’s exactly a problem but it kind of is.

For some of my childhood I was obese. I loved to eat and well, didn’t like to play ANY sports so I just sat around for most of the day

Imagine having your entire school life being called ‘Golu’ or ‘Motu’. If I had to pinpoint where I started hating the way I looked it would be junior school. I never wanted to go to school because I just didn’t want to face my day, to be told again and again that I wasn’t perfect in some way.

All the name calling and all the teasing snowballed and finally I said ‘ENOUGH’ and joined squash classes. 

Okay, it really wasn’t that easy. I had to convince myself that I needed to do this for myself and also to stop the relentless bullying. I cried that first squash class because the fat kid didn’t want to run. LOL! But as I got better and as I started winning games I began to fall in love with the sport.

It turned out, me, the fat kid could do something sporty and actually do well. The ‘high’ I would get from winning is beyond words. Imagine being the kid who would never be picked to play sports during PE, to being the kid who actually won AT SOMETHING.

I won some games and I lost some, but what I really lost was FAT, and loads of it!

I looked amazing (if I may say so myself) and guess what? All the teasing stopped and all the name calling stopped too. I had officially climbed the social ladder and was finally seen as partially acceptable. I’m not going to lie, it felt amazing to finally be in the crowd. It was as if a switch had gone off in everyone’s head. They were cool with me all of a sudden, and being as naive as I was, I went with it, because hey, the teasing had stopped.

I lived in that moment for a while, and slowly the joy it gave me started to wear off. I don’t know how it happened but I fell out of love with the feeling.

It didn’t know it then then I had internalized the self hate and the self loathing. It just hid somewhere for a few months, but when it came back, it came back stronger.

I knew I was liked just because I’d lost a few kilos, it felt insulting and I felt insecure. In my mind I blamed myself because the only thing I presented to the world were my looks, I had convinced myself that nobody liked or even loved me for who I am, so there began the negativity again.

It was worse to go back into that loop of self hate because, simply put, why do I need to do this again?

I couldn’t bring myself to look in the mirror. So this is when, ladies and gentlemen, I started binge eating and boy oh boy was it serious.

Chips, pakoray, chocolate, ice cream and the sort, oh and I even left playing squash because there was just no more motivation to do so. I felt empty on the inside, and as sad as it sounds, food was the only thing that could fill that void. So yeah, I got fat again. Wohoo!

Stuff got even worse. If you lose weight and then regain it all back people have stuff to say. They make you feel so bad! But I think at this point I just can’t give damn. Like I’ve heard the ‘kaafi healthy hogaye ho’ too many times in my life for it to matter to me anymore. I mean 10 years of the same shit over and over again, now I’m just immune.

Now I’ve gotten to a point where I really can’t give a damn but my insecurities came back the other day and that too with vengeance.

So I was stalking myself and in those photos I found myself, only thinner. I loved the way I looked (not in a narcissistic way or anything) and I had a FREAKING jawline. Like wow. Then it hit me, when these photos were taken, I hated my body and the way I looked. It was just funny, I lost weight, looked amazing, felt bad again, gained weight and now love the way I looked back then.

I now know how to love myself. I wish I had only known this back in school because those were tough years.

Being a fat kid in school is not easy. Oh and by no means do I blame my bullies entirely, I know I am to blame for how I treated my body, but people never let me have the chance to love myself that way I was. I let what people thought about me to inform how I felt about myself and it was terrible. I’ve ruined my self confidence, my image of myself in my own eyes and worst of all my own health.