the dangerous question of why and how it disrupted my life

Growing up I always found myself questioning “why” to everything but holy crap this was ten times more amplified during the time of quarantine. During the isolation the whole world was trapped in, I succumbed to unbearable boredom and spent endless hours scrolling through social media, especially TikTok and Instagram. At this time, I was incredibly insecure about the state of my acne and my body image as I had gained hella weight from trying every single recipe I found on TikTok. From whipped coffee to mini churros to mug cakes, I slowly became a mad scientist in the kitchen. Unfortunately, I was not blessed with the metabolism of a teenage boy and all these little experiments began to add up.

This was when the whole world seemed to become obsessed with fitness and nutrition as Chole Ting came to light. And kudos to her, her workout regime was insane and gained immense popularity for obvious reasons. My for you page began to transform from recipes to workout videos and endless body checks and one thing became apparent to me. I look nothing like these girls I saw on my screen. The questions began to rise. Why didn’t I look like them? Why isn’t my waist as small as theirs? Why isn’t my stomach as flat as theirs?

My self-hatred grew exponentially. I wanted nothing more but to look like them and that is precisely what I set out to do. Unfortunately for me, I knew absolutely nothing about nutrition or fitness. I come from a Pakistani family where food was THE way of showing love to each other and EVERYTHING on the plate had to be finished. So that obviously set a great foundation for my fitness journey. I figured all I had to do was eat less and work out a lot to lose weight but oh lord I could not have been more wrong. Nevertheless, that is what I did.

Of course, this method worked as results began to show. I lost a couple of pounds and the compliments rolled innnnn. “Wow, did you lose weight? You look good, keep it up” or “Have you been eating less, you look healthier?”. From these types of compliments, I began to associate looking pretty and accepted by others with losing weight and that is when everything began to go downhill. I knew I could lose more weight because all the other girls looked like they weighed less and looked a lot smaller than I did. So I began restricting more and more, working out more and more, and losing more and more weight.

Crazy to think that all this happened because of a small question of why.

Looking back I can confidently say that comparison is a curse and is incredibly detrimental to anyone’s mental health. I wish someone told me from the beginning that no one is meant to look the same. Each body is different and not meant to have the same needs or shape. That’s why it is always so hard to find jeans that fit! We just come in so many shapes and sizes, and that is exactly how we should be! Your body is your very own and you should love and cherish it as your very own temple. It is the only body you will ever have and once you begin to love it, it will love you back. You’ll see what I mean in a future blog post, but I still have miles before my recovery actually began :P. 

Self-love takes time and A LOT of healing for anyone who suffered from any self-doubt and insecurity the way I did and to be completely honest, still do. One thing I have learned is that recovery takes time as my eating disorder didn’t develop over a couple of days. It developed over 4 years!!! And even if it takes me four years to recover, it will all be worth it in the end and if you keep reading, you’ll soon find out why.

XOXO,

Laiba <3