Struggling with Fitness
Those who’ve known me from a young age might remember be as the fat kid. At 8 years old, I was 4’10 my waist line was 30 and I weighed 130lbs. It was also a factor that unlike most children, I started puberty at the same time. You can imagine the kind of trauma being bullied for both being fat and starting to have boobs and breakouts when you’re not even in high school. It was only when I started learning martial arts that I eventually dropped 30lbs and had some sense of normalcy in my weight. However, when I stopped Taekwondo when I was 12 due to an injury during a competition that left my mother traumatised (I was bleeding everywhere), the rollercoaster of my weight loss and weight gain started. People don’t understand the kind of trauma children undergo at a young age when they’re verbally abused regarding their weight by their peers or even by people they love at home. Instead of being encouraged to live more active lifestyles and eating healthier, we learn to hate our bodies for not looking a certain way.
At the Flyweight Boxing Studio after work
During my early high school life, I was characterised as the kid who loathed physical activity. My friend would have to poke the sides of my back in order to “jumpstart” me into finishing a one mile run. I also went to a special high school for “gifted” kids that was insanely stressful and needed me to commute or be in the car for at least 2-4 hours a day. With all the factors combined and the weight started coming in, I would routinely either starve myself and then binge eat. It was a way to cope with the things I couldn’t control and a way to make sure that I wouldn’t get bullied for that again. Towards the end of my senior year, I was experiencing symptoms of depression that were alarming enough to make me take a short leave from school. As per my therapist, I began going to the gym for the first time to help my treatments. I got myself a trainer and went three times a week. Eventually, I felt better enough to return to school and my relationship with fitness began.
Wall climbing with my friend Gem
Years later, I found out that I actually had PCOS, a medical condition that made my hormones imbalanced, was one of the reasons behind my weight gain and possibly with mental health. I want to save my discussion about PCOS in another post about how I personally struggle with it, how the possibility of infertility is a difficult conversation to have (especially when dating), how I’ve had several conversations with women who also have it and struggle with and our joint frustrations about its treatment and the use of the pill.
While there are things and issues my body, I recognised sometime in university that I while I was not defined by it, it was a part of who I am. While I struggled during my early years of university to show up to the gym, I realised I was looking at fitness wrong. As a person, I knew it wasn’t sustainable to view fitness as a punishment or as a drug to overcompensate other parts of my life. I knew that for me to keep an active life, I had to find a way to make it more fun.
While I still go to the gym, I’ve been exploring other kinds of work outs like boxing, spinning, dance, hiking, parkour, climbing and so on. I’ve been cycling activities so I wouldn’t get bored and invite friends to more active things instead of just dinner or a movie (but occasionally I have those too). It’s good to have friends who go to regular workouts with you, just so you have other motivations besides your commitment to stay fit.
Doing a throwback series of my Indochina trip. Starting with Kayaking in Vang Vieng, Laos! ❤ . . . . #travelphotography #travel #travels #travelgram #asia #portrait #portraitphotography #laos #lao #vangvieng #travelblogger
I also started integrated my work outs to my travel.Whenever I go to a new city, I make it a point to try fitness classes, have physically taxing activities or walk a lot. So far I’ve done hiking, snowboarding, regular, kayaking, white water kayaking and so on!
To be honest though, it’s still quite a struggle, especially now that I’ve entered that freelance commercial modelling (to add to my income streams while my start up isn’t full operational yet). It’s hard to wean away from the idea that how you look does not define you are when you are industries that thrive on typecasts and objectify how you look. But for the most part, I’ve stopped making a scale define what I can and cannot do in life. l have learned that my weight does not define me as a person and that being interesting and a good person will always be more important than looking a certain way.
The next leg of my fitness journey? Learning to have a diet a works for me!
