by Missy J
Here’s a potentially unpopular opinion: I hate articles about people who have successfully lost weight. I have nothing against the people featured in these columns, but I take issue with the narrative these articles propagate. On the surface, they’re meant to inspire the reader. If Average Jane can do it, so can you! But if I’m being honest, weight loss success stories often made me feel discouraged. I couldn’t understand why others could achieve their ideal weight, yet I kept failing.
My weight used to be socially acceptable. At one point, I was even underweight. Things changed when I lost my father to cancer. I fell into deep depression, and although I didn’t realise this at the time, I also had clinical anxiety. I had to take a semester off university because I couldn’t even write, which, up till then, was the one activity that brought me joy.
Subsequently, I was put on a cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics and sedatives. I stopped socialising and would spend all my time in bed with just my cats for company, my curtains drawn shut. The sudden cessation of physical activity, combined with the side effects of medication, made me put on a whopping 35 kg over just two years.
Cue unsolicited comments about how unattractive the weight gain made me look. No one seemed concerned that my breathing was now affected, that I had developed pre-hypertension and that I was feeling suicidal. I was no longer “hot”, and that made people talk about me in unflattering, hushed tones.
A tremendous amount of therapy went into helping me regain the ability to socialise and to rediscover the fun in writing. When I finally returned to university, I was still struggling emotionally and mentally, but I smashed all my modules nonetheless and graduated with Honours.
To celebrate, my family and I hired the services of a photo studio. I was proud of everything I had and was still attempting to overcome. You could see this in my smile as I grinned in my graduation gown. When I received the photos, I found the studio had ineptly airbrushed my double chin out, leaving me looking like I had no neck. Like Jabba the Hut, my face seemed to melt shapelessly into my collarbone. But hey, at least I didn’t have that pesky double chin anymore.
I was devastated by this little incident. All the effort and achievements over two nightmarish years had been swiped away in a clumsy attempt to fix my appearance.
Herein lies the problem with most weight loss success stories. The spotlight is never on the underlying issues which may contribute to weight gain.
If these topics are mentioned, they’re done so in passing. The treatment of these concerns is never part of the package of the journey to overall well-being.
Ultimately, what’s most troubling about these stories is the implicit message that the subjects were less worthy in their overweight forms. They didn’t earn the right to happiness until they had shed those ugly kilos.
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