11/29/2015 0 Comments Why I Stopped Weighing MyselfMost people have trouble with weight at some point in their life. In fact, body image issues, eating disorders, and obsessions with dieting are so common nowadays that those who are confident in their weight, body, and eating habits are almost considered outsiders. Adolescents are expected by their parents to go through a phase in which they ache to transform into the people they see in movies, magazines, and more. This is normal. This is wrong. For most of my life, I've always considered myself the biggest girl of the family. Growing up with an Asian mother and twin sister who took after her was hard, as I constantly compared myself to these tiny women, and questioned "why don't I look like them?" Throughout high school I watched my friends inevitably echo the words they had been trying to push away: "I need to lose weight" "I need to start a diet," or maybe "I have to go running now." People around me became so concerned with their weight and the way they looked, so set on a goal that they couldn't see the real, beautiful them staring back at them in the mirror. Like with every goal, you have failures. You have regression and you have feelings of guilt and defeat. What I've noticed is that many people nowadays are so concerned with living a healthy lifestyle that ironically they're doing the exact opposite of that. They're so set on eating leafy greens, minimizing the amount of food in their stomach, and running 5 miles a day, that they don't notice all the bad that these "healthy actions" are causing. Many times, this intense focus comes paired with "cheat days." On these occasions, we allow ourselves to indulge in the things we enjoy before we go back to our miserable routine. This is ridiculous. Of course eating 10 chocolate chip cookies every night before bed isn't the best habit and diets are put into action in order to save ourselves from health conditions. But these strict rules we are creating are actually making us more susceptible for other health conditions! We mentally and physically suffer from diets. We fight with ourselves to persevere through this discomfort, reprimand ourselves when we can't do it, and stop ourselves from improving our self esteem. I'm not suggesting that ALL diets are bad or that people who diet are idiots, but I'm merely trying to make people aware that the fad of diets is more dangerous than most realize. Eating healthy is great but that doesn't mean that you have to guilt trip yourself when you want to eat ice cream. Healthy eating is allowing yourself to do what makes you happy and not feeling bad about that. Since I've been more lenient towards myself when it comes to eating, I actually feel healthier. I'm not sure if I lost weight as I no longer weigh myself. Weight is just a number, yes, but it still affects me when I see it. If I look in the mirror and am happy with how I look, that's what matters, and so I don't need another reason to label myself.
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