Much like putting this article together, three years ago, in 2023, I had absolutely no idea where to begin. I was completely lost. I remember coming home one night after a work event. When you work in F&B and hospitality PR, work often means hosting media and eating and drinking everything on the special menu, because if I didn’t, that wouldn’t be very hospitable of me, right? Wrong.
I had also just ended a long-term relationship with a personal trainer. Throughout our relationship, I weighed around 104 kilograms, and for most of it, he never made me feel inferior because of my weight. Until the very end, that is. That night, I came home, stepped on the scale and saw that I was edging towards 105 kilograms. I looked at myself in the mirror and completely broke down. My doctors had already warned me that I was approaching type 2 diabetes, and I genuinely thought I had let things go too far. That there was no coming back from this. Or so I thought.
As most modern-day inspiration seems to arrive, I was scrolling through TikTok that night when I came across a creator who said something that stuck with me – every major redirection in life requires you to reprogram your brain. So I decided to reprogram mine. I knew I needed to change, but not because I didn’t feel beautiful. Not because I had become the “fat joke” amongst some family and friends, or because, in many South Asian families, the “fat daughter” isn’t exactly expected to find love, get married and live the fairytale. She’s expected to work hard, hustle and make money instead.
I needed to change because I couldn’t breathe properly anymore. I couldn’t sit down for too long without losing sensation in my legs. My health was on the line. And, if I’m being completely transparent, I was tired of being the joke. I remember being absolutely heartbroken and shattered at one point in my life and people finding it funny simply because of the way I looked.
Those words could have destroyed me. Instead, I decided to use them.
That night, at nearly 105 kilograms and feeling more defeated than I ever had before, I made up my mind. I was going to prove everyone, including myself, wrong.
My Villain Arc?
The next morning, I decided that if I was serious about reprogramming my brain, I needed professional help to do it. I found a life coach and therapist, started seeing him weekly, and we worked on something much bigger than weight loss, my fundamental beliefs about myself. He encouraged me to get a personal trainer, take control of my health and, for once, focus entirely on me. I locked in.
Apparently, this was my villain arc, suddenly, I was “too obsessed.” A couple of friends even told me I wasn’t being very body positive, and that hurt. Not because I don’t believe in body positivity, I absolutely do. But loving my body also meant taking seriously the fact that my doctors were warning me I was approaching type 2 diabetes. I wasn’t changing because I hated myself. I was changing because I finally cared enough about myself to do something.
Then there were the South Asian aunties and uncles, the same people who could laugh at my weight, tell me I’d never get married and compare me to Rasputia from Norbit suddenly had plenty to say when I stopped eating their greasy biryani. Then I was “too obsessed,” “too skinny” or accused of having a disorder. You genuinely cannot win, so I stopped trying to.
We live in a time full of buzzwords and opinions about how we should look, eat and feel about ourselves. But sometimes choosing yourself means being misunderstood. I needed to go all in because, for me, the alternative was continuing down a path that was seriously damaging my health. You are going to be the villain in somebody’s story. Just make sure you’re not the villain in your own.
The Things They Don’t Tell You
It took me three years to lose 50 kilograms,110 pounds, and that was intentional. From the beginning, I accepted that this was going to be a journey and not a quick ride. On the days the scale didn’t move, or I stared in the mirror convinced absolutely nothing was changing, I would remind myself of one thing, if I’m consistently eating in a calorie deficit and moving my body, change will come. I just had to trust the process long enough to actually see it.
The first thing nobody wants to hear, stop trying to lose weight as fast as possible. I know, boring. We all want the before-and-after picture yesterday. But extreme, rapid weight loss can come with muscle loss, loose skin and a pretty miserable relationship with food. More importantly, what’s the point of losing it quickly if you can’t live that way forever? This isn’t supposed to be a body transformation. It’s a life transformation.
The second thing? People assume you lose the weight and then your mind magically catches up. For me, it was the complete opposite. I had to start changing the way I thought before my body followed. The body came later. The real transformation had already started in my mind.
So, what really changed?
I did.
I became happier. More disciplined. More protective of my peace. People’s opinions still exist, trust me, they always will, but they stopped carrying the weight they once did. Weight and bodies will always be sensitive subjects, particularly for women, and I’m certainly not here to tell anyone what theirs should look like. I can only tell you what I learned from mine, drown out the noise and get brutally familiar with what healthy feels like for your own body and, most importantly, your mind.
Making the most of your one life doesn’t mean eating and drinking everything humanly possible in the name of “living.” Sometimes it means keeping promises to yourself and living with discipline, integrity and self-respect. Looking in the mirror and being genuinely proud of the person looking back, and not just because of what she looks like.
Three years ago, I thought I needed to lose 50 kilograms to change my life. It turns out, I needed to change my life to lose them.
