These days on social media, you are highly praised for having a size zero waist. The amount of pressure on you is higher than ever before and it can be a daunting feeling. This is why I decided to share how the social media pressure has affected me, and how much damage it could be doing to you or someone else you know.
About two years ago, before I started my blog I dropped around 10kgs. It was something that started out as me wanting to eat healthy and take care of my body which I eventually let turn into a disorder, filled with sleepless nights and anxiety problems. Something I didn’t think would ever happen to me. Before this all happened, I had been happy with my body, there was no major self esteem issues and I was quite confident with how I looked.
It was when I started to meet lots of models and started getting a few modelling gigs myself that I decided I needed to start taking care of myself a little more. Just to make this clear, no one said this to me, I came up with it myself. So I downloaded the “myfitnesspal” app. This is an app where you track your calories for the day, set yourself goals and track your weight loss over the time that you started. I just thought it would be a good way for me to only eat what I needed, instead of over eating which is something I tend to do… I am a massive foodie. I love really good quality food!
Somewhere in those few months, I started to really rely on the number of calories I was allowed. To the point that when I was eating something I wouldn’t enjoy it, I would just think to myself “okay cool that’s only 100 calories so I have 500 left for dinner but I’ll try to not eat all of them” or “I am so freaking hungry, but if I eat right now, I’ll be over my goal.. I’ll just have a glass of water and hope it goes away” People started to point out my weight. Complaining that I had gotten too thin. P.s I know you were tying to help, but this doesn’t help, this just made me feel worse. I was in denial because I strongly believed that this was not a disorder, I just thought I was being healthy. The fact that I was still eating led me to believe that I was fine. But I wasn’t. Not really.
On days where I ate over my goal I wouldn’t sleep all night because I just thought about how big I was going to get. It’s like the scariest thing that could ever happen to me was get fat. Anxiety kicked in. If you know me, you’d know that I am the most chill person ever. Anxiety and I had never really met before… How did I let it get this bad??
What happened was I stopped looking at how I looked in the mirror and instead I focussed on the number on the scale. When I finally hit 57kgs (which I suppose sounds ridiculous to you all but I am really tall. The “normal” weight for my height is 70kgs (according to the docs) I decided that this was a good weight for me and to be honest I was so sick of people complaining about how I looked. I knew I had gone too far and I decided I would start to just try and maintain the weight I was on.
While I was “maintaining” my weight, I started to relax my thinking about it. I still had a few sleepless nights here and there about how I was letting the ball drop and how fat I was going to get. Eventually over time, I got sick of it. I got sick of the app, I got sick of being so hard on myself and I was tired of noting down every single thing I ate! I decided to delete it off my phone. The next month or so, I downloaded and deleted it off my phone multiple times. Because I had been doing this for so long, I still wanted to be really skinny but I didn’t want all the issues that it came with.
I deleted it for the final time and I started to gain some weight. I’m really grateful no one mentioned my weight gain when I slowly started gaining it back, even though I could tell they noticed, they knew not to talk about it by this point. I was still in a really weird state of mind. It has been such a “off limits” topic for me, again if you know me.. I talk about ANYTHING. I decided to share this with you all because it turned me into such a different person while it was happening. I had no idea how cloudy my brain had become, and how obsessed I had become with being tiny.
These days, I’m back to my old self. I’m at a healthy weight and I feel good. I’m no way near perfect, I have a sugar addiction and I over eat dinner sometimes but I’m really okay with this. I know I’m really lucky to be so comfortable with myself. I know that a lot of other girls struggle much worse than I but the fact that this did affect me the way that it did just proves that it really can happen to anyone.
Even though, I preferred not to discuss it with anyone until now, I know that talking about it could have made the situation so much better. It’s awkward and uncomfortable at first but once you do, it’s like a massive weight has lifted off your shoulders.
Essena O’Neill seems to be hot on everyone’s lips right now, the girl living the Instagram dream, known for her perfect body, having the perfect boyfriend and the ability to take a few thousand decent pictures for her social media account.