Rushing Against the Dawn — A journey towards self-love

What is self-love? Is it narcissism or an avenue to help us be in balance with our body and mind? After years of punishing myself and poisoning my own mind, I decided to sign up for Pilates classes on a whim and hope to launch a journey to better connect with myself.

There’s this nice Pilates studio about a 25-minute walk from my home, and they had a 30 Day Challenge starting in May. Here’s me totally taking it as a sign that it was the time to whip myself back into wellness.

“Even through to my mid-twenties, I never learned how to love myself, and it’s haunting me.”

I’m currently finishing my second week of the challenge, and I’m really enjoying it. If you haven’t tried Pilates, I highly recommend it. Almost every morning (I’m a morning person), I find myself rushing against the dawn at 5.15am, trying in a weird way to outrun it as I walk to my class. I want to write more about my experience with Pilates when I finish the challenge. For me, this is not just a challenge to set myself on a path towards a healthier lifestyle, it is about trying to love myself a little bit more with each class and come to peace with my body. So hopefully, you’ll stay around for that article.

I’m not the athletic type as I spent my teenage years like most girls — making a tragedy out of my looks especially given the fact that my own mum has always been thin, and I took more of my dad’s ‘fluffy’ physique. This brought its own challenges as when I was a kid, I was considered quite chubby compared to other kids my age, by the time I reached my teens, I grew out of it, but like most teenage girls, I was obsessed over my looks, and I was striving to achieve to mum’s shape even though it is impossible.

At this point, you might be thinking that you’ve clicked on the wrong article, but I felt like sharing my life story through this medium (pun intended?) as I better express myself through writing. I have nothing to hide. I think in one way or another, a lot of people can relate to this story. It took me a while to get here, but I wanted to share with you what I went through, and if you’re going through something similar, this might resonate with you, and hopefully, we can figure out together our paths to self-love.

I started going to the same gym my mum was going to when I was 14 years old with the same PT she had. He was a good (though mostly merciless) trainer, and I got into good shape, but somewhere along the way of trying to get fit and become skinny, I crossed that line and created an unhealthy relationship with food. I lost too much weight for my teenage body to handle (but yay I could fit into some of my mum’s clothes for a moment there). I wanted to lose even more weight, and I literally had major breakdowns because I gained 100 grams overnight (q in eye roll).

How did it affect my health? It didn’t affect my physical health nearly as much as it did my mental health. Yes, there were physical repercussions like my period stopping for almost a year, and feeling even more fatigued because there was school, heavy exercising, and extracurricular activities. But kicking yourself mentally and punishing yourself is never good, no matter what you’re going through. You know what’s crazy, back then, when I had a piece of unhealthy or junk food, I would feel so guilty that it made me depressed. I would literally feel heavy like I gained 10 kilos after eating one little piece of chocolate or a small slice of pizza.

When I moved away from all of this (and by moving away literally moving to a different continent), eventually my relationship with my body moved in the opposite direction, where I put no care at all. Which increased the consumption of junk food, and lack of motivation to do any activity. After I moved away, I never really had that spark to go to the gym, which made me realise that there’s no one fit for all in terms of exercise.

Because of my past with the gym, I never really enjoyed it, it’s just not my type of activity. After a few years, I discovered my passion for yoga, and I couldn’t stop, I did it every morning, and it made a huge difference in my mental state and physical appearance, which was great, an added bonus was that I lost all the weight I gained over the years. Though a short while after, I spiralled into a similar pattern of creating unhealthy habits and found myself trying to lose even more weight.

Then life happened, and I abandoned myself again for another 3–4 years. Now I found myself in a horrible shape, very unappealing to myself and unhappy, so I wanted to do something good just for me. Even through to my mid-twenties, I never learned how to love myself, and it’s haunting me. Sometimes I have bad episodes when it starts affecting my daily life, even to this day. Which was a big sign for me to do something good for myself — aka try out something new like Pilates.

In brief, this is what I realised over the years:

• Diets are not a long-term solution to your weight goal, starving yourself is never good neither for your body nor for your
• Over-exhausting yourself with exercise will crush your soul (geez that came out a bit dramatic). Let’s try again.
• Over-exhausting yourself with exercise won’t bring joy, if you decide to do it, do it to make yourself happier not overworked. We’re already working so hard to try to live through everything that’s going on in the world, this will just start feeling like a burden rather than an avenue to be happier.
• Stay curious and open-minded. Everyone keeps telling you to go to the gym? Well, what if you don’t find joy in it. Over the years, so many people looked funny at me when I told them that I don’t like gyms even after giving it several tries. Go on a bit of a journey and explore, who knows, maybe you’ll really like aerial yoga or Zumba?
• Don’t like the gym, going to classes, or running? Urgh, I hate running. I love going on an energised walk (as evident by my 50-minute commitment to get to and from class) or even a hike on rare occasions.

Let me know what you recently adapted to your lifestyle to appreciate yourself a little bit more. I’d love to hear what helps you stay on track and be happy!