Still, I am so pleased to be home. To see my family, my bed, my books, my garden, and my lovely Muslim shower that sadly has already begun its summertime volcanic activity.
Make no mistake: "You look healthy" means "You look like lard and potatoes had a baby"
There was, I hasten to mention, a disturbing theme to my travel that started with the passport control at Abu Dhabi. “Well,” said the woman checking my passport picture, “don’t you look different?” This is not wholly unexpected for two reasons that have nothing to do with fraud (you hear that, US immigration? NOTHING!). The first is that when I had my most recent passport photo taken, the guy asked me if he should airbrush out some spots. Yes please! I had never been airbrushed before and admittedly got a bit too carried away, so that now my face in the passport picture looks like it belongs to a fiercely pouting android. The second reason is that in the last month, what with work and leisure commitments, I have seen the inside of a gym only twice and one of those times was because I had to use the loo in the area.
You would think that this isn’t a major deal. Pfft, you might add, what’s a month? I totally agree. That’s why I thought nothing of starting every morning for two weeks with a lovely almond croissant (logic: almonds are healthier than chocolate, obvs) and ending it with fried take-out food, because “treat yo self” is a good motto. It took about six days for everything to fall spectacularly out of place. My waistline expanded, my cheeks filled out and my resting metabolism, already reeling from quitting smoking and general stress, went full-on comatose.
As with any weight gain, you think you are the last one to notice it.
When I got to Lahore and gave my passport to the tired-looking immigration officer, he did an exaggerated double take before launching the cruise-missile of “Aap to kaafi healthy ho gaye hain.” Healthy. Healthy? HEALTHY?!
The world “healthy”, need I stress, is a synonym in our part of the world for “Fat” and is, as such, one of the last remaining vestiges of the “big is better” attitude that has permeated South Asia since the dawn of time. But make no mistake: “you look healthy” means “you look like lard and potatoes had a baby.”
It’s the same word my cook/domestic dictator Zia-ul-Haq said on seeing me. As did the electrician who I called in to fix my air conditioner. When I saw my trainer the next morning, he didn’t even have words, and instead just looked at me with downcast eyes as if to say, “Why?”
I didn’t go into the tailspin of self-doubt that these reactions used to previously inspire. I lost most of my weight many years ago, and keeping it off is going to be a life-long battle. Bad attitudes towards food, like any addiction, are never cured so much as managed. I am acutely aware that my body’s default position when not exercising is not “Underweight” as much as it is “Under chocolate”. This is not a problem for me for the most part. I have come to accept that the near-constant self-criticism that goes on in my head is white noise, and that a thought is not necessarily the truth. I remember seeing a picture of me from college a few years ago and I remember looking at the lanky arms and sunken cheeks and feeling…sad. Sad that the Me in the photograph hadn’t appreciated himself at the time, had felt the same self-doubt and dare I say, even self-loathing that now, looking back, seems wholly unjustified. And cruel. Now whenever I feel bad my about body, I remind myself that when I look back in ten years, I’ll have wished I were kinder to myself.
It just so happens that it’s Body Image Awareness week right now, and the only reason I know this is because of the many articles on weight loss that have been flooding my Newsfeed recently and acting like well-timed therapy for me. They demonstrate that everyone is fighting their own battles in their heads, and I’m happy to not feel alone in this. Though at the end of it, how you feel is really up to you.
Such self-induced flurries of positivity aside, though, I’m cutting out carbs and skipping dinner for the next three weeks because there is no harm in being both thin and happy. None at all. Plus croissants don’t last well in the heat.
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