Whale 🐳 on Earth

You look up and see your reflection in the mirror looking back at you. Your skin has dulled, you look like you’re bursting out of your body with how big you’ve gotten, stretch marks on your hips and thighs and chest etched into your flesh. You feel ugly, like you want to apologise to the people who have to glance in your direction and see you.

But you don’t let that destroy you. No. You immediately trot back out to your bedroom and plop onto the chair at your desk. You start making a plan. You will not give up on this plan no matter how many times you fail.

“Okay, so calculate my TDEE, minus 100 from it and set that as my cal limit. Hmmm, OMAD sounds good and for the rest of the time I can drink unlimited unsweetened black tea. Two litres of water and no strict plan to work out.” You mutter to yourself. You write as neatly as your stubby hands allow you to and download a tracker app where you can input your weight and calories.

The first few days are very hard, almost torturous. You’re tired, your stomach really hurts, you have no energy, and you feel like binging almost all day.

But you push through.

The next few weeks are slightly easier, every day that goes by, your confidence in yourself increases. It looks like you might actually do it this time.

And then you binge.

“Fuck” you sniffle as you wipe the sauce off your lips. You’re in pain from how much you’ve eaten after your stomach shrunk from eating very little every day. You feel nauseous and you’re dreading that you have to record every single calorie that you’ve inhaled in your trance.

The next day, you get up and you fucking keep going. No, this is not like the other times where the one time you stumbled you’d continued to fall off the wagon completely. No. This time you’re doing it till the end.

A couple more weeks go by and you’re seeing the numbers drop, little by little. You also notice small things like your clothes getting looser, the silhouette of your bones rippling under your skin. You learn to cope with the fatigue by lot’s and lot’s of tea, water, eating very protein rich foods and actually doing things you enjoy so you don’t think about food as much.

You start walking. Yep. Walking. On the treadmill at first, but then you get the urge to go and explore your city. Visit new places and marvel at the old ones. You go and see as many free museums as you can, take pictures when you remember to, and actually look forward to your days.

You start to get back into dancing and youtube workouts. Nothing crazy of course, but dancing and working out is satisfying and fun, seeing your progress at the exercises, your body getting more flexible and elegant… it brings you a sense of pride and confidence.

Now, it’s getting closer to summer and you don’t want to shed your layers yet. You’re almost there but not quite yet, you still feel like you’re fat and ugly, that you don’t deserve to be feminine and have nice clothes. That you’d ruin them anyway. But of course, you’re smart and observant enough to notice that those thoughts might not actually be attuned with reality.

So you start to really focus on your self confidence. You start saying affirmations to yourself every single morning in the mirror. “I’m beautiful, I’m smart, I’m capable and I can overcome anything” becomes your new morning mantra. You start complimenting people on a whim, start forcing yourself to take a step back and center yourself before entering a room, starting a conversation or meeting someone new. You start to journal, but in a productive way. You don’t just vent, you problem solve, reflect and improve.

Now it’s the end of june and the weather is officially way too warm to keep wearing hoodies and oversized pants. Now? You’re ready to shed and emerge from your coccoon. You’re also ready to give yourself a major makeover.

You book appointments to get everything done. That waxing appointment that you’ve been avoiding like the plague for months now, the nails, the lashes, the eyebrows, the facial, the haircut and blowout. You even schedule a massage in there. Oh, and don’t forget the shopping spree.

You go on the shopping spree first, needing to get out of the sweaty hoodies as soon as humanly possible.

You go into all the stores you used to dream about shopping freely at when you were heavier. You nervously pitter patter around the shorts section. After a while, you decide on a cute skirt, a sundress a crop top and a bralette and to play it safe you go with the medium sized tops and size 40 bottoms.

You shuffle into the dressing room, and change into the first outfit. As you stare at your reflection your jaw drops. Every single item you tried on was too big. Like the ill fitting type of too big. You hear a shopping assistant walk by the dressing rooms and you step out and you shyly ask her if she could get you some of the items in a size small.

She looks you up and down and says “alright ma’am, but if you’re wearing a medium right now, you’d better fit a size extra small.”

You reluctantly try on the items she brings you in an xs and to your surprise they fit perfectly. You’re in shock from just how well everything fits. After picking up a few more essentials, you step out of the store with your hands full of shopping bags and tears in your eyes. Except this time they’re happy tears.

On the day of your appointments, the salon ladies that hadn’t seen you in ages gasp and fawn as you step through the door. They compliment you on your weight loss and your beauty, saying things like “is that really you??” And “i could never, your self-restraint is unreal”.

They get to work, after all, you’re everyone’s client today, since you need a whole makeover. You first hop up on the waxing lady’s table and take off everything but your undergarments. She gasps in shock.

“Sweetheart, I knew you’d lost weight but now that I look at you up close you look absolutely amazing, how did you do it?” She exclaims, while applying the first coat of wax on your legs.

“Oh, please, I take a walk every day and cut down on carbs- ow!” you flinch at how much more painful waxing is after you’ve shed all of the fat that was protecting you before.

“Oh yes honey, it’s gonna sting a little bit more” she smiles in pity.

It stung and not just a little bit.

After your wax, you go through every other service, the nails, the brows and lashes, the hair and at the end of it you look at yourself in the mirror in complete awe. You knew you’d clean up well, but this blew you away.

The woman staring back at you in the mirror was breathtaking. She was clad in a white sundress that accentuated her beautiful collarbones, delicate shoulders and trim waist, her long thin legs looked smooth and shiny, her hands were delicate and manicured, her face was slim and polished with perfectly framed brows, bright skin and laminated lashes, while her hair flowed voluminously down her shoulders.