#grandslam2017

At the end of a training session a few months ago, my personal trainer asked me about the stretch marks on my arms. I told her I was very fat during my early teenage years. She hardly believed me.

Growing up, I was a very skinny and gangly kid. And then, puberty hit, and it seemed to all disappear overnight. I never became skinny again. 

My struggle with my body seemed foreign to me at first. The body was never an issue before I became a teenager. Sure, kids would compare weight when it came to height and weight measurement, but I always thought that, because I was taller than everyone else, I didn’t have anything to worry about. I could justify me being ‘heavier’ than most people. In fact, it got quite ‘competitive’ to see who was taller. And my attitude to the body was simple and dichotomous. You either are of ‘healthy weight’ or ‘unhealthy weight’.

It was when the curves started appearing, though, that I started to scrutinize the change in the way I looked. I became more acutely aware of where weight was distributed across my body. It bothered me that I was carrying more weight in the lower half of my frame, when I thought the whole point of puberty was to grow breasts and become more womanly. And I didn’t know how to really categorize myself. I was tall but I wasn’t lean. I had curves, but I wasn’t typically curvy. And it didn’t help that in Singapore, I felt I didn’t fit in because I didn’t see anyone else who looked like me.

This led to many battles, fights, and frustrations in my relationships - with my then-boyfriend, with food, with my sanity, with my self-esteem. Even when I thought I was winning the tiny battles, the ghosts of Endless Scrutiny, Criticism, and Condemnation would sneak up on me, and linger in my mind. And they would continue to stay there, ebbing, sometimes even growing, for the next decade of my life.

In secondary school, I lost a bunch of weight (20kg), and I managed to get my freedom from TAF Club. That feeling of your school uniform hanging off your shoulders, being very roomy around the waist - I felt that I had accomplished this amazing feat. But my old friends, Endless Scrutiny and Criticism didn't really allow me to celebrate for long. And because I didn't lose all that weight in the healthiest of ways, a few months later, I felt miserable again. I didn’t want to wear anything that showed off my arms because the stretch marks showed off more prominently than ever. I didn't look satisfactorily ‘thin’, I just looked unhealthy.

I went through another bout of weight loss in my final year of university after a breakup that happened around the same time as when I was working on my honours thesis. I hadn’t meant to lose weight, I just forgot to eat. I hadn’t realized it, but I had lost 5kg within 2 months. It only really hit me how much weight I lost when I was getting dressed for a party and everything looked big on me. You would think I’d be elated because it seemed an effortless achievement. But no, at that moment, I broke down. I sat on the floor, bawled because my favourite size 12 dress was too loose on me, and almost never made it to the party. 

At that point I was the smallest I’d been, but just because I was at my smallest, it didn’t mean I was at my happiest. It did appear that way though – I thought that maybe I was happy. And the feeling was amplified when I went to live in London for a few months. I felt satisfied with myself because I could see people who looked like me – there, there was a wider range of shapes – my shape too! There was happiness in finally being able to believe that I belonged, that I fit in. The elation disappeared when I came back to Singapore. I didn’t realise I’d gained most of my old weight back again. And I felt severely disappointed. I felt that I’d let myself down with my lack of self-control, my lack of discipline, and my lack of care for the way I look. It’s ironic how I berated myself for not “loving” my physical body enough to not get carried away. In actuality, without truly loving myself for who I am, and not how I look, or how well I fit in wherever I happened to be living, the ‘happiness’ I thought I’d felt in that span of 3 months could only have been temporary.

9 years of perpetual struggle, swaying from one extreme to another, was exhausting me physically and mentally. No matter that I lost weight, became smaller, I realise I was still the same person as when I was a teenager. Endless Scrutiny, Criticism, and Condemnation were still inhabiting my mind, creating turmoil in my spirit. “You could have been perfect if you had just kept up your discipline, if you had just said no to desserts, if you had just run more, run further, if you had just not been so complacent.” I felt like I had slid all the way back to square one. So I turned to one of the constants that I knew could bring me a sense of freedom. I put on my running shoes and started running to try and find that inner peace and make myself feel better again. 

In my running journey, it was when I crossed the finish line at my first full marathon that something broke through. It then became hugely important to me that I realise I’m able to do great things with my body. Even when I hadn’t been accepting it for the way it was, my body still carried me through to cross that finish line. I was not at my fittest or my leanest, and it was something I never thought I could do. But my imperfect body can – and did – achieve something huge. Now running has become my life, an inherent part of who I am. It has become a way to accept myself and what my body can do. In running, I feel both invincible and vulnerable. I celebrate the records and the achievements, but I am also confronted by the losses and injuries and setbacks. And being able to bounce back from these is what makes running so much more than just a “weight loss method” for me. People see my training logs / posts and they might think it’s easy, that runners are “special people” imbued with a rare sense of grit, determination, and discipline. But in all honesty, running is my lifeline. The people I run with, my running family, they’re my lifeline. They keep me grounded, they help me look beyond running as a means to lose or maintain weight, and instead they inspire me to continuously challenge what my body can do. The moment I feel like letting myself spiral down the rabbit hole, they pull me out (and then they make me run hill repeats). 

I'm not at the end of my journey, and it's still not easy. Sometimes, when I least expect it, thoughts of not looking like a "typical runner", threaten to break me. But one of my running inspirations, Mirna Valerio challenges that mindset. When you're 250 pounds and can run ultra-marathons, it shows all the more that great things can be achieved by any body type or shape. The people who inspire, support, and encourage me – they’re not all elite runners or super lean either, but that doesn’t make them any less awesome. I love that secretly, we’re actually just one huge makan club. I mean, when our running routes and start / end points are determined by where we can eat after the run, it clearly shows our priorities. 

Do I love myself just the way I am now? Well, I’m still working on it! For Christmas, my sister gave me a Reminder Band, and it says ‘Be Kind’ on it. It is a reminder to always be kind to myself, as I often don’t do, especially when it comes to my body. A reminder to not always give it a hard time. A reminder for progress not perfection. 

In the meantime, I choose to focus on the positives. This body climbed a mountain and a volcano crater. This body ran two marathons, and is about halfway training for a third. This body can run hill repeats, rolling hills, and Marina Barrage loops three days a week.

And when I’m training for my first ultra, there will be days where I’ll feel like my body has been hit by a truck. But this body isn’t quitting.