Watch what you say to others. Watch how you say to others. - A story about why "You've lost weight, you look good." is not a compliment to me.

I know my blog has been a bit... well, negative lately, but these are things that I'm going through and want to get out of my mind. For a while at least.

I'm gonna tell you a story of a kind once again. This story involves an eating disorder, so you've been warned.
Few people do know that I used to have an eating disorder, it's not  something that I've shouted from top of the hill, but not something I've gone out of my way to hide either. I guess now it's out in the open :'D

It all begun some years ago. I was relatively normal. I had hobbies and hung out with my friends etc. I was outgoing. An extrovert. I guess some, if not most, of them thought that I was an "attention whore" and loud, but I didn't care. I didn't care much about my looks either. I knew I was okay-looking and considered myself normal weight, but I didn't really care about those things.
Around that time too I realised my depression and a friend of mine talked me into going to a doctor.
Now, I am in no way depressed enough in Finland's standard to get professional help (aka I am not hurting myself or others physically nor have I tried to kill myself), so all the doctor did was give me meds. They never really told me what they'd do or what their purpose was, only mentioned something about regulating my sleeping and eating.

Soon enough things changed. I developed a binge eating disorded (BED). I was basically eating all the time. If there was food, I was probably eating it. That meant I gained weight fast and a lot. Of course I had no idea what a BED was, nor that I had it. It's something I only realised years after.
I still didn't care about my weight or my looks.
But some people and friends, some that I trusted and considered important, started saying some nasty things. Some barely wanted to hang out with me. One of them told me that I was "sickeningly fat" and that it was unhealthy.
That crushed me. This was a person I had trusted, and they said that in a rather unkind way, with disgust in their voice.

This of course changed everything and I took a 180 turn in my eating. I stopped eating almost completely. From one eating disorder to another.
I also kind of pulled myself into my shell. I started to avoid most people and tried to not be too loud.
Quite soon I had lost a lot of weight and slowly started to go back to those places where people had hurt me. Back to the people who had hurt me. In just a couple of years I had...

gone from this...:

  

April 2007 (if I remember correctly, this was taken really close to the "you're sickeningly fat"-comment"

to this...:

 

July 2008

to this...:

 February 2009

September 2009

Of course they saw my weight loss (who wouldn't have?) and they started saying things to me again.
Instead of the comments in negative tone, they were saying things like: "You've lost weight. You look really good." with a very positive tone, and they wanted to hang out with me more once again. I honestly felt like I wasn't good before, but now I was. I didn't realise it back then, but my worth was basically measured with my weight. Not just by others, but by myself as well. I was more worthy if I was skinny.

I started eating quite normally once I had a job, which also gave me a reason to spend less time with those people (I had started to feel awful around them once again) and soon enough I moved to England for studies.
I visited Finland every now and then, and every time I saw these people, they'd tell me how good I looked and how skinny I was. Every time I felt awful.

Some of the people didn't see my discomfort, some I tried to explain it to just couldn't understand why it always made me feel anxious and horrible when others "complimented" me. One even told me that they'd feel really happy if someone told them they looked skinny and good (appparently I was supposed to feel and be like them all the time). I still hate it if anyone comments on my weight, even when they try to make it a compliment. It's a trigger that shoots me back to the time I was in the middle of the eating disorder and felt like I was only worth something to people when I was skinny. I still feel horrified every time my weight goes over a certain number.

I've pretty much left those people behind and decided that I don't want them around me.
Another thing that's changed is the way I feel when other people talk about their weight. I hate it. I never say it out loud, but the people close to me complaining about their weight (usually: "I'm so fat") horrifies me, because I have no idea what to do or what to say. And whenever I say/do something I feel like I'm making it worse by basically making them feel the same as I did. That their weight needs to be something for them to be worthy.
I never had anyone help me, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I feel helpless and I get reminded of my own fight. I try to help by telling them that if they wanna lose weight, the best way to go about it is: eat and exercise. 
But those weight conversations keep coming up and they always make me terrified and anxious. Selfishly I wish they didn't. Selfishly I wish people would just shut up about it around me sometimes.
I want to help, but I feel like I can't. In a way I don't even want to, because I'm so scared of saying something hurtful.

Maybe someday I'll get over this all and I'll be okay with my weight again, but I know it's not now.

Stay human, and blog ya later!

Fat, skinny, normal, who the f**k cares?!

So this is something that’s been bothering me for a while, and I just feel the need to get it out now. This might get long, but please, bear with me.

What I want to talk about is weight. That is body weight.

We live in this society, infested with all kinds of diets (and I’m not now talking about someone’s general diet, I’m talking about those weight-loss ones), and media full of skinny people, and it seems to me it’s become a basic assumption, that pretty much everyone thinks everyone else wants to lose weight as well and that they should be complimented when they’ve lost weight. So basically people are worth the compliment of “You’re looking good” when they’ve lost weight. We are basically living in a time of “thin privilege” where we are, well our worth is, automatically reduced to our dress size and measurements, and where the skinnier seem to have it better (NO, I am NOT saying that skinny people don’t get discriminated, just read further, please).

Now this leads to fat shaming, and in a twisted way, also to skinny shaming, which both lead to eating and mental disorders with most people. I mean both are about shaming, discriminating people because of their appearances, and you can NOT possibly know if the person is happy about themselves and what’s going on in their head when you make a comment about their weight, be it a compliment or criticism. Unless you ask them first. For example me… well let me actually tell you a short story about me and my weight.

I never used to think about my weight, I was happy just the way I was, even with my depression and anxiety. Then I got my first mental medication, which screwed me up completely and soon enough I developed an eating disorder. I started gaining weight, but I wasn’t still thinking about my weight in a bad way. Not until people started to comment on it. I got some REALLY nasty comments every now and then, people telling me how I didn’t look healthy, that I was unhealthy. All the time I just wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault, it was my eating disorder’s. I was already anxious, now I got more anxious. Of course thanks to the nasty and constant comments, my disorder took a turn to the opposite and in a year or so I lost a ridiculous amount of weight, and when I saw some of the people who had been looking at me previously, obviously thinking about my weight as a bad thing, were now telling me how good I was looking etc. As if I wasn’t bloody gorgeous before and I only was worthy of people and their compliments now that I was skinnier.
Thing is, my weight kept falling, and soon people were saying things like “You’re gonna disappear soon.” No, I wasn’t underweight/anorexic. I was at a perfectly normal weight in my opinion, but still people felt the need to comment about it to me. Since then, many times I haven’t seen someone I know for a while, when we see they usually immediately tell me that “you’ve lost weight” like it’s a good thing.
I am not gonna lie. It’s a trigger for me. I haven’t been happy with myself since years ago when my eating disorder originally developed. Whenever someone comments on my weight, it triggers all these shitty memories in me. I hate it. Some people see me and tell me “You’ve lost weight, you’re looking good,” and all I can think is: “I don’t wanna lose weight. I’m not losing weight, because I want to. Does this mean I wasn’t good looking before?” And all these other horrifying thoughts NO ONE should deserve to be thinking.
Nowadays I just don't want to hear comments about my weight, and if I do, I escape the situation ASAP.

So that’s my story in a nutshell. So if you come to me, telling that fat shaming is completely okay, since it’ll courage “obese people” to lose weight, you can, and I’m gonna say this NICELY now: “Go fuck yourself in the ass with the prickliest cactus you can find.”
It’s okay to be concerned about the people you care, and if you think they are unhealthily over/underweight (question is over/under WHAT weight?) then TALK about it to them. NICELY. Don’t make them feel bad about themselves. Also, that BMI thing? Quite a lot of crap, lemme tell you.

Now, I don’t want any of you going to your skinny friends and tell them how privileged they are and make them feel bad about themselves either.

Fat/Skinny shaming, aka putting someone to shame because of the way they look, is someone making another human being feel bad and inadequate by discriminating them just because the other one is fatter/skinnier.
Now answer this question to me, please: Who deserves to be called names and shamed because of their looks?

...

If you answered: “No one” - GREAT. You are a decent human being.
If you answered: “Fat/Skinny people” – Once again, go kindly fuck yourself with a cactus.
If you answered: “*insert a name of a person here*” – You should probably re-evaluate your thinking style and reconsider if you REALLY need to call this person names and shame them because of their looks. There is still hope for you.

This is getting a bit long now, so I’ll try to wrap up soon.
The point I’m trying to make here, is that you can’t know for sure if a person wants you to comment on their weight, if they’re not happy or are happy with their weight/are trying to lose weight/etc. unless they tell you. So please dear people, unless you know that someone wants to be complimented/commented on their weight, think about saying anything before saying something. You’ll never know who has a problematic past, who are struggling with a disorder, who just plain doesn’t want to hear about it.
And do stop shaming the fat and skinny people. Do they really hurt your life that much? Are they personally offending you by being the weight they are? Have you though that they might have other problems already than dealing with your shitty way of letting out your opinions/your personal problems?

And lastly, but not least…ly, my dears, do NOT go on a diet just because you feel pressured to lose weight. Do it if you REALLY want to do it, if YOU feel like you need to do it. And don’t ever pressure other people to do the same. Never make someone feel pressured to gain/lose weight. Honestly.

Your body, your rules.

Stay human~ Sushi out!

PS. If you want any comments/recommendations about weight loss/weight gain, feel free to just comment here and ask me anything. I'll help you the best I can (and just because I'm a Bachelor of Arts, doesn't mean I don't know anything about nutrition etc.)

Body image.

First of all: THANK YOU. So much. Everyone who commented on my previous post, cheering me up and sharing their support. I really appreciate it and you don't know just HOW much.

But now... I thought I'd share something about female bodies and the body image that I've been thinking about lately...

They say that a woman is beautiful when she accepts herself, when she's okay with her body and mind. And I don't disagree, really.
But I also can't get over the fact that media keeps pushing out these skinny models, actors, singers etc. Because no matter how beautiful they are (and they really obviously are), I can't accept the fact that the media sets up the way women are "supposed" to look.

I don't know if any of you have watched Disney Channel lately, but even Disney has jumped into the fashion train. It was this last winter (I believe) when I was visiting my oldest cousin and her kids, and her 10-year-old daughter was watching Shake It Up, or something like that, and suddenly looked at her thighs and said: "My legs are too fat."
Needless to say that I laughed my ass off, because a TEN YEAR OLD girl was saying this. Her mother laughed as well and we confirmed the daughter that no, her legs are not fat, and no, she shouldn't even think about those at that age.

But I couldn't stop thinking about it, and realised that even kids under 10 years watch the Disney shows and THINK that they should look like this:

The main characters of Disney's Shake It Up. Actresses' ages are 14 and 15.

Forgetting the fact that the show is just terrible (I had to watch it all summer and winter because of my cousin's daughter), all the characters in the show are as... fit and fashionable as these two.

And since kids watch shows like these all day long, OF COURSE they think that they need to look like that. It's imprinted in their minds at a young age already.

I was lucky enough to watch "boys' shows" (and I don't like that either, categorising shows, toys etc. into boys' and girls') when I was a kid, and back then the Disney stars used to look like this for example:

Raven <3

Of course there were the Disney Princesses of the animations who frankly enough have ridiculous body ratios, BUT I admired them for their personalities. Think about it, even though their waists are skinnier than their necks and heads, at least they show over and over again that they can be heroes too. Strong, independent women who can choose what they want by themselves.

Can't really say that for the shows on Disney Channel nowadays, since most of the characters I've seen are silly kids, who have big dreams and stupid jokes...

ANYHOW. Let's get on with it and move onto other topics than Disney and other media's set-up of the ideal female body.

As I said before, I agree that beauty is when someone accepts themselves and are confident and happy in their bodies. That doesn't mean you have to be skinny or chubby or fat or normal or have to train your ass off daily or whatever. It means if you get up in the morning and think "Man, I feel GOOD. I could go to gym and then have a pizza" and put on whatever clothes feeling good and beautiful, then you are most probably happy with yourself, and that's beautiful to me. Beauty is not just what you look like, it's what you feel like and how you are. Your nature. In my opinion.

But since I already mentioned that media sets us the ideal image, I should probably continue with the outer image of beauty, and introduce you some of my girl crushes:

Scarlett Johansson

As long as I remember I've admired this woman for her beauty. She has curves and even stretch marks. She is beautiful and she is sexy. She is talented and confident and one of those Hollywood actors who keeps getting ranked as one of the sexiest women EVEN though she is so-called normal size.

Jennifer Lawrence

She is gorgeous. And every Jennifer fan knows that she doesn't mind being lazy and normal-sized. She loves it. She is happy with how she looks and yes, she goes to gym (which actor DOESN'T?), but she's also said publicly that she loves eating. She's not ashamed of how she looks even if she's surrounded by skinnier or chubbier actors.

Missy Peregrym

This girl has muscles, arms and boobs. You know those actresses with spaghetti arms and legs? Yep, not Missy. Just like Johansson and Lawrence, she has curves, although she can easily look boyish with the right clothes and bra:

Missy Peregrym on the left, just FYI.

Amanda Righetti

Once again, a woman with wide-ish shoulders, muscles and just an absolutely gorgeous body.

Yes, these four women are what I would consider normal size, but I believe they all been considered one of the most beautiful women in the world in different charts. And I don't wonder at all why.
They are all beautiful outside and seem to be confident and happy with they look.
I can't say that ALL media is about the skinny ones, since these four women have also modelled for different magazines and brands, so there's hope. But it just seems that women, especially the younger ones, seem to pick up the examples from the skinnier part of the fashion and pop culture.
And let me tell you one thing a lecturer of mine, who's worked in films and TV told me: the camera actually ADDS kilos on you. And

Now I'm gonna show you... ME!
This is as close to naked you'll see me on internet:

 Love handles!

Stretch marks!

I would be lying if I said that I am completely happy with my body, since I'm not. I'm okay with my upper body, but I do find my bum and thighs just a big too big for my taste.
I've been trying to tone them, but the only place I seem to lose weight is my ribs and waist xD
So if I get them juuust a bit skinnier and just more toned, I'll be happy.
I'm not too confident with myself and after my eating disorder I've been constantly conscious of how I look and whenever a male coursemate has to lift me I tell them "I hope I'm not too heavy".
I don't want to be skinny. I don't want to be fat. I don't want to be chubby. I don't want to be normal. I want to be happy with myself and how I look.

And that's what I think everyone should aim to.
I hope everyone understood my ramblings...

Now let, me leave you with Ashley Graham, a gorgeous plus size model, and I'll blog ya later~