Like many, I packed on a few extra lbs in lockdown. I don’t own a set of scales in my house, so I didn’t really notice until WFH came to end, loungewear became but a distant memory and it was time to don my office attire, which…no longer fit. Then, during my weekly trip to Choitrams, where I have frequented for the past couple of decades, my friend the fishmonger, whom I regularly chat with and have known for years, smiled at me and giggled, “Madam, you got fat!”
A comment not at all fuelled by malice, but a comment, nonetheless, that shocked and slightly stung. I’ve always been pretty fit; I workout at least five times a week – and not because I have to, but because I want to -, but I knew my eating habits had become a bit lax and lazy over the past few months.
I decided to double down on my diet and take a bit more control over what I was eating. So I turned to The Den, probably the best gym in Dubai (I swear I’m not biased…) in Motor City that offers all sorts of fun* (*read: hard AF) exercise classes and a nutrition program that was set to make my six week challenge a bit more bearable. But there was something stopping me… Would my fellow curvy girls think I had turned my back on them? Would they think I was giving into societal pressures and no longer embracing my body because I was trying to change it? Could I be body positive and still want to lose weight, or does that make me part of the problem?
Society’s relentless surveillance of female bodies has put women on a no-win journey in which weight gain is seen as a failure, and weight loss is…also seen as a failure. So where does it end? Why does being a size activist and wanting to drop a dress size have to be mutually exclusive? Are they binary? Are they are oxymoron?
“Weight as a metric does not correlate directly with how someone looks. You can be satisfied with your current physique and how you look, but having the desire to change is absolutely awesome,” says Michael Sole, nutritionist and founder of The Den. “Weight as a metric does not correlate directly with how someone looks; you can change the way you look drastically, without changing the number on the scales.”
First and foremost, I needed to see exactly where I was going wrong. My membership plan at The Den was still going strong, but I needed to know what to change in the kitchen, so I signed up to My Fitness Pal. Now, I don’t know about you, but I am probably the biggest foodie I know, which poses a bit of a problem when you’re trying to fit back into old clothes. I have an insatiable appetite for, well, everything – and therein lay my problem. Within a week of tracking my daily calorie intake I learned that at dinner alone I was consuming up to 1,500 (which is some peoples’ entire daily quota).
If I had a Dhs for every time someone told me to go keto, paelo, cut carbs, cut sugar, intermittent fasting – you name, it was suggested to me. But no, I wanted to do this properly and sustainably. I wanted to embark on something that would liberate us all from the tyranny of diet culture, and prove that you don’t have to starve yourself to lose weight. I adjusted my daily calorie intake to 2,000 calories and so began my little adventure.
“Why cycle viciously between diets when you don’t have too?” asks Michael. “It’s like anything – stability should always be the focus.”
In six weeks, I had dropped over three kilos and was fitting into my all-time favourite Osman dress again. And guess what? I didn’t have to cut out a single food group. Through a few adjustments here and there, and just generally being more mindful about how much I was consuming, I was well on my way to feeling like my pre-pandemic weight.
I take pride in my appearance and being a size activist. And I, too, want to fly the flag that marks a self-love revolution and curvy-and-proud adulation. I’ll never be a size eight (and nor do I really aspire to be), and that’s okay. And hey, no shade to the size eights! There is an underlying assumption that losing weight is a common goal, but body positivity is, by its very definition, about viewing our bodies as something that is not only perfectly acceptable but entirely fab. My attitude towards my weight and my body is demonstrably different now than it was 10 years ago, and it’s okay to want to make some adjustments to your appearance every now and then if it means you will feel your best.