For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived in a body that never quite matched the world’s expectations. Some girls remember their teenage years through soft, rosy filters — I remember mine through numbers: how many kilos I had, how many I “needed” to lose, how many eyes measured my body before I even said a word.
Ever since high school, I was caught in that exhausting cycle of losing and gaining weight. Losing 20 kilos, then putting them back on. Losing 30, then repeating the story. I learned diets like poems, and I stepped on the scale like performing a sacred ritual. Now and then, I reached a weight that magazines would call “ideal.” But me? I never felt ideal.
Society told me I needed to be less. My classmates told me the same thing, only harsher. The bullying wasn’t just mean — it was relentless. A shadow following me through every break. If I ate, they laughed. If I didn’t eat, they laughed anyway. I felt trapped in a body that didn’t seem mine, and in the judgement of people I should never have allowed to define me.
Still, life moved on. I finished high school, graduated from university, built a life, and fell in love with an incredible man. Someone who never had a problem with how I looked. Someone who saw beyond clothes, weight, numbers. But his love couldn’t fill something I didn’t have: self-love.
And that absence slipped between us in small, heavy ways. When I refused to be photographed. When I avoided going to the beach. When I couldn’t accept a compliment without putting up walls.
After giving birth, my body changed in ways no one truly prepares you for. I was left with more weight than ever. And in a mix of desperation, exhaustion, and blind hope, I decided to undergo weight-loss surgery.
I lost 45 kilos. Impressive, right? Yes — but not for my soul.
Because, surprise: the bullying doesn’t disappear when your belly does. The wounds from adolescence don’t melt away at the gym. A lack of confidence doesn’t vanish just because a surgeon removes part of your stomach.
I woke up in a slimmer body, but with the same critical voice in my head. The same old shame. The same thoughts whispering, “you’re still not enough.”
I truly believed that once I became “skinny,” my life would fall into place like in a water-detox commercial. But it didn’t. I was still me. The same me. With the same traumas. With the same need for healing.
The surgery changed my body — not my mind.
My obsession with weight simply transformed into another kind of pressure. And I finally realized something I had avoided admitting for years:
The problem had never been just the weight. The real burden was the one I carried inside.
And maybe, if I had gone to therapy before going to the surgeon… if I had learned to speak kindly about myself, to understand my wounds, to accept my body in all its phases… maybe the journey would have looked different.
I’m not saying weight-loss surgery is wrong. For some, it’s life-changing. But it cannot replace the magic of inner healing.
The kilos left. But the insecurity stayed — until I truly began to work on it.
For anyone stuck in the same cycle of diets, shame, and pressure: your body is not the enemy.
The voice that judges you is. And that voice cannot be silenced just by reducing your stomach.
It needs gentleness, therapy, and patience.
It took me years to understand this. And I’m still learning.
But now, finally, I can look in the mirror with more peace. Not because I’m thinner — but because I’m slowly learning to see myself differently.