Prison Life & Beyond eMagazine August 2016 | Page 5

PRELUDE
Go Love Yourself: Don’t Let The Extra
Weight Destroy Your Self Esteem
Carrying a few kilos more than would be considered
healthy by books is common – recent statistics confirm that
almost 70% of adults are overweight, making “plus size”
appearance more of a norm. While some of these people
do indeed have conditions related to their weight, many
are 100% “metabolically healthy”, meaning there is nothing
medically wrong with them.
And yet, fat shaming is very real, taking the most ridiculous forms. For instance, a new Tokyo “naked restaurant”
won’t let you in if you are overweight. The owners explicitly
state that bodies outside of their criteria are unappealing
and will upset the “skinny elite” who fall within the standards. This is just one of many examples of outright discrimination. Sometimes it is a challenge to maintain a decent
level of self esteem being in the skin of a “plus sized” person and, to make it worse, scientists confirm all it does is
makes people feel terrible about themselves, give up and
gain even more weight.
What if we told you that practicing body positivity is the
way? And no, it’s not about finding excuses to reach out
for that extra cookie because you don’t care. It’s about
finding true love for your body, taking the greatest possible

care of it and feeling great without any weight goals in the picture. You can’t tell if someone is
healthy or not by simply looking
at them! There are overweight
people eating perfect diets and
exercising, and there are skinny
people with horrible eating disorders.
And even if there is something
clinically wrong, it should not define how someone feels about
their body. Our lives change, we
change, and so does our appearance – but any random number,
whether it is waist circumference
or weight, must not define who
we are. Strive to embrace yourself as you are, make a goal to
be a better person by doing
something nice and healthy for
yourself every day, and don’t
concentrate so hard on the
scales, away already. After all, as
the popular quote goes, “perfection is just a figment of human
imagination”.

“Sometimes it is
a challenge to
maintain a
decent level of
self esteem being
in the skin of a
‘plus sized’
person”