The excessive attention to body conformation, reinforced by our traditional greeting, can be disastrous as well for very young girls like me. A couple of months ago, people I often see noticed that I am gaining weight and it was a compliment on my part at first because old people foresee me as a thin and malnourished girl. I love eating so much even though when I was young and yet I don't know why I am not gaining the normal weight. I remember when I was in my 1st year in college we've checked each others Body Mass Index in our PE class and it resulted that I am underweight. Being underweight is so not healthy we all know that. So I continue eating heavy meals everyday and when 2008 entered I gained the normal weight that proportion in my height and age.
As time keep on coming, I've noticed that people always greeted me in a statement like this, "Uy, Cang, taba mo ngayon ah. Laki ng chan mo!". Sounds brutal, doesn't it? It has a great impact on me especially when a guy is the one who's telling me that. There will be times, too, when it is said in jest and with time, I did come to accept such statements. I always check my body flaws in the mirror, and yes, I gained so much weight and it is not so pretty.
I decided to eat light meals and sometimes, I don't eat at all though my stomach is growling from hunger. My parents noticed my dietary stuff and told me that it is not so good for me because I'm starving myself. They told me I'm not fat it's just my belly who's huge so I don't have to starve myself but instead I should do sit-ups and jogging at least twice a week. That is the healthy diet, they added. And yes, they are so right. It was just my belly who looks so bad.
Since that day I've exercised a lot and still, eating light meals. I don't eat rice at dinner or sometimes just eat one piece of banana. But still people greeted me in the you're-so-fat statement, and so I decided to drink slimming tea everynight. And it's effective, I think but it's really hard because I have to go to bathroom every 5 minutes and I'm experiencing too much pain on my stomach. So I stopped it and don't eat.
Until last night, I found the print facts left in the girl's restroom in our school last semester about Anorexia Nervosa. I read a lot about it.
Anorexia Nervosa or Self-starvation is a kind of reverse addiction: an addiction to not eating. And like many addicts, anorexics deny having a problem. They see themselves as healthy, but others see the terrible damage to body and mind that anorexia causes. Teenaged girls and young women are mostly the victims of Anorexia to maintain a good body figure and to escape from rude greetings like I am experinencing most of the time.
I've also read the signs and symptoms of anorexia and unfortunately, I am exhibiting 9 out of 15 symptoms.
I remember when I've watched a scene from One Tree Hill Season 5 in theCW website wherein Brooke Davis became successful on her fashion clothing calls "Clothes over Bros". She dropped out all the extremely thin models that her agency called. She says
"They are anorexics! Anorexia is an illness not a trend!"
And she is so right.
I don't want to be anorexic and I am not fat, I believe so.
People exagerates sometimes, we all know that.
Maybe I'll just continue exercise and eat light meals
AND i will never starve myself AGAIN! :)
