Looking at the post title, what
kind of issues do you think I have? Overweight
issues?
At 175cm, I weigh just 48.8kg. I
thought I was at least 50kg, but a more sensitive machine revealed
otherwise. I’m severely underweight, more than I thought I
am.
Let’s say you’ve just met a new
friend/person, he/she is obese. Will you make comments such as:
‘are you a glutton?’, ‘omg you’re so damn fat you should go on
diet’, ‘you so fat already still eat so much’.
I think most (thoughtful) people
wouldn’t, because such comments obviously provide no help except
hurting someone’s feelings. So why the reverse comments should be
constantly made against skinny people?
‘Are you anorexic?’, ‘you’re so
thin, must eat more lah’, ‘you so skinny already still eat so
little/go for runs’.
I think people who make such
comments mean no harm, and I kept telling myself I should not be
overly affected by such comments. Outwardly, I appear so, even
going to the extent of joking about myself (‘oh yes, I eat only one
meal per day. I’m so fat so I must diet ya?’). I kept reminding
myself that if I have a inferior complex or have no confident about
myself, how can I expect others to look at me
otherwise?
But…I’m only
human.
‘You should eat more’. Seriously,
if you put yourself in my shoe, that is a very very very obvious
thing that I should do, even to myself. You may mean no harm making
such remarks but it serves to remind me that I’m not doing things
right, that somehow I’m not ‘making enough efforts’ to improve on
my weight.
Imagine sitting with your friends
during lunch, with almost all of them having completed their food
(some with ‘more rice’) while you still have 1/3 to go on normal
serving. There’s enough pressure having everyone wait for me. The
last thing I need is for people to tell me to ‘eat more, eat
more’.
Just like how no fat people want to
be fat, not all skinny people want to be skinny…especially when
everyone around complains of being too fat.
I’ve just started to go to gym on a
regular basis with the intention to bulk up. If that sounds easy to
you then you’ve probably never tried being the only extremely
skinny person in a place full of muscular guys (or at least, mildly
obese) working out with 100kg dumb-bells (not joking, I saw one
ang-moh do >160kg, but he's ang moh). You see all the
commercials on TV with those skinny guys in the gym trying to do
weights with a 5kg dumb-bells…ya, they’re making fun of people like
me.
But still, I go to gym. I try to
‘be blind’ inside. At the same time I’m researching on ways to
increase weight in the most efficient manner. And the last thing I
need is for people to emphasis or remind me of the fact that I am
indeed very light-weight.
Recently, I revealed that I go for
runs. Well, what I didn’t expect is that people actually ‘advise’
me not to go running, because it’ll make me loose even more weight,
as if the fact that I go for run ‘confirms’ the fact that I’m
indeed anorexic.
But after attending the AHMs during
my army days, I did develop a liking for running long distance. No,
wait, I don’t really like running after all, but I like the feeling
of pushing my limits and being able to complete what’s difficult to
do. It’s not so much about making me fitter or losing weight, it’s
about pushing myself to the limits. So I’ll stubbornly insist on
continuing my runs (not as if I run that regularly, it’s less than
two times a week)…at the most I’ll focus harder in other areas of
gaining back the weights.
Lastly, I’m just trying to let of
steam by posting in here (yes, it’s a long post). Hopefully, I’m
not acting like some emo teenagers whining about some petty issue.
If my friends read this I think they’ll be able to deduce who I am
(after all, there aren’t a lot of extremely skinny guys in
Singapore), but I’m gambling on the fact that they wouldn’t
anything to anyone else. I guess I will not be able to make the
world revolve around me by asking every single person around me to
stop commenting about my weight. What I can do is to instead change
myself.
Hi annoy-you-must,
You are severely underweight! I can understand what you mean
when you express your unhappiness about the people who keep asking
you to eat more or put on more weight. As you have mentioned,
most of them do not mean harm, and truly mean well for you.
However, it is not easy to see from the perspectives of others,
especially when it is likely that none of those who commented about
you have ever been severly underweight before.
On your part, it will be good for you to read up on
weight-gaining strategies and create a workout plan for yourself,
instead of going to the gym in hope that you will start to gain
more weight. Without a good plan, you may just find yourself losing
even more weight with random workouts.
Cheers.