The idea of being grounded and being you is something I've always found difficult to process, this being the split of mind and body in a sense. Growing up my body meant everything and nothing to me, I never liked it and I never noticed its existence aside from what it was able to do for me until people started to notice only that about me. In a world that values mind over body it's hard to conceptualize that sometimes. It feels like the world only values your mind when your body is normal, the standard, or desirable, this in many ways translates to my experience of fatphobia. Since I was four I've always had a weight problem that my parents attributed to the consumption of poptarts, and then later high sugar cereals that were branded as “healthy”. The idea that weight and health were strongly correlated has been pushed and etched into my mind by society everyday, inevitably manifesting itself into mental health problems. So as I got older and my problem was just exacerbated by the stress of classes, depression caused by my weight and other factors, and my response to my sexual assault, food became something to help me cope, and then became something I hated because it turned into the cause for every foreseeable problem in my life. The toxicity of how society perceives fat bodies and food translates into the idea that fat people should starve inorder to be “healthy”. Taking this idea into account, if society truly cared about the health of a fat body, society wouldn't be pushing the idea that fat people need to starve themselves, which causes an array of eating disorders.
After being in my fat body it was only until quarantine that I was able to focus on myself and address my mental health problem, after doing this, and finally recognizing this I was able to then make the conscious decision of whether I wanted to lose weight or not. Losing or gaining weight should never be for the conscious eye of society as you will never be able to find validation within other people. After losing so much weight I still wake up everyday disgusted with myself and surprised by the number on the scale. But what is more important is that I am less disgusted everyday that I see myself. Everything is a process, and so is acceptance.