maybe my body isn’t the problem

Hi loves,

I’ve mentioned before in previous posts about how I’ve always used the future to escape the present, and I wrote another post recently where I mentioned “destination addiction” – The idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job, or even with the next partner. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it’ll never be where you are.”

I was scrolling on the internet the other day and saw a phrase that caught my eye.

“Maybe my body isn’t the problem.”

In my head, I think I’ve always known this in a way, but it’s still never stopped me from trying. When I lose weight, no matter how much I lose, it’s never enough. So much so that I’ll get to a place of “What even is the point? Why should I even bother with my weight at all because no matter what, I’m still never going to be happy?”

I touched on this in a post I made a while ago where I said that the things I was looking forward to in my head, didn’t actually make me any happier once they’d arrived. An example of this is when I say that “when I lose ___ amount of pounds I’ll be happy” or “when I reach ____ goal weight I’ll be happy”, but in reality, when I do actually reach those weights or lose those pounds, I’m never any happier than when I started because to me, it still isn’t enough.

And that’s where the phrase “maybe my body isn’t the problem”, comes in.

I have this thing where I believe that I can’t start to live my life until I look a certain way / weigh a certain amount. – “I can’t start making Youtube videos until I’m ____ amount of pounds”, “I can’t start posting Instagram photos until you can see my jawline”, “I can’t start applying for new jobs until I’m at my goal weight.” It all stops me from living my life when in reality, I can do all of those things right now, there is literally nothing stopping me from posting a Youtube video / Instagram picture or applying for new jobs straight away, it’s just me believing that I can’t until I look a certain way.

When I have a flat stomach, I still dislike everything about myself, I still dislike my face, my body, etc. I still don’t like what I see, and then I get frustrated because I’ve pretty much killed my body off to look like this and gone through mental hell, yet the result still isn’t enough and that’s where the whole “What was even the point?” argument comes in.

I actually had lip fillers recently for the first time ever (let me know if you want a post on that??) in order to even out my face. I don’t like “cosmetic surgery” as it were or the idea of injecting things into my face, I’ve never been into the idea of having boob jobs, tummy tucks or lip injections because those things don’t appeal to me at all, but I was literally sick of looking at my face whether it was fat or thin, makeup or no makeup, and still being put off by what I saw. My face is naturally round, as in, any weight that I have seems to go straight to my cheeks and it’s always been this way, whether I’m underweight or overweight my face is still round and there’s literally nothing I can do about it however, my lips are incredibly small. As in, I pretty much might as well not even have a top lip, I’ve seen people complain about how small their lips are and not kidding their lips are still probably 10x bigger than mine, like girl you don’t wanna complain about small lips until you’ve seen these. My dad pretty much has no lips either and lucky me got the lip genes from him instead of my Mum, so basically I was doomed from the start. Anyway, a permanently round face regardless and no lips just calls for disaster – it makes my face out of proportion and gives the illusion that my cheeks are 10x bigger than they really are due to having no lips to even it out.

So what did your girl do? She got lip fillers. No, I didn’t want to (though no one was forcing me of course) but I was just sick of the whole fiasco and in the end thought fine just inject me and make me look normal. The aim was literally just to even out my face, I don’t want huge duck lips or to look like Kylie Jenner (for reference, I got 0.5ml injected and the people that you see with huge lips have about 3ml) so don’t worry about that. It got to a point where I was so conscious of them (my lips) that I’d do things like subconsciously cover my mouth with my hand while I was talking or move back a little if someone got too close to my face when we were speaking, it even got to a point where I’d subconsciously walk round with a pout almost, one day my friend was like why are you doing that?? And I was like what? And she said pouting? Why are you pouting? And then I was like…well shit, ‘cause I didn’t realise I was doing it, it was just a habit I’d taken on through being self-conscious.

Also, pouting in photos – I hate doing that. I’ve always wanted to have cute candid smiley photos of myself but it just wasn’t gonna happen – any selfie you see of me will 100% guaranteed have a pout and I hate it ‘cause it’s so silly, but if I didn’t do it I’d feel like I just couldn’t get a good photo because everything would be so bleh. But anyway, no more of that now!

So back to the point – normally, let’s take the lip fillers for example, I’d say to myself that once I’d gotten the fillers everything was going to be great – I was going to be happy, my self esteem was going to be fixed! And sure, it gave me confidence (that was the whole point) but it hasn’t fixed the problem, I haven’t just suddenly fallen in love with my face overnight. I like my lips more than I did, and that’s about it – but the difference this time was that I already knew that was going to be the case whereas before, I would’ve been counting down the days until I’d changed this certain thing about myself that was going to magically enable my life to finally begin.

So what I’m saying is – my body isn’t the problem. I’m the problem, and the thing is, I know I’m the problem but like I said before, it still doesn’t stop me from trying. Mentally, I always still feel the same regardless of whether I’m underweight or overweight, literally in my mind I wouldn’t feel any different whether I was 20 pounds or 200 pounds because that’s where the problem lies and so like I said, nothing is ever enough but again, I’ll continue to try. Say I wanted to lose 10 pounds, I’d lose that 10 pounds and still be unsatisfied and I’d be like okay let’s do 15…20…25…30 pounds and so on, and eventually I’d keep losing and losing all of this weight until I was barely there and yet I still wouldn’t feel happy, it still wouldn’t satisfy me. That’s also where the problem is because I associate happiness with being thin, but when I’m thin I’m not happy and so my solution is then to continue to lose more weight, but still none of it makes me satisfied and so I’m then left with the question – where does my happiness lie? And the answer is, I don’t know – materialistically, it lies in the things I love of course, but physically within myself, happiness doesn’t seem to exist anywhere.

I keep telling myself that my body is the problem, my body is the reason I can’t do X, Y, Z and I can’t start my life until a certain number is what I see when I step on the scales, but I know that’s just something I’m kidding myself with, saying it as an excuse for whatever reason. The problem is me and I don’t know how to fix it because the thing is, I’m incredibly aware of it. If I wasn’t aware of it, I wouldn’t be able to write a whole post explaining it with the understanding that I know it’s silly and I’m aware of the fact I’m doing it. I just don’t know how to get around it – I’m unhappy at whatever weight which literally means I can’t be anything and be fulfilled. Underweight? Unhappy. Thin? Unhappy. Ideal weight? Unhappy. In the middle? Unhappy. Overweight? Still unhappy.

I don’t normally do this because obviously, I don’t expect you guys to counsel me – I just use this space as somewhere to vent my thoughts (hence why my posts are always so incredibly long and rambly) but does anyone have any ideas ?????? Has anyone been through this / felt like this / is going through this and feels like this?? I don’t mean that there’s a textbook answer because obviously, it’s a mental thing and everybody is different but I’m seriously out of options, food has always been an issue for me and I know I’m not alone in it, so if anyone has any advice or fancies just telling me how stupid I am (I agree) then hit me up.

Sorry for this rambling mess again. I think I think I think too much.

All my love,

Chloe .xx