My name is Ann and I am a graduate student studying psychology, medicine and culture. I started this blog to help me manage my many goals and ambitions, to track them, and to journal my thoughts about them. I live a dual life in many ways in that I straddle two very different worlds - one is intellectual, concerned with values, principles and integrity which includes my University friends and colleagues and culture, and the other is (usually) status/money-obsessed, all about beauty and body, narrow-minded, superficial, and it includes my high school friends, my ethnic culture and sometimes my own family. So, I've grown up with a twisted sense of the world and of what is truly valued in society.
Growing up, my parents were very, very strict. They were disciplinarians to the nth degree. They could be described as "Tiger Parents" except that they could not care less about extracurriculars, being single-mindedly obsessed with grades so that my sister and I could have better futures. They were good parents, but a lot of their fears and anxieties were ingrained in me during this period (6-11 yrs old). After this, we moved to Canada when I was 11 and though I adjusted well to the culture I think the move had a deep traumatic impact on me. My teenage years included mild bullying, body-image issues since I was 12 years old, extremely low self-esteem and self-confidence, and trouble communicating with my parents. My mother also has quite severe anxiety issues and my dad's very pessimistic which...seems to have rubbed off on me in some ways.
But I am also very different from my parents. Always lost in books and daydreams, art and painting, music and writing - things that my parents supported but never truly encouraged. Unfortunately, when high school began the seeds of my depression were planted and I was clinically depressed from around 16-21 years old. This wreaked havoc on my life. My grades suffered, I didn't learn how to drive due to extreme anxiety, I let myself go even more and surrendered to food as my only comfort and lost touch with all of my "friends". I think I gained about 60 pounds from 2006 to 2011 (and then had another regain in 2012 to January 2013). I finally told my parents about my depression and misery in 2009. By now, after living in Canada for about 10 years, were nothing like the disciplinarians who had raised me. They were understanding. I sought counselling and started to mend the damage done by my poor decisions during my depression.
Things began to turn around, albeit slowly. I improved my grades and started to actually talk to people again and engaging in social activities. My social anxiety was practically gone after about a year of participating in a student group at University. I continued to work at the University and made more friends and gained more experience in working and research. However, I was still unsuccessful at losing weight because I was always going about it the wrong way - starving, crazy diets, going vegan for a month, continually falling off the healthy diet wagon, never really trying, becoming demoralized, quitting and eating all the weight back.
I had always been round, soft, chubby, chunky but never truly "fat". It wasn't until I began binge-eating during my depression that I began to crossover into concerning territory. My parents always encouraged me to lose weight, but most of the time their efforts were useless because they went about it the worst way possible - by making me feel bad about myself and my appearance. Again, it was their cultural upbringing but it hurt me very much. So I was one step forward, two steps back. Ten pounds lost, twenty gained back. I also had body dysmorphic issues and my Binge eating disorder and generally disordered eating either had me eating thousands of calories a day or only 300. I swung wildly from one extreme to another. I always had the odds stacked against me and my depression made it so much worse. I still have the residual effects of this. I still have low self-esteem some days, I am still anxious. If I indulge I get the old bingey feelings back. But, I a just became fed-up with making promises. I became tired of not living my life. I became tired of being hollow shell of a person. I lost myself in the fog, the abyss of depression and I wanted to find myself again.
I have once again resolved to lose weight but things were a little different now. Maybe because I'm older, maybe because I'm tired of making the same promises again, maybe because I could finally be myself and realize that I never really try. Maybe because I saw someone actually lose a significant amount of weight in front of me. I am doing better. I am more than familiar with the backslide so I refuse to say that "I get it now". I don't know anything and I am only trying to do my best. I am eating a low-carb diet, mostly salads, protein and as little processed foods as possible. I am also working out.
I have the incredible luxury of not having to work full-time while I do this. I, thankfully, live at home, which, as a student, is a great blessing. I hope to work hard to accomplish my goals and I truly know and understand that it is about the journey, not the destination. Thus, I started this blog to document the journey(s), and to vent my thoughts - I have a lot of them. And, while I know this blog is probably just an echo-chamber for me, I hope it can inspire someone else who is struggling.
Here is my first post where I explain the title and my motivation to start this blog. (But I forgot to mention in that post that I actually started the blog on the day that the transit of Venus happened. I found the concept and name inspiring. I just never wrote anything on it till this year).
