It’s New Year’s Eve 2022. I’m wearing a bright pink turtleneck, satin pants with ostrich feathers, huge pink platform pumps, and lots of faux diamond jewelry to embrace the glitz and glamour of New Year’s Eve. But no amount of dressing up can mask how physically unattractive and mentally depleted I feel.
As with most New Year’s celebrations, I was spending time in the mountains at the family house hosting the annual crew. But this time, rather than food shopping and spending hours in the kitchen, my friends and I decided to go to the newly opened 5-star hotel to celebrate. Feeling low, I just wanted to feel catered to, with my only job being to show up. In short: it sucked. Having only been open for a few weeks, the hotel still had a lot of kinks to smooth out. Then, shortly before midnight, my sister called to tell me a water pipe in the house had burst, and we’d lost electricity in most of the building. Great.
As I stood on the grand terrace of the hotel, watching the fireworks, my blood was boiling, and I thought, “This has got to stop.” I posted an Instagram story — this time of year, our social feeds get populated with highlight reels, but not all of us have had a stellar 12 months we’d like to reflect on. This was certainly my case as I stood on the precipice of 2023. So, I reminded people it was okay if they didn’t feel like they had anything to share. Not all of us were in a celebratory mood, and it seemed to resonate with my little following.
That New Year’s Eve, I reached my threshold for the nonsense I was putting myself through. The switch that needed to be flipped, finally flipped. It was time to pivot.
Grabbing the Wheel
It’s true what they say: you are the captain of your own ship, and if you want to see change, you have to be the driving force—at least when it comes to doing a 180 with your lifestyle.
I had been waiting for external factors to fall into place before I was willing to regain my health and sense of self-worth: “When I get a boyfriend, I’ll get better,” “When I finally get a job, I’ll get better,” “When my parents finalize their divorce, I’ll get better.” I think it’s too simplistic to call them excuses — I genuinely believed if these things fell into place, I’d get better. If there was just peace around me, I reasoned, then I wouldn’t have to continuously rely on my unhealthy coping mechanisms.
But that sullen New Year’s Eve, it finally clicked for me that I had to get better on my own accord—that I needed to find a way to exist in the chaos. I didn’t want to eat and drink my feelings away anymore. I didn’t want to talk so negatively to myself. I didn’t want to feel unattractive. I didn’t want to spend my time with people whose values didn’t align with mine or who made me feel terrible. My era of purgatory was about to kick in.
My brother’s wedding was set for February 11, 2023. I decided that after the wedding, I would seriously double down on my health efforts. And I did.
You would think that with the amount of therapy I’ve done since I was 15, I would never let myself get to a place where my coping mechanisms were excessive amounts of alcohol and carb-heavy food. But I did. In fact, you can be extremely self-aware but still act self-destructively. It’s a caged feeling: you know what you’re doing to yourself is taking you further and further away from the reality you want to live in, but it’s so hard to grab the bull by the horns and steer it in another direction. Bad habits are very hard to break.
Change is hard, even if it’s for the better. I think when we drop bad habits, many of us look for an alternative—something to give an equal dopamine spike. I was stubborn in dropping my bad habits because I was waiting around for a healthy alternative that would taste and feel just as good instantaneously—but the truth is, there isn’t one. Eventually, I accepted that meditating, doing breathwork, and switching off my electronics by 9 PM would not be nearly as satisfying as cracking open a bottle of cabernet or tucking into late-night pizza or chocolate. I accepted that committing to these practices would take time, but the overall positive effect would far outweigh the instant gratification of my bad habits. I accepted that becoming somewhat “boring” and learning to embrace boredom would be my gateway to dialing down my negative self-thoughts and hushing my anxiety, which had been driving my self-destructive nature.
I think people are more aware of it now, but an unhealthy lifestyle is usually a symptom of unprocessed feelings, acting as a numbing agent. That’s why “just change your diet” isn’t as simple as it sounds because our diets are intrinsically linked with how we’re feeling.
Throughout the day, even when unemployed, I could keep myself busy. But come evening, sitting alone at home with my anxiety turbocharged, I turned to appeasing my taste buds and drowning out the noise in my head with too many Netflix shows. I was in full escapism mode. And I knew it. I prayed that doing this would numb my thoughts so much that I’d be able to fall asleep—bad sleep has plagued me all my life thanks to anxiety. Now that I have stellar sleep hygiene (yet still battle with falling asleep), I can see how what I was doing was only adding fuel to the fire and making things worse. But the idea of turning off electronics, sitting still, and meditating—actually feeling the hurt that was going on—felt too overwhelming.
The Will to Change
Aside from feeling rather terrible about myself, a huge motivation for changing was that I have immense respect for people who are disciplined. I used to be extremely disciplined, but that discipline stemmed from a hunger for validation. I wanted to be a star pupil so that I would receive love and validation from my teachers. I’d seen how teachers doted on gifted students, using them as shining examples in classrooms and awarding them at the end of the year, and I wanted in on that. From 7th grade up until my college degrees, I kept on winning awards intentionally. From a young age, I was also extremely disciplined with my diet and exercise, forever chasing “thin.” Say what you want, but being thin is a currency. As much as I love the body positivity movement and I’m thrilled to see us celebrate bodies of all shapes and sizes, I personally don’t think we’ve moved away from our fascination with thinness. The use of Ozempic by already slim people to achieve the heroin-chic look that’s made a comeback is a testament to this.
As I got into my 20s, I lost my sense of discipline. Honestly, I think I was exhausted from chasing the high I’d get from others telling me how good I was, how thin I was, how beautiful I was. This time, my change had to be for me, not for anyone else.
If my bigger body had been the result of finally letting go of restrictive eating and nourishing it, and this was how it naturally looked, I could have learned to embrace it. But I was poisoning my body. I felt bloated, inflamed, and my heart rate was through the roof—at just 31. I felt like I was slowly killing myself. My negative thought processes were fuelled by feeding my body food and drink that did little to support my health. Again, I would say, “Once my mental health is better, I’ll do something about my physical health,” but the two are so connected. To be fair, my diet throughout the day was mostly healthy, and I was also active, going on many walks and using the stationary bike. I’ve never been a couch potato. But any healthy choices I’d made throughout the day were sabotaged by my destructive evening habits.
To change your coping mechanisms, you need to identify your triggers. I am a highly sensitive person (HSP) and often find social settings overwhelming. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve improved at handling events where I feel out of place, but it’s a major drain on my energy. For example, this year, I’ve pushed myself to attend my co-working space’s monthly Thirsty Thursdays to meet new people. Each time, I meditate to calm my nerves before going, and when I get on the tram to head to the party, I feel physically sick. It’s such an overwhelming experience for me, walking into unknown social settings. But this feeling also hits in social settings where I know everyone or when I have too many social engagements in a row.
I used to feel a lot of shame for not being able to handle as much socializing as others and felt immense frustration toward myself. But I’m now more compassionate and accepting of it. When I get overstimulated and feel mass anxiety, it’s usually due to too many social engagements in a row or the people I’m around. So, I knew that an integral part of my success in turning my lifestyle around would depend on the company I keep and how often I’m around them. Learning to say “no” would be vital. My purge wasn’t just physical and mental but also social. And that, at times, felt very lonely—especially when you live alone.
With the help of the Ayurvedic practices I’d slowly been implementing and finally an acceptance that change would mean hard work with no shortcuts, I started to change, slowly.
A Note on External Factors
After my brother’s wedding, I started a job. While I love the idea of managing your life without being influenced by external factors like your job or relationships, I’m not sure that’s entirely possible. External forces will always influence you. Having a job really helped me stay consistent. Unemployed, I had too much time to ruminate in my head and worry endlessly about when and how I’d find a job. Having a job brought much-needed structure to my life, which helped me start my health journey.
Picking Up the Pace
If 2023 was about building a foundation for new healthy habits (remember, this was the year I got off antidepressants—a huge milestone for me), 2024 was the year I executed and turbocharged them. Usually, when I picked up a book, it would always be fiction. I knew there were a ton of inspiring self-help books out there, but I think I avoided them because it would mean holding up a mirror to myself and acknowledging that I wasn’t living a life I was proud of—and truthfully, I didn’t like myself. But I also pivoted in my thought process here and decided that instead of seeing other people’s successes as a reminder of my faults, I could use their words of wisdom to implement positive changes in my own life. I know, I know—the whole premise of a self-help book—but when you’re extremely self-critical, it doesn’t take much to feel like a failure when reading about the amazing work others are doing.
As I got more disciplined, I decided the next thing I wanted to conquer was my morning routine,so I picked up The 5AM Club by Dr. Robin Sharma. I don’t follow the 20/20/20 formula as outlined in the book anymore—20 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes of reflection, and 20 minutes of learning. And I also don’t get up at 5AM. For a good while, I would get up immediately when the alarm went off at 5, but eventually, I moved the clock handles to 5:30 or 5:45. I noticed after completing the 20/20/20 formula, I’d often take a power nap before having to head to work. I’d be exhausted throughout the workday and then, despite being tired in the evening, I’d worry so much about falling asleep and getting enough shut-eye that I’d lie awake stressed about it. It’s a vicious cycle—but one I’m determined to conquer. I’ve known for many years that a huge reason for my destructive evening routine was out of fear that I wouldn’t fall asleep.
A big part of this journey has been about showering myself with compassion and patience. If I have a day where I don’t hit the mark, I remind myself that tomorrow is a new day and I get to try again. I decided not to beat myself up about not getting up at 5AM and doing the 20/20/20 formula. Instead, I prioritize more sleep, and then I head straight to the gym.
Working out before work 3–4 times a week (all in all, I work out 5–6 times a week, but the other workouts are not at the crack of dawn) has been life-changing. My gym opens at 6AM, and you’d be surprised by how many people are in there. Some mornings, when I feel unmotivated to go, I think of the familiar faces I see nearly every time I come in on a weekday morning. There’s the man who wears toe shoes and is a weight aficionado, the girl with the cute co-ords, the man who looks like Clark Kent (and I swoon when I see him, but I’m too shy to ever do anything about it), the small guy with the cap who diligently goes through his calisthenics program, the male duo who do their workouts together, the man who can probably do a push-up while balancing on one finger, the lady who has clearly just embarked on her fitness journey and is in there killing it, and many more. All these people really, really motivate me. I wish I could tell them that their discipline and dedication to their physical health motivate me to come in. But that would be weird, and I’d rather not ruin my morning gym routine by wanting the ground to swallow me every time I walk in.
After my workout, I go home, shower, make my lunch, and then usually bike to work. It’s a routine I’m immensely proud of, and it has a ripple effect on my whole day. Getting up early means having a stellar evening routine. The evening routine dictates how the morning goes, and as I’m determined to be a morning person (at least on weekdays), I try really hard to stick to my routines. This does mean dialing down on social activities during the week. But my new evening routine has had the most profound effect on my health.
Despite doing all the holistic recommendations to fall asleep, my anxiety still ticks up as I worry about being able to fall asleep. But it’s only motivated me to conquer this. I’m getting curious about how my gut flora could be disrupting my sleep and its overall effect on physical and mental health. It’s fascinating to look at how food impacts you beyond vitamins, etc.
What I’ve realized throughout implementing these lifestyle changes is that essentially, I’m trying to apply a layer of blubber over my nervous system. Being active, having routines, and eating well are key to this.
My anxious thoughts feel like a thousand helium balloons attached to my brain, all bumping into each other and going in their own directions. It becomes so hard to keep track of one thought before it’s bulldozed away by another—and the cycle continues. But having these new habits in place greatly diffuses these balloons. And that’s why I keep going. I don’t want to be a slave to my brain; I want to be the captain—not my anxiety.
Main Takeaways (No Pun Intended)
My transformation has been slow, sustainable, and intentional, but I still have work to do. As I reflect back to nearly two years ago, the mountain I was about to climb seemed so daunting I didn’t even want to start. Now, these few areas I need to clean up, I take on with enthusiasm and curiosity rather than an “I don’t know if I can do this” attitude.
If you’re looking to transform your life, my biggest recommendation is to be extremely compassionate towards yourself, patient, and curious. If you “mess up” one day, instead of beating yourself up about it, ask yourself what triggered you. For example, if I end up binge eating, I get curious as to why. Nearly 99.9% of the time, it’s because I’ve overwhelmed myself with social situations or a particular person has triggered me. Then I take it as an opportunity to learn and implement more safeguards for next time.
But above all: start. It doesn’t matter how small—just begin somewhere. And if I can do it, then you most certainly can too. And for the love of God, don’t compare your journey to others. Stay in your lane and go at your own pace.
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