The weight we carry isn’t always ours

I had bariatric surgery in May 2021. It was supposed to be the solution — the thing that would finally “fix” me.

But maybe I should start at the beginning.

I’ve struggled with weight for as long as I can remember. I was that “chubby baby” — at 6 months old, I weighed as much as the average 18-month-old. By the time I was 11, I was sent to my first weight-loss camp for overweight children. I ended up at three of those before I reached adulthood. They lasted 4 to 8 weeks each — strict diets, constant exercise, being weighed and measured. And yet, I was always the one child who lost the least weight. I remember the puzzled faces of medical professionals who couldn’t work out why I wasn’t shrinking fast enough.

At 17, things got darker. I became obsessed with exercising. I started restricting food more and more. I remember sneaking out for runs in the middle of the night while my family slept — all to “burn off” a single lick of ice cream. That was the beginning of what I now recognise as atypical anorexia. Despite all of that, I never dropped out of the “obese” BMI category. Not once.

In my early 20s, I had my first child. I gained 40 kg during pregnancy — and once again, I spiralled into dieting and compulsive exercise. It was all I thought about. My whole life revolved around food, my weight, and trying to fix a body I had been taught to see as a problem. I became convinced this was why I couldn’t get pregnant again. When I finally did, six years later, I gained another 40 kg — and I’d had enough.

That’s when I turned to bariatric surgery. I saw it as the “easy way out.” I wanted to stop the obsession. To be free of it.

And at first? It worked. The weight dropped quickly. I was barely eating. I felt hopeful.

But six months later, the weight loss stopped. Despite eating child-sized portions and a healthy diet, the scales stopped moving. A year later, the weight started coming back.

And then came the side effects.

Fatigue so intense I couldn’t get out of bed. Hair falling out in clumps. Nails breaking, skin flaking, nosebleeds. Shaking hands. Vomiting. Nutritional deficiencies. Autoimmune issues I had never experienced before.

But that dark time gave me something I never expected — clarity.

I realised: I never hated my body. I hated how the world treated it.

My body was never the real problem. Society’s obsession with making it smaller was.

If I lived on a desert island, I wouldn’t give a second thought to the fat under my skin. My body carried babies. It allowed me to live, to work, to laugh, to move. It kept going despite the abuse I put it through — with every diet, every punishing workout, every surgery. What broke it wasn’t the fat. It was the pressure to get rid of it.

Now, four years after they removed 70% of my stomach, I’m nearly back to where I started. But this time, I don’t care. Not in the way I used to.

I see the hype around GLP-1 medications in the bariatric communities I’m part of — the same desperate hope I once clung to. The same promises. The same expensive “solution.” But we don’t know what the long-term consequences are. Just like nobody warned us in the ‘90s what putting children on 1000-calorie diets might do to our developing bodies.

And I’m not willing to pay that price again.

I did my research. I was curious. But ultimately, I chose acceptance over control. Peace over punishment.

If someone else has a problem with my body — that’s their problem. Not mine.

I don’t need to be thin to be worthy. I don’t need to be pleasing to be accepted. I don’t need to apologise for existing in the body I have.

And I’ll say this with everything I’ve got:No drug, no diet, and no surgery will ever heal what only self-acceptance can.

Written by Alex Sejdia