prologue

I’ve always remembered growing up taller than the rest of my peers in school. As a result, I always looked bigger. In the early 2000’s I was heavily influenced by Asian media - kpop being the biggest contributor. I was amazed at how perfect everyone looked; the glass skin, long hair and how slim everyone was. As a 15 year-old girl, I had none of these things. In Asian culture, slimness is regarded as a characteristic associated with beauty, health and discipline (it showed that you were capable of controlling gluttonous urges).

But then I found the ✨ not-so-magical-world of kpop fad dieting ✨

Back then, I knew nothing about the consequences of fad dieting: slowed metabolism, dehydration, bingeing, etc. All I knew was that to lose weight, you need to consume less calories than you burn. When I saw articles upon articles of kpop idols losing weight eating only watermelon, only bananas, water fasting, etc. I thought, why couldn’t I do that? It seemed to worked for so many of these idols that were beautiful.

I don’t blame any of the idols I goo goo gaga’d over in my teen-hood — they just had one job to do and they did it damn well.

Basically, I wanted a Dream High Kim Pil-Suk moment

I remember the winter break of my Sophomore year in high school: I made a promise to myself that I would come back slim, pretty and unrecognizable.

I remember watching Dream High’s Pil-Suk lose 30kg in the name of 🌹 love 🌹.

For so long I was invisible and a push over, maybe this was my chance to change! From there, I took the extreme route - I severely limited the amount of calories I ate, jogged 3-5 miles and followed workout videos on youtube. I started off at 170 pounds at the beginning of break and came back to school at 150 pounds. Instantly my friends recognized that something changed and I was hooked on my newfound attention. I kept this routine and made it down to 140. At this point, I was constantly hungry, my face looked grey, my hair thinned, I developed Gastritis and at 15 I still did not have a period.

I remember having Suzy (left) and Seol-hyun (right) as my body goals for years

Then I went to college and met my husband.

For the first time, I felt so happy and comfortable in my own skin because I met someone who didn’t care or hyper-fixate on appearances. As our relationship progressed, we moved in together and put our lives into sync — this definitely included our eating habits. We pretty much ate whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. And exercise? As an engineering student, I’ve never heard of her.

…aaaaaand you guessed it, I became the biggest I had ever been at 220 pounds.

To be honest, I was in denial. But I couldn’t help the nagging feeling in the back of my head that I knew I wasn’t healthy or happy with myself. When I slowly gained the weight back at the beginning of our relationship, my period returned and my skin brightened. A few years later when I was past the point of a healthy weight, my period had once again disappeared, my skin was excessively oily and I began to have knee problems. I now had to work twice as hard to lose the weight because of how damaged my metabolism was from years of fad dieting.

It took me around another year to realize I didn’t want to live that way — I was so physically uncomfortable in my body. We began our fitness journey at our local gym with a personal trainer and once I built up the confidence to work out in a gym, my fitness journey really began.

But that story will come soon :)

Left: Feb. 18, 2022 - Start of my fitness journey.

Center: April 22, 2022 - A little over 8 weeks into my journey.

Right: April 22, 2023 - Myself a year after that center photo!