New year resolutions,body positivist and NHS !

Hello and happy new year! like most i started my year with a hangover and a degree of liver damage , don't drink 40% whiskey on its own if you want to live in the morning!

Also like everyone i came up with 3 new years resolutions!

1- work on my mental health a bit more

2- be vegetarian or cut the amount of meat i eat

3- become an egg donor! because as a young lesbian who does not want kids and could also do with a bit of cash for uni i thought it would be great. Also the matter was kind of personal since i know many older friends that want kids but can't due to issues such as PCOS and in fact my cousin is going through IVF at the moment. so i thought i could really help them out...in a way ...by helping donating eggs.

Unfortunately, i cannot do this due to some history and my mental health and autism which is gutting ...but also i couldn't do it because of my BMI. I just didn't know it was a factor to consider but the second i read that i knew i probably could not do it as i am overweight and is chubby and quite big. However, i didn't know my actual BMI number so i checked on the official NHS website and surprise! surprise! I am overweight. which i don't mind because i have never really been skinny and it doesn't affect me in a way as i learnt to love my body when i was a teenager because rather if i'm 'skinny' or 'fat' or 'curvy' or 'chubby' i will still have the same face and personality and plus who gives a shit! My size has never affected me on friendships, on relationships, on jobs, nothing like that. Have I tried to drop some weight? Yes but most of the time it is for me in order to buy clothes or just for me cause I do like the gym. Anyway this is not about my weight...fully. So I checked on the NHS website and it just threw ‘you are overweight’ in my face. Fair enough. What I didn’t like is what they put underneath.

(yes that is my screen)

I understand the issue with the risk of actual health diseases like diabetes , but low self-esteem or poor confidence kind of pissed me off .

We live in the world where there is this ideology that ‘skinny’ is better and it is shown in adverts or models and yes recently there have been/are plus-size model movements but unfortunately getting a plus-size model on an ad that is not Dove is rare. I would expect this from a magazine. I would expect this from Victoria secret. I wouldn’t expect this from the NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICES.

I have been overweight since I was 10 , around the age when puberty hit me because my body reacted that way and I just had to deal with it. Which I did. Yes I was called fat and had issues with my image at the start. But that didn’t stop me from joining the debate team and arguing in front of crowds, it didn’t stop me from doing Ted/turbo talks and it sure as hell didn’t stop me from wearing a bikini or a pair of shorts and bra at gay pride!

What I'm trying to say is that being overweight does not cause you to have ‘poor confidence’ or ‘low self-esteem' . What causes those who don’t look like the ideal image because they are ‘fat’ to have these qualities is pushing this idea of what our bodies should look like and then harassing them constantly about their image.

How can we have body positivity if even our own NHS doesn’t promote it.