Are you familiar with the feeling which comes when you are constantly struggling with something and after trying numerous times you finally succeed? That feeling must be ethereal because when you are suffering a battle with your own mind, that feeling is rare.

In a world where every single trait of yours depends on how ‘people’ look at you, the way you look at yourself loses importance. However, we are aware that what matters the most is how we perceive ourselves. This conversation applies to various battles but, this article would like to throw light on one of them, which on various occasions is invalidated by others, skinny-shaming.

The relationship people have with their bodies is often directly proportional to the relationship they have with the food they consume. Many times, this relationship is disturbed by people interfering in someone’s growth process, just because the certain ‘people’ are unsatisfied with the other person. This disturbance is what we call ‘body-shaming’. Before we continue we have to ask, what does someone’s ‘growth process’ exactly mean? And is it really considered ‘growth’?

Growth or not, every single person battling with an eating disorder or something which comes under the spectrum of a disorder (even undiagnosed) is a part of a process. Despite this fact, many people around the world are seen disregarding the struggle of people who are conventionally thin. Let’s look into why they’re not ‘lucky’. They struggle to lose weight using unhealthy habits and disguise it with actions calling it ‘exercise’ to make sure their loved ones don’t worry about them. Unhealthy habits here refer to, starving one or purging the food consumed etc.

After the process seemingly comes to an end, you would expect the person to be satisfied. However, that’s almost never the case. The aftermath is a constant fight between you, food, the comments you receive on a body which was supposedly going to make you happy and the mirror. They can now feel a presence of a void which cannot be filled with satisfaction no matter how much they try. Every time they look into the mirror, they question themselves. Counting the items of food they’ve eaten in a day and the number of calories consumed becomes a part of their routine. And quite often, they’re faced with a point of hopelessness and they breakdown.

This is a summarised, not-so detailed version of a personalised battle. The ironic part is the mind is the biggest enemy. Constantly checking and measuring the amount of weight you’ve gained and if it doesn’t measure up satisfaction, falling into the pit of despair once again. At any given point in time between 0.3-0.4% of young women and 0.1% of young men will suffer from anorexia nervosa. The effects vary largely. Some face hair-loss, brittle nails, loss of energy and dizziness along with light headedness. Mental health is also largely affected causing irritability, over-exercising and Obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Some are lucky to have support around them and slowly lose the hyperventilating thoughts over years. However, those who are alone in their battles are the ones we should specially look out for, because we never know when they are about to lose.