Mel Greig: I refuse to be shamed for losing weight

There was an Instagram post that went viral this week about banning women from sharing their weight-loss journeys.

And although I support some of what was being pushed towards me, I also felt I was being shamed for trying to better myself.

This was the viral Instagram post:

“Don’t make it something we think or talk about. Every time you post about your weight it makes someone else think about theirs. We have to break the cycle of shit, so we can be free.”

I understand that this post had positive intentions and I think women should learn to embrace their bodies.

But shaming someone for sharing their ‘weight-loss’ journey is way off track and here’s why.

The key line that I’m going to focus on is this one: “Don’t push that onto women who look up to you, every time you post about your weight it makes someone else think about theirs”.

Based on that theory, should people who have children stop posting about them in fear of ‘pushing and flaunting’ that onto someone that can’t have a child?

Should we not post about successful careers incase someone that is unemployed is reminded about not having a job? Should I stop posting about my Ambassador work for charity incase someone feels they aren’t doing enough for the community?

If we are truly trying to empower women, then the message should be: ‘DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO SOMEONE ELSE’.

We are all on our own journeys and WE are in-control of our own thoughts and emotions. If someone is looking at pictures of someone else and feeling down about it, they need to work on their own self-love and to not compare themselves to others.

Further in the post it was suggested that instead of saying we are losing weight that maybe we could call it getting stronger, getting faster or getting fitter. But the vital one was missed, and this is what it should be about and it’s impossible to truly embrace your body without this one… GETTING HEALTHY.

The heaviest I’ve been recently is a size 16, tipping nearly 90kg and I tried to embrace my body, to love my curves and to not worry about the scales or what I looked like in the mirror naked.

But there was a reason why I couldn’t embrace my body, and, in all honesty, my body didn’t deserve to be embraced… because it wasn’t being treated with the care and nutrition that it deserved.

I’m not going to embrace my overweight body while it’s unhealthy, I won’t accept that pouring two bottles of wine a night into it was ok. My body was the way it was because I mistreated it and that is not a body that I wanted to embrace.

Having children, or injuries or just being built a certain way is completely different and those bodies should be embraced if you are filling them with love and care.

The first step of embracing your body is to create a healthy body. Does this mean working out at the gym every day? No. Does it mean cutting out alcohol and sugar? No. It means doing what you can to be as healthy as you can, make smarter choices and don’t just abuse your body and then convince yourself that you should embrace it.

I’ve been in that position. My poor body had been through hell with depression and endometriosis and that was out of my control.

But pouring two bottles of wine into it every day and smashing junk food was absolutely in my control.

I am losing weight because my body is getting healthy, weight loss comes with getting healthy and it’s not something to be ashamed of.

Sharing that journey is something I’m proud of and I won’t apologise if someone is upset about my posts because that’s on them. This is my journey and we need to realise that WE CAN’T COMPARE OURSELVES TO OTHERS.

To truly embrace, you need to have self-love inside and out and that starts with being healthy.

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