As much as I have lost, I have gained so much more than what I have actually lost.

I gained companion.

I gained deserving love.

I gained honesty.

I gained respect.

I gained self respect and confidence.

I gained knowledge about myself.

Life changed so much in such a short amount of time. It's amazing how every spectrum shifted; familiar became unknown, undiscovered becomes reality.

I am not the same person as I am just within a year. But if you stood by and watched me grow, you would have loved me even more. I know I am capable of so much more, I just needed that time, space and love (support) to grow.

But you're 20 now, that's what adulthood does to you; no acknowledgement, torture and pain. You just need to dig inside of you hard enough to find that piece of inner peace and blossom from there. Love grows if you allow it to. Love, is peace.

Every now and then I question what I eat and what I have become out of my diet. Not much, other than I am losing weight by the day. Is it possible to lose more now? The day when I hit 50kg was a glorious day, it made me really happy and everyone around me who noticed the change was happy too..? No. They told me I needed to eat more, gain a little bit more weight and I would be perfect! But why perfect?

I lost appetite almost immediately. I knew I didn't intend to gain weight, it was the culture difference and the excitement of new food that got me eating almost anything that was placed in front of me. First year in a different country, that was the change and everything was exciting.  Whether the food was bad, I wouldn't have known because I just wanted to try EVERYTHING!

But what happened?
I think university and life happened. Everything was going into a autopilot now. I knew what was good and what wasn't good for my palate. I also discovered that good food costs double of what mundane food would cost. Alternative was cooking and that was time consuming. So, I started eating less food, more 'junk' food if you must say. But food in general doesn't interest me as much as it used to.

You know what's worst? Nobody could ever stop talking about how skinny I am! Imagine meeting somebody and the first thing they mention is your body figure. Flattering, but you know it doesn't end well; 'you need to eat more', 'why are you eating', 'no money to buy food?'.

*why is it that I am so bothered by what people have to say about me? I don't know, maybe you can tell me why would you actually ask that kind of question, ey?*

Though present day, I do cook more often. But my interest in food is sort of the reason why I am refusing to eat most of the time. I really want to eat something good, but the money I have to pay for it doesn't quite justify the value. Current mentality is that: if its not worth the money, don't spend it, don't eat it. I try to remind myself that I need to eat, but I just don't know how!

In case you're wondering if I am worried about my weight at all, I am. I am worried that I am way below the recommended BMI that somewhere in my body, its weakening some functions. If you think that I am losing weight because I think I am fat, I am not. I just don't know how to make myself eat food normally.

It really is a struggle.

I am not proud being skinny, but I have definitely accepted that I have this body. Some people make remarks of jealousy saying, 'unlike you, you don't ever have to worry about getting fat! The moment I eat this and I'd explode into a pumpkin'.

Sigh. You don't know my pains. But I'll let you have your moment of self pity.

I was scrolling through Instagram like I do every morning, then I saw a post from megturney and she was posing for a playboy photoshoot. It wasn't her first time, and I somehow didn't quite like the way she portrayed herself to the public with those kind of photos.

I didn't understand my hate, it was absolutely unnecessary. So I questioned, 'why do people like taking photos of their body' and I found this link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/10760753/Why-we-really-take-selfies-the-terrifying-reasons-explained.html

It made sense. I remember taking selfies thinking how almost everyone takes selfies and churns out well received profile photos or even just a mere post by itself. It seemed as though those likes measured the person's popularity or how 'pretty' she seems. I remember the process of taking selfies, taking a minimum of three shots to a maximum of 'oh my god, I'm never getting this amazing selfie shot' and eventually give up. Even sometimes when I feel satisfied with the selfies I took, the people who followed me didn't seem to agree. The result with my posts aren't great, it got me even more confused; what is it that they have that I am lacking? Was it because I wasn't pretty enough? Was this really a bad shot? How are they getting so much likes and comments?

It's almost like a 1 out of 10 published photos where I get more likes than the others and I have no idea why. Then I started to think in the 'popular' perspective, what are the likes making them feel. Are they really who they are if not for the 'likes' that they've been receiving?

I noticed that I have been deleting photos that didn't surpass 10 likes in Instagram. But I also realize, people will only like your photo when it comes to their feed and it's very unlikely that they will tap on your profile and scroll through your timeline to appreciate what you've posted up. Maybe it's my morale where people should show a little more effort than to blatantly touch and go in your life to be significant enough to be a part of your life. It sounds out of context, but if you understand what I mean, then maybe you're different from the rest of the pack.

I struggled to find myself in the middle of this social media mess that is all about likes and comments that determines who you are in their lives. An empty comment that goes: 'so pretty!' would seem deceiving (I mean, LOL is used but the person sending it to you is probably typing that with a blank face). But we humans live on compliments to be accepted by the society.

Living without social media is difficult too, because it seems like its the only platform that makes communication much easier than actually meeting up and talk. We've moved from proper paper/face to face invitation to a mere event invite on Facebook. You comment and share your thoughts, ideas and opinions on Facebook so much easier than to speak of it when you're with a group of people. You banter and frame somebody with ease on Instagram, just because it's easier to do that online instead of being truthful.

After two months of not being on Facebook, I finally logged back into it for half a day and I hated every moment about it. It just flushed me with hatred towards everyone. One reason I say that is because I wasn't sure if they were real people or people who have been altered because of the likes.

:)

@>~-

Why I don't eat lunch

I don't want to eat by myself. It makes me feel lonely.

But not only because of that.
I seem to have figured out what works best for my body! Hooray for that nutrition unit I had in my final semester. 😊

On Sundays when we have trainings in the afternoons, I noticed that I would crave for meaty meals. No rice, just plain meat.

On Mondays, we have leagues at night and I would crave for a late lunch loaded with rice.

On days where I have nothing to do, I will have something light and simple to just give my stomach a little something to deal with.

Some days, I would just roll around in bed until it's dinner time where my body will turn absolutely jelly and my vision takes awhile to restore.

I have low blood pressure, getting up after sitting down will result with blackout visions. That is quite a problem if I were to be out and about doing stuff, imagine sitting down for a rest and then seeing a disc coming your way, you need to get up to catch that disc but your vision is just blacked out you could no longer see where the disc is. So I guess now eating was the only way I could prevent having such problems with my sight.

Though to be fair, by not eating lunch I save heaps of money. I am not trying to lose weight, it is the last thing I would want to do. But by not eating, I am also making my blood pressure drop because of the lack of sugar moving through my body. No food, no sugar.

So the diet goes as it is and I noticed how my body responded to it. Here's what nutrition class taught me:

Instant energy: sugar
Sustainable energy: meat (protein)
Long term sustainable energy: rice (carbs)

Explanatory for my 'other day' food intake, where I don't really need the energy and I only need just enough so that my blood is circulating okay. My stomach will just absorb the sugar easily and my body will be supplied with sugar wherever that is needed.

As for my 'Sunday' routine, I needed more energy because I need to run in about an hours time after food intake. Meat is easier to break down and it contains more energy than sugar, which will give me enough energy to be running around after a short digestive period.

RICE though.. It's a food where I need most time to digest. Its a bigger protein that meat and it will require more energy to break down. I would avoid eating this if I know I need to run in the next hour or so. But it provides the most energy out of all three, which is sufficient because I not only need to burn energy to run, but I need to burn more to keep my body warm in this cold Melbourne winter. I would also prefer eating rice as the final meal of the day (dinner) because it makes me feel tired and I could just lay around and rest at night after dinner anyways. Right now, I've just finished a lunch meal with rice and boy I really can't do anything at the moment.

Oh right, and carbs are the ones that makes you feel full fastest. So if you ever go for buffets, eating meat and seafood first would be the best idea, try avoiding rice, potato, starchy based stuff. Eat as much dessert as you can! But don't forget to exercise to burn it all off, otherwise DIABETES and OBESITY...

Don't eat fat please. They do you no good.

I guess I can't say I don't eat lunch. I do eat lunch, but they are more of munchies rather than a full meal. I'd also get really disappointed if dinner is bad. Because dinner is pretty much the only meal I look forward to everyday!

So.. What's for dinner?

It was a miserable weather tonight. If I had the choice, I would have just cuddled Pengy and stay warm in bed. Though to be honest, that choice was given to me rather readily more than a couple of times too. But I sat there in the car for twenty minutes, psyching myself up, debating hard if I wanted to be out there playing in a horrible weather, or be a coward and stay in the car and be warm.

I went out anyways. I guess I wanted to prove myself wrong, that I can actually survive this horrible weather. I knew by taking the step out of the car was already a good enough effort on my behalf and would have been proud. But it went even more than that. My self motivation somehow just kicked in and I went above and beyond what I expected myself to do.

But of course, I was told to take off my winter jacket and join the team for training. I refused, there was no way I could do anything without my winter jacket in the bitter cold weather. Then I realized that I wasn't able to catch a lot of discs that were thrown to me. Disappointed, I kept trying anyways. It could be my jacket that was slowing me down, or maybe I just wasn't 'warmed up' enough yet.

After training ended, I took the opportunity to throw with someone to get my catches on. I was also told to make sure I catch all my discs. Hurhhhhh.. I took that in and I continued my throwing sets.

Game time, somehow I was pumped up to do my best today. I really don't know what has gotten into me. I probably haven't felt like this in a long time and it felt really good. It made me work really hard and I just wanted to work with the team as much as I could. There maybe a few throwaways, but I didn't feel frustrated or angry. It somehow feels like I have been elevated in some way, it's strange, but it's nice.

I am very proud of myself today. I did a lot of things that I would never thought I had the courage to do. :)

Also, I have determined that I get high after every game of ultimate frisbee. Doubt it works for tournaments though, but definitely Monday leagues so far. 😂

Ps: omg. Mids. Wow. #upgrade
Umbilical is so hard. I died. But I did amazing, so.. #yeay