The wellness story usually starts with you running into aunties you haven’t seen in a while at a family gathering. Before you know it, you hear, “Ah-ah, you’ve added weight o.” Then a full committee is having a forum on your ‘new look.’
Sometimes, your doctor’s conclusion about your symptoms usually starts with “watch your weight.”
Wellness Beyond Weight Loss
Suddenly, you become self-conscious, and your body starts feeling foreign to you. You are compelled to tie your worth to the number on a scale or your figure on the size chart. Truthfully, many people are tired. Tired of dieting, tired of feeling like we’re failing at wellness because our stomach isn’t flat enough for a crop top.
What if wellness becomes a way you care for yourself rather than a chore?
Treating Weight Like a Report Card
Growing up in African homes normalized the liberty to share their opinions about people’s bodies. Little girls were told not to get fat or they won’t find a husband. If you are skinny, they say people will think you’re suffering.
The media represented “healthy” as being slim with a tiny waist and a “soft life” aura. Wellness became trendy. Diets became “detox tea,” starvation became “intermittent fasting,” and extreme calorie cuts became “discipline.”
What Is Wellness?
If you remove the snide comments about your body, wellness will become more about your health than weight. It’s all about how you feel in your body and your life.
Working on your inner purpose, physical, mental, and social well-being is how you achieve a healthy lifestyle. Genes, hormones, stress, environment, medication, and your diet mostly affect your weight.
Redefining Wellness on Your Own Terms
Ask yourself some serious questions if you want a healthier life that isn’t controlled by the scale. How do your body to feel when you wake up? How do you handle stress? Do you often feel fatigued or not.
Then, secondly, shift your goals from aesthetics to function. Instead of “I want a flat tummy,” focus on more important things like that back pain you have been ignoring. Rather than focusing on the ‘kg’ on the scale, pay attention to how to feel light, supported, and comfortable in your body.
None of this requires you to become a gym rat. It just means you start treating yourself like someone worth caring for.
The Myths We Need to Unlearn
There are a few popular myths that chase women around like a shadow. Some people believe that if they are not losing weight, they are not making progress, and this is not true. Actually, your body might be quietly thriving.
Another erroneous belief is that healthy people always look a certain way. You can’t scan someone’s health with your eyes. There are slim people with terrible diets, stress, smoking habits, and silent health issues. Health is not a body type.
Navigating Body Comments
Living in African society means unsolicited feedback is basically a love language. Irrespective, you can draw the lines. When someone comments on your body, you can choose to ignore them or tell them to respect how you care for your body.
Practice protecting your physical and mental wellness whether you are online or otherwise. Do what’s right for your body, and try not to be lazy about adopting a healthy lifestyle.
Designing Your Own Definition of Healthy
At the end of the day, the loudest voices about your body should not be that of strangers but yours.
Maybe for you, wellness starts with drinking more water, walking after dinner, sleeping an hour earlier, taking your medication consistently, going to therapy, or finally booking that check-up you’ve been putting off. Maybe it looks like finally figuring out how to manage stress.
Whatever it looks like, remember: your body is not a project you must fix to deserve love, respect, or enjoyment. It is your home. It deserves more than constant criticism; it deserves care. Your health is measured in peace, energy, strength, and joy, not just in kilograms.
