Graphic by Sana Amin/The Gazelle

Those who know me well are aware that I care a lot about the way I look, the food I eat and the amount of times I exercise. I am often criticized for paying too much attention to all these things. For instance, my dad frequently tries to convince me that I should try a more flexible diet. He tells me that it’s fine that I want to take care of my body, but at the same time I should not starve myself to death.

I guess that he is right. I should not prioritize my body image over nutrition because, as we all know, food is essential for our survival. There have been times when I’ve treated my body badly by not eating well — by which I don’t mean eating junk food. I mean that I eat way less than what I should be eating. The times I have stopped eating and lost unhealthy amounts of weight have been because of depression, not because I want to lose body fat or make my abs more noticeable.

In the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that I am happier eating everything I want whenever I want to. I’ve started to think less and less about the impact of food on my body, which has made me happier. But it is not easy to come to this realization, especially when there is a lot of stigma around body weight and looks.

When I was a child, I was very fat. Actually, I was the fattest one among my friends. I was bullied for it. I remember that I hated going to pools, beaches or the lake because I knew someone would make a comment about my body. I couldn’t stand it — there were times when I would have to go to the bathroom and cry because someone had called me a pig or a cow. In my opinion, instances like these lead people to develop eating disorders.

According to a study, five to 20 percent of females and one to seven percent of males at college have or have had an eating disorder, and sadly the numbers are rising. If someone comes and tells me that it’s a lie and that people at college don’t care about appearances, I would tell them that I don’t believe them. If that were the case, we wouldn’t be so scared of the freshman 15.

Luckily, because I was a child and under my parents’ supervision, I didn’t develop an eating disorder. My parents realized that I was getting extremely upset about this whole issue, so they forced me to practice a sport. That’s how I started my nine-year career in swimming.

While swimming helped me lose weight and look better, it also taught me a valuable lesson: food is important and necessary to help us function. If I wanted to have a good day at school and swimming practice, I had to eat about five times a day plus three or four snacks; otherwise, I would be weak.

Everyone who sees Michael Phelps says that he has an amazing body. I wish I could have that body one day. However, what some people do is hit the gym or pool every day five times a week, and eat very little because they think that’s the way to achieve the Michael Phelps body. Little do they know that given the amount of training Michael Phelps undergoes, he needs to consume 12,000 calories per day. Some of the food he eats can be considered to be fattening food.

For some people even eating 1,000 calories a day is too much because they will get fat. People think that having a fruit as a meal is reasonable when they are not hungry. Others who exercise for two or three hours a day think that eating a salad will make them succeed in their quest to being fit. However, they are wrong.

According to a study by the Harvard Health Publication, women who consume 1,200 calories and men who consume 1,500 calories a day would probably lose weight. Nonetheless, in order to maintain a healthy body, women must intake between 1,600 and 2,400 calories per day and men must intake 2,000 to 3,000 calories. These figures do not take into account whether people exercise, so most likely, if you exercise you have to consume more than the calorie threshold required to maintain a healthy body.

I have also fallen for the fallacy that eating less makes you look better. I had never been as fit as I was in December, so my goal was to stay in shape over the break and January Term. I thought it was going to be impossible to maintain my fitness level and physique if I ate all the food I like from home, given that Salvadoran cuisine is extremely greasy and unhealthy. I managed not to cave into any of the unhealthy cravings I had, but I left home extremely unhappy because of this.

The problem with food and body image is that we usually take it to the extremes. We either want to look good and prioritize exercise over food, or we don’t care about our looks and prioritize food over exercise. Our goal should be to be somewhere in between these two cases.

But who am I to judge you based on how I would like you to look or what you like to eat? At the end of the day, we should eat and look the way that makes us happy. If happy means being fat or skinny, then go for it, because there will be at least one person who will like you and won’t judge you for what you eat and how you look. Just remember that your health should be above anything, including the rumors and bad things others have to say.