Huang Huiling: "6 IUIs, 4 IVFs and S$60,000 to get my son"

I am Lyn, mum to a boy who just turned one year old. I love to introduce myself as such because this title as a mum did not come easy for me. I never thought that someday I would "upgrade" my status to Mum. I've had six intra-uterine insemination (IUI) and four in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments over the past four years and met with umpteen failures. It was almost S$60,000 of hard earned money and savings gone down the drain with no returns.  Let's READ More

Joyce Yap: Regardless of how I look, I am still me.

Being a plus-sized girl in Singapore was never easy for me. I often get comments and advice from family and friends that I should lose weight to "fit in”.  The thing is, I was not always this size. I only started gaining weight after I went abroad for a break from work. When I came back after nine months, many of my friends were horrified from the weight that I had gained. I’ve gained 15kg in just nine months.  I tried many ways to lose the weight. I went to the READ More

Clara Nah: The more we try to control food, the more it controls us

My poor relationship with my body began when I was around 17. I was active and played sports but was never concerned with what I ate. I was borderline overweight and comments from well-meaning family members and banter with friends led to a deep-rooted insecurity inside of me.  I had a very low self-esteem and I felt like I needed to control other aspects of my life to feel like I was good enough. Criticism of my body as I was growing up, being compared to a sibling who was naturally READ More

Rebecca Hatten: I don't like running

I don’t like running. There, I said it. That might seem like a strange way to open my story about a running group, but stay with me. The thing is, I love sports. I’ve always been active – my poor parents had to drive me and my brothers around to all sorts of team sports training and games throughout our school years (thanks Mum and Dad!) and I continued playing team sports through university until I began working and my corporate travel schedule meant that I couldn’t READ More

Katelyn Leong: Initially I lost weight just to get people to leave me alone

I didn’t know what it was like to love myself for the longest time. Growing up, I watched a lot of shows that promoted the same theme: that if you just believe in yourself, you can be anything that you want to be, do anything that you want to do, and be happy. Reality, on the other hand, told me otherwise. I had been overweight and unfit since the very first steps that I took in this world. I was the fat kid. I was big for my age. I had to start shopping in the women’s section READ More