Michelle Lim: Live life on your own terms

For as long as I can remember, I struggled with my self-esteem. Because of my height and my build, I was always referred to as the “big one” and it made me very self-conscious. I couldn’t fit into the same types of clothes that my friends could and I always felt like a giant amongst my friends. I hated the way I looked and I desperately wanted to lose weight and (miraculously) become shorter. I thought that I didn’t deserve happiness because I didn’t fit the
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Michelle Yang: Believe in yourself even if no one does

I was never a thin or skinny girl. My heaviest weight was 96kg at the age of 13 years old and I was considered obese. Everyone called me all kinds of names linked to fatty or piggy and not many people wanted to be my friend due to how I looked (because of how fat I was), hence I had very few friends. Boys I liked never liked me back and when I eventually had one, he left me for a skinnier and prettier girl. There was even a period of time where my own
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Netty Lie: Love your imperfections

I have always been a tall slender girl for my entire life and my weight had never exceeded 60kg in the past. Then I got married and pregnant in the same year and gained a crazy 25kg in my first pregnancy. I remember being a shocking 85kg super huge pregnant mama at the end of my pregnancy and it was a bit depressing. Luckily I managed to lose 20kg of that weight when my son turned 8 months old by almost exclusively breastfeeding him. I went on to conceive my
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Nada Khalid: Don’t live by anyone else’s perception of beaut

Growing up, I have always been a skinny kid and it was pretty normal for me to be underweight. Things changed when I hit my peak as a sprinter in my JC days, where I was hitting the gym for more power on the track. I started gaining muscle, my weight was on an upward climb and it felt good to be strong. Then at 19, the worst thing that could happen to any athlete happened to me – I had a stress fracture in my foot and I had to take a 6-month layoff from training and competition.
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Jasmine Pay: Do it for yourself

Like most girls out there, I was never the “skinny, pretty girl” to begin with. Since young, I was always overweight and was in the TAF Club from primary school to secondary school. It doesn’t help that I love to eat. Of course, my classmates always gave me weird nicknames but I got over it. It was only after I went to ITE after my GCE “O” levels that I started to get very concerned about how people looked at me, so I asked my
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