Jazzy (short for Jasmine) Tasdelen is probably more active than three-quarters of the population – she sees her Personal Trainer five times a week doing weights, cardio and high intensity interval training. She also swims and runs. On top of that, she eats a healthy diet with the help of a nutritionist.

However, the 33-year-old digital marketing manager struggles every day with her weight due to certain medical conditions and it doesn’t help that society is quick to criticise.

At 1.65 metres tall and 95kg, Jazzy has to keep up this level of activity and eat healthy just to stay at this weight. “I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Basically my body develops cysts, which leads to hormone imbalances. These imbalances lead to weight gain and fertility issues,” she shared. This makes it difficult for her to lose weight.

Because of her PCOS, Jazzy had to spend three months doing IUI and injecting herself with fertility drugs 15 days of every month. That caused her weight to balloon badly. Her body also doesn’t produce much melatonin, which means she has a lot of trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep.

“Due to all this, I need to be really careful with what I eat and I train five days a week with my PT. If I take a few days off (which I do, I’m human), I gain weight or size,” she added. “It is a very long and slow process, but my body is changing with all the training. I am getting muscles and I can see shape changes, so I just have to be patient.”

‘I never thought I was fat’

Jazzy didn’t think herself fat until she was in high school – a really cruel place she calls it – where she was made fun of by her schoolmates. She was an AU size 14 by the way. Her schoolmates picked on her more, also because she was different.

“I was outgoing, loud, totally extroverted and that can be intimidating. I moved to a rural town at the start of high school. There were only 2,000 people in the district and just 250 kids in my school. I was christened with the nickname ‘Fat Fahey’ (my maiden name is Fahey-Winter) on my first day and that name stuck for my whole time there,” she explained.

Boys were very nasty to her. When they were interested in her at parties and kissed her under the influence of alcohol, they would deny it on Monday at school. She only got a boyfriend at Year 9 and he had to put up with a lot of teasing for going out with her.

Due to this, Jazzy developed a huge obsession with being ‘liked’ and would often make a lot of stupid decisions so people would like her. More often than not, she would end up in tears, feeling more depressed than ever.

“I still have journals where I’ve written ‘I’m fat, I hate myself, I want to die’ over and over and over again for pages,” she revealed.

At 14, she tried to kill herself by taking every pill she could find in the house and downing them with mentholated spirits. Thankfully, her father found her in time and forced her to throw up. The year after at 15, she tried to take her life again by slitting her wrists.

During these actions, Jazzy really thought it was the only way to stop the pain and hurt that she felt. In hindsight, she realised they were all just desperate cries for help. Her science teacher in high school managed to figure out what was going on and arranged for a psychologist to come and see her. The therapy helped and Jazzy was slowly finding herself.

Slipping into denial

In her 20s though, she slipped into denial.

After high school, her head state was in a much better place but like everyone, she started thinking about her weight again. “You look at your smaller friends around you and you subconsciously feel inferior as they look better. You end up skipping lunch, trying whatever fad diet is and then you give up! I partied my ass off and I drank every way I could. You just don’t care anymore. You know you are fatter and bigger but you just. don’t. care,” she said.

Jazzy went on like that for years and it wasn’t until she got married six years ago that she started to diet again. “You suddenly realise you have to put on a white dress and these photos last forever, so that’s when I started going, ‘I need to cut out the drinking, I need to start exercising again’,” she laughed.

“I got a gym membership and went twice a week. At that time I thought I was trying but in hindsight I was not trying very hard at all because I would still eat what I want and go out on weekends. For some reason, I managed to lose 10kg before my wedding which was great as it was the first time I had been under 90kg in a very long time.”

But after the wedding, it didn’t matter again. Jazzy stopped and binged to 114kg. It’s the heaviest she has ever been in her life and she didn’t realise how big she was until she saw a photo of herself at a leaving party before they moved to Singapore from Australia.

“I just lost my mind,” she shook her head, “I couldn’t understand how I could let myself get that big.”

Feeling out of place

Coming to Singapore in 2012 (for her husband’s job) made her struggle even harder. Asians are traditionally small and petite, making her feel out of place. It was very difficult for her to buy clothes too.

“I liked to wear those long leggings which are stretchable, but it’s too hot in Singapore to wear those! So I had to find clothes that were size 20 and there are a couple of stores here that will carry a 20 or higher than size 20, but the fabric was horrible or it wasn’t fashionable. Then there is this thing called region sizing where I can be a Nike XL in Australia for example, but I couldn’t even get over into one arm in a Nike XL in Singapore,” she lamented.

That meant having to do most of her shopping online or doing a big shop when she returns to Australia. On many occasions, Jazzy would walk into a shop and be waved away by the assistant who would say, “No miss, not for you, no size for you sorry”. Others would ask when the baby’s due even though she’s not pregnant and that’s a doubled-edged sword because of her fertility issues.

To try and solve her weight issues, Jazzy went to doctors and specialists in Singapore but most were quick to refer her for gastric bypass surgery or putting her on pills like Duromine, instead of getting down to the cause of her bad nutrition and weight struggles.

It was only in mid-2015 that Jazzy went to see a nutritionist who finally worked out what was going wrong. “I wasn’t eating enough for a start. Also, even though I was eating clean, I was eating things that didn’t agree with how my body works. I did a full food allergy test and the food elimination diet, and discovered a MASSIVE difference with how my body works and I managed to lose some weight.”

Because of her other health issues, Jazzy can’t shed weight easily but her body works better now and she has more energy to do more things.

“I still struggle EVERY SINGLE DAY,” she admitted. “If I catch myself in a reflection, I freak out from the side view BUT even though I struggle every day, I love myself more now than I ever have.

“I can RUN, I have medals from running 5km races; I can lift weights, I have muscles! Granted they are baby ones, but they are there and I feel good, because I am doing something about it every day. I am being aware and making choices and getting right back on when I fall off the wagon.”

Finding the balance

She was at a point where she would do these 30-day programmes and lose 5kg in a month, but because she missed out on friends’ birthday parties or dinner with the husband, she would fall into this self-destructive spiral of behavior. She would binge and the weight would come back so much quicker, making her feel worse.

But all that is behind Jazzy now.

“Everyday just brings something new and awesome and I am excited to work out and I change my playlist everyday. You know, it’s just a way of life for me. It’s not so much getting smaller and it’s not about getting super fit either. If I want cake, I’ll have the cake; it just means I’ll have to work a little harder.

“It’s about just being happy and having a balance. It’s taking a really long time to just reach that level but I accept that this is a long journey for me,” she beamed.

Gone are the days of counting every calorie and stressing out so much that she forgot how to have fun and live life. Jazzy keeps a very positive attitude despite all the struggles, with the support of an incredible husband who loves her the way she is, often telling her she is beautiful, fun and sexy.

“I love Rock The Naked Truth (RTNT) – the message is so needed in this day and age. We have eight-year-old kids going on diets and people constantly comparing themselves to everyone else and it’s just not right. Everyone is different and awesome and amazing and beautiful, but our obsessions with attaining the perfect body are getting scary. I wanted to look a certain way because I felt I had to from those around me. Now I want to be fit and strong and RTNT embraces this.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re tall or skinny or fat or short or whatever. It’s about being happy and healthy in your own skin. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have rock hard abs. It’s not about being the fittest or the best or the tallest.. it’s just about accepting yourself from the inside out.”