Author: admin

Back in 2016, Bavani Palanivellu was in a very toxic and abusive relationship which led her to severe depression because her then-boyfriend was manipulative and narcissistic. Blinded by love and foolishly thinking that he would somehow change, the 30-year-old business development manager did not realise that she had lost up to 15kg in a very short span of time.

“I was running, cycling, swimming and hitting the gym just so I could “keep up” with my ex because he was a very active triathlete. I wanted to be the “ideal girlfriend” by participating in activities he was drawn to, hoping that would give him more reason to stay in the relationship,” she shared.

However, all that training, whilst being underweight, caused her to suffer further as she was perpetually exhausted and weak. It was 2017 and she was only 45kg at her height of 1.72m. As a result, she kept falling ill as her immune system crashed.

To make matters worse, she had the worst acne breakouts on her face that hurt and bled. “I started hating how I look and I didn’t like going out,” she said.

“My insecurities slowly chipped away at my self-worth as my ex kept putting me down. When I told him I wanted to do my first Ironman 70.3, he told me that I wouldn’t be able to do one without him. That led me to think that I was always gonna need his help.

“Eventually what I found traumatic was when I finally realised the degree I was manipulated to. I could not accept that someone I loved so dearly would do that to me. Being the strong girl that I’ve been from a very young age, it also weighed me down to think I was so foolish to fall for the same guy twice and get my heart and spirits shattered, twice.”

After completing her first half-Ironman race, Bavani felt extremely proud of herself as it was a challenge she took upon herself to remind her of the girl she once knew, before the relationship.

“I realised that my body is capable of all this, on my own. We always have a choice and I want to emphasise the importance of simply choosing ourselves. Choose you.”

*This is a collaboration between Rock The Naked Truth and Pink Salt

Her life came crashing down when she was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago, at the age of 31. “It was hard to accept as it not only made me face my mortality, but it also brought me to make a lot of difficult decisions that impacted my physical body and my self image. I admittedly went into full-blown project management mode after the shock of my diagnosis wore off,”

“I drove myself to exhaustion consulting with many doctors and researching the internet. All this while I process the decision I am going to make to part with my breasts. Then I hit a breaking point.”

“It was lunch time and I left work to see a doctor. I was hungry because I haven’t eaten a thing and I had a client meeting after, so when they ran late, I got anxious and panicked. I called my boss and ended up breaking down over the phone.

Thankfully, with his kind voice, he told me to go and eat, see the doctor and go home for the day. At that moment, I knew I needed to be kind to myself and stop putting so much pressure on myself.”

The worst for the 37-year-old banker however, was when she made the decision to go for a mastectomy.

“I felt I was losing a part of me that makes me a woman. How will others view me? Will I be able to exercise properly? I lost my real breasts and for a few months I obsessed about how they look and whether I will ever look sexy again,” she recalled.

It also didn’t help when she did hormone therapy and went into menopause, causing her to gain weight and feel more self-conscious about her body. After she got off the meds, she shed the weight but she started having chronic hives and that left her with scars and marks all around her body. These allergies made her eat less which led her to shed more weight, to a point where she was worried she may have lost too much.

“As you can see, over the years it’s been up and down. It’s a journey but in each phase, I learn something and the more important thing is I learn to love myself more and more.”

“I honestly don’t think I had a magic formula on how I coped with it after that. I just took it a decision at a time and a day at a time.”

*This is a collaboration between Rock The Naked Truth and Pink Salt