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You would think that national sprinter and hurdler Dipna Lim-Prasad would never suffer from confidence issues – let alone struggle with her body image. After all, she’s clinched two Southeast Asian (SEA) Games medals and to date, holds the national record in the Women’s 400m Hurdles at 59.24 seconds.

However Dipna’s journey to where she is today was never a straightforward one, especially since she had a slow start in her sport, which largely affected her confidence.

Finding her talent

Having enjoyed running around and playing catching in her neighbourhood playground as a kid, Dipna simply wanted to join a Co-Curricular Activity (CCA) that allowed her to run. Naturally, she ended up in Track and Field.

While she dabbled about in other CCAs such as table tennis, hockey and Brownies throughout primary school, she decided to return to Track & Field. She then applied to the Singapore Sports School (SSS), competed in the time trials and made it through as the pioneer batch of the acclaimed school.

However, she didn’t have a great start there.

“During the first year in SSS, I was ‘tossed’ around a lot because I was really the slowest. They thought it was because I was in the wrong event. So I went to long distance, to jumps, but I eventually found my way back to sprinting because that’s what I really liked. I basically sucked at everything else,” she laughed.

The 400m event stuck with her, and in Secondary 2, she picked up the gold medal in the 400m sprint at the National Schools competition and subsequently earned her spot in the National Team.

“I think it was down to partial growth spurt, partial training properly for the entire year. I managed to clock a really good timing, and it was uphill from there,” she reminisced.

In Secondary 4, she had a new SSS Track & Field coach Slavan who decided to start her on hurdles. While she was initially closed off to the idea and even tried to cry her way out of it, she ended up liking it and doing pretty well at it too. Since then, she’s earned herself a Bronze and Silver medal in the 2013 and 2015 SEA Games respectively.

“You’re too skinny!”

While one commonly associates body image struggles with individuals who are on the plus side, Dipna struggled with her slim physique.

At a lanky 175cm and weighing 55kg, Dipna is often told she’s very skinny for a sprinter.

“Having the right muscle mass is so important in sprinting and being skinny isn’t a good thing. One important block of my training is hypertrophy and max strength to build muscle mass and be stronger,” she added.

Besides her physique, people also poked fun at Dipna because of her unique ethnic features – such as her long eyelashes and thick hair – due to her mixed Indian and Chinese genes.

It started in primary school, where Dipna was only one of two Indians in her entire batch. She never felt out of place, but the popular girls at school picked on her for how she looked and for her performance in the sport. It didn’t help that these girls clinching gold medals at Track & Field competitions, at a time when Dipna was struggling at the sport.

“The first year I was in track, the girls went outside my classroom where everyone was, and shouted at me to keep up or quit. That was awful. These were the same people who, for the rest of the years in school up to about Primary 5, would say things very loudly on purpose so you could hear them,” she said.

These girls not only mocked at her for her poor performance at the sport, but also laughed at her appearance and the way she walked. “They would say my eyelashes were so long and they meant it in a bad way. I had no idea how you define ‘nice’ eyelashes though. I looked around the school and everyone mostly had short eyelashes, so I thought I was weird. I actually went home to cut my eyelashes to make them shorter!”

All that is behind Dipna now though – she has taken great strides to be where she is today and she hopes others will be able to look at themselves in the mirror and accept themselves. It’s all about “feeling happy and content with yourself, and not picking on yourself,” she said.

Dipna’s advice to those who are struggling: “Love yourself. For me personally, it just came to a point where I can’t do anything about it so I just took me as I am, and I realised you can love yourself. You can do the same too.”

We chat more with Dipna…

Name: Dipna Lim-Prasad

Age: 25

Occupation: Full-time National Athlete

Height: 175cm

Weight: 55kg

What’s your current personal best for 400m sprint and hurdles?

DLP: Officially for 400m sprint, it’s 56.23 seconds, but that’s in 2013 – the last time I ran 400m flat. For 400m hurdles, it’s 59.24 seconds – clocked during the 2015 SEA Games.

Do you still suffer from body image issues?

DLP: I guess there are days when you get really paranoid, like when you wear a tight dress. I’ll get a little conscious because I’m pear-shaped, naturally flat and my legs are a bit bigger cause of running. I know it’s ironic because I wear tights to run, but I can’t help I feeling cautious when it comes to dressing up in casual wear so I try to avoid tight dresses.

When I go swimming, I try to wear sports bra and tights or short because it’s safer and it covers my eczema spots and marks. Also because I’m a bit more muscular, so wearing a bikini looks a bit weird on me.

Currently, what comments do you get about your physique?

DLP: No one really picks on me anymore.Social media opens the door for really weird people to comment just really inappropriate things, but at the moment, I’m quite lucky and it’s been quite positive.

People still comment that I’m very skinny for a sprinter, but I’m working on it by building more muscle mass. I don’t really get any negative things like about how I look. I’ve been an athlete my whole life and I’m used to having a larger lower body. A happy worry I have is not eating enough, which is what my friends do worry about.

The thing is – I eat a lot. A lot of my friends are disturbed by the amount I eat! The first time I went out with Amanda Lim the swimmer, she literally told her friends: “I’m going out with Dipna today and I’m going to see how much she eats for dinner.” At the dinner, I ate my meal and I also helped to finish the excess sushi! She then went back and told our friends, “Eh Dipna really can eat leh! Like legit.” Haha!

What do you think of Rock the Naked Truth?

DLP: I think it’s fantastic because I was actually speaking to a friend, and she was telling me her daughter was having trouble in school because she just hit puberty, and is having this growth spurt and gaining a lot of weight which caused her to lose friends. I shared my experiences; although weight gain wasn’t an issue for me, but I can relate to the humiliation and how to cope.

I remembered reading Sha Halim‘s story so I showed it to my friend, who showed it to her daughter and they were so inspired. There’s a wide spectrum of stories that RTNT shares and there’s definitely going to be a relevant story for everyone. I think it’s all about making a positive difference – it did for my friend’s daughter!

2016 has been a very eventful and exciting year for me – I got married (moved into a new home/family) and was given a new job scope at work too, but what made this year exceptionally meaningful was getting to know the Rock the Naked Truth (RTNT) movement through a very close friend, who struggles with self-esteem issues and joined this group for hope of support and recovery. My very first ROCKevent was their first ROCKrunners session on 30 January and since then, I’ve been going for many of their events. I have to say, it is through RTNT that made me realise how fortunate I am.

The Perfect Image – is there one?

Every girl probably grew up having the mindset of the perfect image being tall, skinny and fair, which in turn translates to being more lovable and popular in school with the boys. However, along with this comes the pursuit of reducing that number on the weighting scale. This is very common and I’ve seen a lot of these – especially coming from a girls’ school – where they become obsessed with the number on the scale.

I was very lucky that I was never overly bothered by weight or body image issues. I grew up doing sports – I was part of Cross Country team in secondary school and the Canoeing team in Junior College. Certainly there were occasions that people commented on how dark and broad I was (especially in JC days), and then I looked “the worst” in my early university years (having stopped the intensive training with minimal reduction to food consumption).

But I continued to make time to clock my runs, making the conscious effort to be healthy and feel good. So although the occasional comments can hurt sometimes, I was able to rationalise with myself that I was still fit and healthy, and never ever got to the state of dieting or starving myself to satisfy others.

I recall a particular comment from a friend – “Wah your arms and shoulders are so broad that if I cover your face in the photo, I would have thought it’s a guy.” Ouch, that surely hurt, but guess what? I was certain that I was stronger and faster than he is, so I didn’t think I had anything to be ashamed of.

People can comment and judge (it’s just human nature), but it’s really up to ourselves to discern what should really matter to us. We should not expect anyone else to love ourselves more than we do. If we don’t love ourselves, what right do we have to ask for others’ love? Developing your own personality and finding the self confidence is so much more important, because that is what defines our unique self and worthiness. So to everyone, be kind to yourself, acknowledge your strengths and beauty from within, because that will certainly go a much longer way than physical appearance.

My Running Journey

I have been asked quite a number of times about “my running career” so I thought I will use this opportunity to share. Very thankfully, this year has been phenomenal where I managed to achieve my best timings across various distances. But it has actually taken a long time to get me this far.

As mentioned, I started running in secondary school – I was part of the Cedar Cross-Country team. I was never fast, or rather, never fast enough. I remember panting and struggling with 5:00 min/km interval trainings and dreaded speed-work (even now I still do)! To put things into perspective, the team had 9 of us in my batch; 8 to form a team and I failed to make the cut. *sobs* Well, getting into school team was very competitive back in those days and simply, I just wasn’t good enough.

Luckily I didn’t end up hating running or giving it up, and the training actually laid down the fundamentals for my canoeing days in National Junior College. It was during this time that I learnt about the priceless value of TEAMWORK. Running was a very individual sport for me but in NJ Canoeing, we learnt about how a team is only as good as the weakest link. It’s never about who’s the strongest, but building a strong team together. Through that period, it was a very humbling experience going through thick and thin as one.

My first ever marathon was with this team – 107 rounds around NJC track on a Saturday for fund raising. We took forever (like 7+ hours?!) to complete it as ONE team. That was done at an almost-walking pace at 10:00 min/km and I remember my joints felt like breaking at the end. Later that year on the day of our prom night, the girls’ team did the Stanchart Marathon Singapore (SCMS) full marathon together and it took us about 6 hours. I’ve had my fair share of experience running slow, but here’s where I say that it’s not about timing, but about the achievement of completion, together.

Till 2015, I took part in races on and off, slowly setting targets to better my personal best. Having clocked 2 sub-5 marathons in 2012, I switched to half-marathons but was never able to set my mind to better my PB of 2:00:09 in 2014 until this year. With a nudge by my bestie who shared the promo code for Sundown Marathon, I took up the challenge to aim for a sub-2 half marathon and officially submitted that as my short-term goal for RTNT goal-setting – that set me up to adjust my fitness regime over the next 6 weeks.

So, it really took me a long time but nonetheless I am excited and proud of how far I have come. This year has been great as I managed to try different distances 5, 10, 15, 21km and I have even set myself up to challenge the 42km again next year. The pursuit for numbers really never ends, but my bottomline is to strive and find the balance – to stay injury-free, eat healthy and run happy.

Thank you RTNT and ROCKrunners

Apart from achieving my fitness goals, I have gained something much more valuable from my RTNT experience thus far – and that is empathy and appreciation. I am lucky enough not to have been through a rough patch on self-esteem issues, but I never thought that I could be in a position to motivate or inspire others. I’m pretty much a skeptic, so although I can quite effectively neutralise negative thoughts about myself, I don’t take compliments very well. It’s not uncommon for me to reply “Oh really?” or hold thoughts like “Does he/she really mean it?” So this self-doubt is always lingering somewhere within and probably as a result of that, I don’t give enough compliments too.

The ROCKrunners family however, has made me realise that little steps go a long way and people do appreciate efforts. It didn’t take much effort or time to run with others or to talk about my own running journey, but the words of thanks and seeing newcomers return for subsequent sessions feels really awesome. And in this community, it’s all about opening, sharing and giving. Amazingly, the receiving comes naturally. A little word of thanks or a simple compliment can go a long way to making someone’s day. So a gentle reminder to ourselves – appreciate ourselves by accepting others’ kind words and let’s not be stingy with our praises too.

I would like to thank RTNT for giving me the exposure to experience different types of fitness activities – yoga, spinning, weightlifting, Bounce, cardio hip-hop (the list goes on…).  In running, I’ve had the chance to race different distances and set goals to achieve my personal best. The ROCKfam is indeed priceless and the very reason why I look forward to waking up even earlier on Saturdays than on work days.

To my beloved ROCKfam, it’s truly amazing how much each and everyone of us have improved and I’m really proud to be part of this family. The positive vibes, energy, contagious laughter and the never-ending buzz of encouragement have propelled us to improve as a team and I’m certain this support and friendship will last a lifetime.

A shoutout to those who are battling the SCMS this Sunday – some of you are doing it for the first time, some gunning to smash your PBs – you guys are ready for this! To the first timers – the distance can be daunting, but listen to your body, have faith in your training and remember, the goal is completion. To the old-timers, focus on executing your plan and own the road! With the amount of mileage that most of you put in, there’s no reason to doubt yourself.

Cheers to loving ourselves more each day! Train happy, be healthy.

Love,

Vien

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ROCKstar of the Month is a monthly award given to an inspiring individual who advocates a positive mindset and living an active lifestyle (see full requirements below). 

Requirements to be a ROCKstar of the Month awardee:

• SUPPORT – Believes strongly in the movement and advocates the right mindset
• INFLUENCE – Displays ability to be a positive influence to those around him/her
• ENTHUSIASM – Regularly attends Rock The Naked Truth events
• LEADS BY EXAMPLE – Demonstrates desire to improve lifestyle aligned with the movement
• CONTRIBUTION – Does his/her part to give back to the movement