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Then Kelly got injured and fell off track because she couldn’t exercise as much as she used to. The weight piled back on and she found it hard to regain the same motivation.

Today however, Kelly has found her happy place.

Gone is the pursuit of a petite frame, gone are the crazy days of exercising nonstop. Eat well and don’t deprive yourself of your favourite foods, work out because you enjoy it and not because you want to lose weight. Once you are happy and you take good care of your body, the results will show for itself.

Kelly shares her thoughts…

What does body image mean to you?
Body image to me is how I perceive myself and how comfortable I feel in my own skin.

When did you struggle with body image?
I’ve struggled twice with my body image. The first was when I was overweight after returning from my studies in Australia in 2008. I felt out of place and uncomfortable in a petite-frame society. Thus, I decided to eat clean and work out religiously.

I lost the excess weight, and some. I got lots of jobs and everyone complimented me on how I looked, but my body started changing. My hormones went out of whack, my period was irregular and I became obsessed with being a size 6.

Then when I got injured, I gained weight due to my lack of training. I fell off the bandwagon, tumbled down the slippery slope and found it hard to regain motivation.

Since then, I’ve found a happy medium… I eat well, with treats and cheats. I work out, and I make sure I enjoy each session. There’s a system and a goal that is sustainable and suitable for my body as I enter the next phase of life.

What advice do you have for others who are struggling too?
If you find yourself struggling, you need to identify what it is you’re unhappy with and why it makes you unhappy. Once you realise it’s something you want to change, you’ll be able to define a goal and make it happen. But if it’s something that is influenced externally due to social pressures, you’ll quickly realise that those opinions don’t matter.

What are some of the misconceptions society has about fitness now and how do you hope to correct it?
Society has several standards and the “ideal” body type has changed in recent years. To make a general statement, especially in Asia, I feel that a more slender physique is preferred and that a muscular frame is largely frowned upon. That’s changing, slowly, but we need to be happy with ourselves before society catches on.

What do you hope to do in your capacity to help those with body image struggles?
I hope to reach out to more people, male and female, to help them be happy with themselves. If you are giving your body all the ingredients it needs to be fit and healthy, then you have every reason to be content with the way you are. Be happy with yourself, but ensure that you’re helping yourself along the way to become the best version of you.

It may have seemed worth the pain to look like this, but trust me, the mental anguish, the psychological stress and the constant beating up of myself for not being good enough are all things I don’t ever want to feel again. I was so obsessed with my weight, weighing myself every hour and it even got a bit mental when I started scratching myself for “putting on weight”. My parents nearly sent me to the psychiatrist!

And are you wondering where the money came from at that age? I used to work several part-time jobs whilst balancing my studies (at the expense of the studies to be frank) just to fund all these silly things I did to myself to try and lose weight. I don’t even want to think of how much I have spent in all – definitely tens of thousands, including at least S$10,000 on Herbalife – and it’s probably best that I don’t know.

Finally, I decided to open up about my struggles over the past 10 years and sharing my experiences in detail as never told to anyone before.I genuinely accepted my body for what it is, I am truly comfortable in my own skin, thus I want to reach out to others who are facing or have faced similar problems – you are not alone.

I was a fat kid in primary school and thus I was bullied by my classmates, being called all kinds of mean nicknames. Up to junior college, I was still being teased (good-naturedly this time though) and it eventually hit me hard internally. But it was something that happened during my first relationship which ingrained this permanent message of “I don’t look good enough” into my mind.

At present I stand at 1.67 metres and I tip the scales at 60kg – by “societal standards” that’s considered “fat”. I used to slap an “ideal weight” of 50kg on myself and hence went through all kinds of ways and methods to try to achieve that weight.

I did hit 50kg (and below) twice in my life – From 65kg I went down to 45kg when I was 18, then I suffered a rebound and went back up to 62kg when I entered university, then down to 49kg when I graduated. From 2011 onwards though, my weight has steadily climbed and finally stabilised at 60kg today.

But you know what? I was never satisfied. Once I hit “my ideal weight”, I still thought I was fat and I wanted to lose more weight. (Geez, I must have been so annoying to talk to then.)

But you know what? The numbers don’t matter no more.

I don’t have the 23-inch waist I had, I can’t fit into my 25-inch Levi’s anymore, XS is non-existent in my world – but it doesn’t matter. The other day I finally sat down at my dual cupboard and threw out all the small clothes I was harbouring, in hope of being able to lose weight and wear them again some day. For some reason, hey, that move was pretty life-changing.

I’ve come to love my body for what it is and what it can do for me. We are all born differently and our bodies work differently, so I accept that I wasn’t born petite. I lead an active lifestyle now – I lift, I run, I flip tyres, I push prowlers, I kick, I punch – and I’ve never felt happier. Sure, there are days when I wish my arms were less flabby or my stomach is flatter or my thighs were smaller, but those aren’t what define me.

I derive confidence from what my body enables me to do, such as my work (be it writing about someone’s story to the world or capturing important moments through my lens), and I’ve learnt that self-esteem is measured by the confidence in yourself and not by how you look. And if someone cannot love you for who you are (not what you are), he or she isn’t worth keeping.

Learn to love yourself – respect your body, feed it well and treat it right. Life is too short to be unhappy.