Brilio.net/en - The Internet can be a dreadful place, especially for people who gets a lot of so-called haters with their envy-worthy photos on Instagram. The bullying and hateful posts from those haters can become unbearable.
It was what New Zealand based woman Simone Anderson experienced weeks ago, after she decided to share her weight loss journey on social media. She did it for two years, in the hope of becoming inspiration for people like her.
Instead of praise, the 25-year-old faced a huge amount of abuse including online commenters saying she had faked her weight loss.
Andersons weight loss journey began when she was 23 years old, burdened with 169 kilograms (372 lbs) body weight. She wanted to live her life to the fullest, so she decided to lose weight.
I was living a half-life. I was constantly lying to myself that [my weight] wasn't stopping me from doing anything, she said, as featured on Mashable. I was turning down so many opportunities and day-to-day things, like walking on the beach with my friends.
Anderson underwent gastric sleeve surgery in 2014 and shift her lifestyle, dieted and had a lot of exercises in an effort to burn off the pounds. Though she has been through many difficulties and hard works, for her facing people's judgements and mean comments on Instagram has been the most difficult.
I started the page only for me. It was my little space to keep myself accountable, she said. I never expected it to grow into what it has, now opening [me] up to a whole world of judgements and opinions I find that really hard.
One of her viral posts can be a perfect example. The photo showed Anderson before and after 11 months of weight loss. The post attracted a horde of comments from users accusing her of faking her achievement.
For me it was tearing down my hard work, and I had worked so hard for it ... most of the comments was stuff like 'oh she doesn't have the same hair colour, so it can't be the same girl, she said. It was really base level comments like that.
But seems like Anderson wont get anyone to snatch the achievement from her. She fought back by uploading another photo of herself two days later, in which she added a revealing image of the excess skin gathered around her torso. Its an inevitable result of losing so much weight.
It was a strong and brave message to the haters, along with the undeniable proof that she was who she said she was.
It was definitely a very scary thing. It was something where I had struggled for five or six days as to whether I'd share those all those images, but I thought I needed to, she said. From day one, I said to my followers I'd be really honest about both the positives and the negatives of extreme weight loss.
Anderson's massive transformation has been aided with surgery to remove her excess skin, plus a breast lift and an augmentation, all of which occurred in the U.S. last September. Some of her loyal followers even helped to pitch in for the surgery via crowdfunding.
Image via mashable
She has managed to loose 92 kilograms (202 pounds) since she started her weight loss mission 90 weeks ago. Still, those comments about faking it appear every now and then.
I think now I've grown a much thicker skin and I try to not read them too much or reason with it, she said.
Anderson has hit 141,000 followers on Instagram and fortunately in recent times most of the comments she receives are from people inspired by her journey.
"It still something that blows my mind every day ... and it makes me really, really proud," she said. "If one person has decided to go running every day because of it, that's really huge."
(brl/red)
