Ronali Amatya: My Journey to Loving Myself

"Now that I think about everything I went through, I feel grateful for all I went through about my body since it helped me realize how I need to stop depriving myself and made me love what I am today even more." - Ronali Amatya

In conversation with Ronali Amatya

Growing up as an active child who always took part in sports, did Karate, and a list of other physical activities, I always had this athlete feature in my body and was the “tall girl who could beat up the boys’’ of the class. I was never bullied as a child in school for my features though. After graduating with my bachelor’s degree, when I was 20, I started pursuing the field I was passionate about all my life, modeling. I entered into model hunt Nepal in 2016, and fortunately, I won. That’s when everything started and this became a part of my career.

 

When I look back at the pictures of me back then, I see how different I was as compared to what I am today. From the very beginning in this industry, I was surrounded with comments and complaints about how I looked, calling me names for my body, bullied by the organizers themselves. Being someone who, if I have a goal and I have the devotion to accomplish something, I give my hundred percent to so with no option to turn back. And so I did, I listened to what everyone said and took it in thinking it’s good for me and it’ll make me better at what I’m doing. Having a muscular body, my muscles were tight and stiff and that’s just how my body was built up. But in the industry, they only saw numbers, no matter if the numbers are of body fat or muscular weight. And my muscular weight was always high, so my weight in number was never good enough for them, no matter how ‘toned’ I looked.

 

Despite being encouraged by my family and friends of how there was nothing wrong with me and my body was meant to be a little thick and muscular, I still fell into the hole of negativity and complaints coming from everyone else.

 

In 2017, there was another beauty pageant, Miss Eco International, that led me to Egypt, and it was such a big thing for me. I’d always wanted to go to Miss Nepal and this was the opening gate for me, I was dedicated to giving my two hundred percent this time. Here too, it always came down to my body being the factor to hold me back, and everyone kept finding flaws somehow, to a point where it started affecting my mental health. My mindset was so invested in the fact that if I’m good at other thing and my body is the only thing stopping me, I’ll do anything to make it worth. I used to listen to whatever they would say, and I would try to mold myself to become their version of ‘beauty. When I look back today, I feel amazed wondering how I handle all that hours of intense workout with such few nutrients. And yet, never did I receive any sense of appreciation for everything I did and my mental health grew to become worse with time.

 

Then came Miss Nepal which was in 2018, the turning point of my life. I realized how if you think you are fat, you eventually will become fat. My thoughts, my mentality, was always revolving around how my body looked and the people around me, constantly, pushed me further close to that insecurity. Before, I used to work out, ate healthily, and felt good about myself. But when I came to miss Nepal, my confidence level drastically dropped. Every single time, I used to be told how my body was like an athlete, my muscles were like that of a calf, and how my body looks such when I wear heels. Some people would appreciate yes, but my mind was so lost in the negativity. I reached to a phase where I couldn’t even talk properly about what I was struggling with, and my level of self-doubt reached to its peak.

 

Even after that, during my journey to compete internationally, I reached to a phase where I had to visit the doctor due to a severe increase in my gastritis, to a state where there was a possibility of having an ulcer. My mom told me that this is dangerous, if I continued depriving myself and overworking my body, my health will get worse. She even said how I shouldn’t go to Japan to compete because of how drained out I had become. That’s when I what I’ve always wanted with my life and now, because of my health, I might have to step back from this. I continued, despite everything, trying to improve my diet little by little, but things were still the same.

Now when I’m reflecting on my days back then, I see how I couldn’t even think that this is wrong, and I shouldn’t have been brought so down about how my body looked. I used to be so busy with things that I couldn’t even take time to think about where my entail and emotional health were with everything moving so fast around me and how mentally exhausted I was with no feeling of happiness. Meeting with people, going on photo shoots, I never got to confidently show myself and always felt insecure about how they must be looking at my body and listing out more negative things to talk about it.

 

In 2020, during the lockdown, I finally got the time to be alone with myself and had time to think of myself and do things I want to do. Not meeting more people meant not listening to their opinions and comments, and that led me and my body to go back to being healthy and happy. All my insecurities and self-doubts started flushing out and I was finally happy with what I was, what I am. Getting to spend more time with me, with my family, I realized how everything that was so wrapped up in my head about the ‘flaws in my body’ that, in reality, was never flawed like they said it was. How I let the five minutes conversations with the people who brought me down took away five months of my life trying to fit into their words.

 

This also became the period where I got to rediscover the part of me that became attached to yoga back in 2017 while I was exploring new activities to lose weight. Yoga became my way of going back to being a confident, healthy version of myself. It became the platform for me to become healthy physically, mentally, emotionally as well as spiritually. I took a certificate to be a professional yoga instructor and now want to help others grow as I did. I’ve always wanted to do something good for other people and having the power to do that by helping them grow physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, truly makes me feel like my life is finally whole again. Yoga helped me connect all my dots of life goals connect in such a beautiful way.

 

Now that I think about everything I went through, I feel grateful for all I went through about my body since it helped me realize how I need to stop depriving myself and made me love what I am today even more. At the end of the day, It was just me and my happy little, or should I say a big body that I absolutely love, that can do such cool yoga poses.

 

“It’s not just what I went through, every day, the bullying and body-shaming about people being too tall or too thin or too fat by society can take such a big toll on them, their mental health, and their love for themselves. If the only people had the habit of looking at things through someone else’s shoe and knowing that all of us have our battles to fight and we should have the compassion to help each other get through it. I believe practicing empathy is the seed of change.”

-Ronali Amatya