Suffering from depression and binge eating? The baby steps to recovery that helped a Hong Kong woman lose 30kg and find her confidence again
- Mayuri Punjabi was miserable, demotivated and overweight; self-destructive habits kept her in a cycle of despair for years that she could not break out of
- She took a baby step towards healing by joining a yoga class, realised she wanted to thrive and not merely survive, took up meditation and ate gut-friendly food
Forty-three-year-old Mayuri Punjabi is a picture of health and happiness. Trim and fit, the mother-of-two meditates daily, practises yoga regularly, nourishes her body with gut-friendly food, is brimming with energy and full of hope for the future.
Her younger self looked, felt and acted much differently. From mid-2007 to the end of 2010, Punjabi was suffering physically and emotionally. She was 30kg overweight and diagnosed with three conditions: polycystic ovary syndrome that causes irregular and painful periods, pre-diabetes, and an underactive thyroid that wasn’t producing enough crucial hormones.
This triggered depression. To numb the pain, she binged on junk food and overindulged in alcohol.
“Food helped fill a void inside of me,” says Punjabi, who was born in Indonesia and has lived in Hong Kong for 15 years. “I ate all the time, whether I was hungry or not, and would stuff myself until I felt like I was going to explode. Junk food was my ‘drug’ of choice – ice cream, burgers, pizza, milkshakes, and other processed foods.
“Eating huge amounts made me feel better, but only until the negative feelings surfaced again. In social situations, I used alcohol to feel better about myself. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything remotely healthy. At the time, I was just trying to survive. I was angry and felt misunderstood; I did not feel seen, heard, loved or validated, and I blamed the world for it,” she adds.