Meet Tara Swinfield, dance teacher, age 32, whose life literally changed when in the middle of an audition for a cruise ship, women whispered her, “You’re the best dancer in the room, but you’ve got to lose weight.” This happened a decade ago but this decade was a really struggling one for Tara.
She did a drastic weight loss for being a professional dancer. She got what she needed, but soon she started suffering from bulimia, an overeating disorder, and then again she controlled her life and get on her own. All she wants people to know is, change for yourself, because changing for others…it’s never going to work.
From her early age, she was into dancing and also competed in athletics. But her love for fast food soon got her with increased pound in her system. Working at pizza hut was another reason she was so much into noodles, mac and cheese and KFC.
“Growing up I was fed very well by my parents, but once I moved out of home and started earning my own money I didn’t cook. I was hungry and I was tired and I’d just go for the easiest option. I ate crap, I drank crap, and I just enjoyed lots of alcohol as you do at 18.”
Soon she was heavy with 80kilos of weight and even her parents overheard an athletic coach asking before a competition, “How can she be a good jumper if she’s bigger than the rest?”
Though she won the competition, but after the audition in 2008, she decided to make a change into herself to complete her dream of dancing professionally. She quit eating carbohydrate, pizza pasta and ice cream and started only proteins, salads and vegetables.
“I’d just run, anything that was going to get the heart rate going crazy for 40 minutes was what I did. I just didn’t want anything to do with weights because I had that warped perception that they were going to make me huge, and that’s exactly what I didn’t want.”
After coming at 62 kilos, she started getting complements about her looks. “For someone that has always been criticised about their weight, it was nice for people to start saying that I looked really good.”
She got the job at the cruise ship, but after her 53 hours of travelling to Italy, she got to know that there are more weight restrictions. The same woman who said her to lose weight years ago again said to lose more. They asked her to lose weight or else she would be sent home.
“I started crying. But I’d just flown to Italy and I thought, well I might as well give it a go. If they want me to lose a little bit of weight, I’ll lose a little bit of weight.” And again she did it and lost some weight.
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