I am embarking on a journey, of health and wellness. Where my body is now, I definitely don’t hate it, but I know it can be to be much better. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, that was four years ago, in my sophomore year of high school. I went from 218 pounds down to 188 in three months, and then at my lowest of 170 a month or two later. I had been a big girl all my life, so losing 48 pounds was a big deal to me. At that time, the purpose of losing so much weight was so hopefully be more accepted amongst my peers. I wanted to fit in, and thought that if I was more “beautiful”, I could be loved by everyone just as much as my friends were.

Maybe that’s why it didn’t last long. The way I went about trying to better my life was all wrong. First, the way I lost all the weight to begin with was really bad. I did a mixture of juicing and intense cardio. For the first two months of my weight loss I had dropped fourteen pounds, went on a family vacation and gained 5 pounds back. I felt like I needed to be down a lot in order to be ready for viewing when school started. So when I got back after my vacation, I was 209 pound. Using that combination I mentioned earlier I managed to drop that extra 30 pounds just in time for school. Great for me, because I got what I wanted, but very bad for my body. By the time I finished my first year of college I gained pretty much all that weight and then some.

At first I was devastated, I had gone through a lot just to achieve this size and this look, and then it was all gone. Eventually I became more accepting of my bigger size, because I realized that I was still beautiful. No one had treated me any different. Also, I found that gaining all that weight back was actually one of the best things that happened to me. It put a lot of things into perspective. In some way it was like the person I was before was gone, and I couldn’t imagine ever being her again, but also I don’t think I would want to be her again. The girl I was, only existed for other people, and not for myself. This time around I’d like to be in a place where I’m happy, and where I am the cause of my own happiness.

So here we are, a week into starting my fitness journey. This isn’t about weight loss at all, that’s not my goal, and my goal is to be a better version of me. It doesn’t matter if I lose weight or not as long as I’m bettering myself for me. This time around I plan to take things slower, and plan to just make a gradual change over time. I don’t believe in dieting, I can definitely still have whatever I want, just more so in moderation. I’d definitely like to still enjoy food. Cutting everything out, like I did the last time, would just drive me insane. I go to the gym, but with school, work, and everything else there’s no way I can make it every day. I also play field hockey, so that helps a lot in keeping active. I also try to keep a busy schedule so where I’m not just eating whatever out of boredom. It’s been good so far, but it’s only the first week, so we’ll see what comes down the line. All in all, I just hope that I can keep this up, and it will be my first step in the right direction for myself.