When I first started high school, my mental health took a sharp decline and didn't hesitate to take my physical health down with it. Every day for lunch I ate chicken nuggets, fries, cookies, you name it. If it was unhealthy, I was eating it. I ended up gaining over thirty pounds, bringing me to the highest weight I had ever weighed. I tried to diet but would end up giving up because I was so eager to see results in my body. That's when I discovered the body positive hashtag on Twitter. I saw girls of all sizes celebrating and loving their bodies despite their insecurities that society deemed as flaws. I figured, instead of trying to lose weight to achieve my goal body, I would learn how to love all of the stretch marks, rolls, and cellulite that I hated on my body.

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This transition did not happen overnight. It took months of unlearning societal standards of beauty and teaching myself my own definition of what I thought was beautiful. I began taking more pictures of my body. I started to wear clothes that I always wanted to wear but felt like I couldn't because of my size. Every day I looked through the body positive hashtag on twitter as inspiration to continue my journey of loving my body. I even followed plus-sized models on Instagram who promoted self-love such as Iskra Lawrence and Ashley Graham.

Emma Piccinini

As I progressed in loving myself, I began to take care of and nurture my body in ways that I hadn't before. I was eating more fruits and vegetables and decided to go vegetarian to help me stay healthy. I also bought a couple Jillian Michael's workout DVDs on Amazon and kept up with them for multiple days a week. I stopped weighing myself for an entire year so that I would focus more on taking care of myself than seeing the number on the scale drop. I knew that if I watched my weight, I would become discouraged if it fluctuated, even though that is natural for a young woman who is going through a drastic change in lifestyle and self-care.

I did experience some bumps in the road during this path, and I still do to this day. There have been periods of time where I stopped working out or stopped eating foods that provided proper nutrients. I have backtracked and had spurts of insecurity. Though these obstacles did not stop me from continuing my journey to self-acceptance, they were merely blocking my path and I needed to navigate around them in order to reach my goals.

Emma Piccinini

Fast forward to a few years later, going into my sophomore year of college, I am the most comfortable with my body I have ever been. Although I am down around 25 pounds since my initial weight gain in high school, I care less about the number on the scale and more on the way I feel. I feel healthier and happier. I feel comfortable in my own skin. I can proudly say that I love who I am, and I love my body. I love myself and not in an arrogant or narcissistic way, but in a way where I feel free and liberated from the hatred, I once felt towards myself. I am still a work in progress, but I feel with each passing year I learn to accept myself a little more.