In every person’s life, there's a moment where you are forced to make a conscious decision to change. Whether you realize it or not, you will be thrown into a situation where fear, sadness, or anger will pressure you into making a decision to change yourself for the better. For me, this came very recently.

In the wake of the huge movement towards positive self-talk and body image, I’ve put a lot of thought recently into my personal struggle with weight loss and body image. I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling ashamed of my body. Throughout the past few years, especially in grade and high school, I was told that my body wasn’t good enough and that I needed to lose weight. And for a long time, I believed it.

I think that believing this for so long had a serious impact on not only the way I saw my life, but also the way I lived it. Instead of being healthy about my weight loss in high school, I decided that skipping meals and working out way too much was the right way to go. I now realize how wrong I was. The toll on my mental and physical health was not worth the weight I was losing. However, I saw results, so I kept going. Minus 60 pounds later, I thought I was happy. My body was screaming at me to stop.

And when I hit college, I gained it all back, plus some.

This was a huge confidence hit for me. Because I hadn’t gained the skills and habits that came along with healthy weight loss, I had no idea how to eat well or work out effectively. Stress and a new environment left me with little foundation to go off. I felt helpless and like I had done all that work for nothing; I was scared and frustrated. This made it difficult for me to go out, have fun at parties, and make new friends because I was so ashamed of who I had become in the past year.

I remember being angry at the world. I was so frustrated with myself and my decisions that I had to blame it on something other than myself, so I blamed the world. This was one of the many mistakes I made that year.

This is exactly what I mean by a moment of change. By the end of my freshman year of college, I had holed myself up in my dorm and I was terrified to go have any fun. I was unhappy. At the time, I was angry at myself and at the world for causing me to be like this. But looking back on it now, it was exactly the push I needed to make a serious change in my life.

This change wasn’t necessarily that I needed to lose weight, or that I needed to specifically start eating healthier or go to the gym. This change was in the way I saw myself. When I came back to school my sophomore year, I was determined to put myself out there and become a happier person.

Now, to just “become happier” is a tall order for anyone, but I knew that small goals (like living in a house with more girls and going out with my friends at least once a week) would eventually lead up to a healthier, happier me. The positive body image movement was a huge help in this because it allowed me to feel good about myself just the way I was, without the stress of losing weight and being thinner. I am proud of my body and all that it could do. I am strong. I am powerful.

Before the notion of losing weight again even crossed my mind, I started becoming more confident and excited for my second year of school. Granted, a lot of that confidence was thanks to my friends and housemates, who I couldn’t have done any of this without, but I was taking small steps toward my ultimate goal. I was more social and much more “me.”

The decision to restart my health journey yet again was not an easy one. It’s not an easy decision for anyone. I felt as though I was starting over, back at square one. But as I came to realize, starting over is never a bad thing. The easy part is giving up; it’s much harder to get back up after you fall down.

But it is a journey that is necessary to your development. The biggest difference between my journey in high school and my journey now is my motivation and reason for losing weight. Back then, my motivation was looking prettier. I wanted so badly to fit in and be thinner than I would’ve done anything to be that.

Now, my motivation has evolved into a journey of health and self-love. I want to feed my body with as much positivity and love as I can; that is what where my motivation resides. It is no longer the way I look, it’s the way I feel.

I cannot express how much I’ve learned from restarting this process from ground zero: patience, humility, and confidence are just a few qualities I’ve gained in just the past year. I can finally say I am proud of the person I have become. While I still have a long way to go, and I am not anywhere near where I want to be, the constant growth and change I am undergoing are necessary to a healthy life. It’s a process, but it’s one I want to be a part of.

It’s going to take time. It’s going to take patience. I may fall, and that’s okay. The important part is that I get back up and continue to make myself the best I can be. I’ll get there, and you can too. Keep going, it will be worth it.