Since middle school, I have constantly struggled with the way my body looks. Looking back at pictures, I believe I had a reason to call myself fat. I was the shortest girl in my friend group, and I was a little chubby. When people see pictures of me from the past, they are like "wow, puberty did you well." I am certainly not offended by that for I 100 percent agree. But I still continue to struggle with my body image today.

There was a period of time in the latter part of high school where I accepted my body and did not think too much about it. But since middle school, I always wished my stomach was flatter. No, I did not need abs in order to feel better about myself. But I just wished it was flatter. I am also naturally muscular and I always thought that made me seem larger. A lot of people always tell me that they wish they had toned calves like I do (my calves are slightly larger which is also something I am insecure about) or more muscular thighs. Them telling me that made me feel slightly better but it does not stick with me.

Now that my first year of college is over, I really regret that I ever called myself fat'in high school. I did gain quite a bit of weight during this first year (freshman 15 seems like and under-exaggeration) and I am not happy about it. I suppose it could have been worse but I regret eating so much food! Now I am finding that losing all the weight is extremely difficult. I feel like when I look in the mirror, there is hardly a change or that change is not happening fast enough.

I am really not too big to be completely honest. But there is just something within me that does not feel good about the way I look. It is so hard to try and change that attitude because I have noticed changes with my body. Some clothes do not fit the way they used to and my arms are not as toned. I feel like I have made changes so far this summer but I realize this is not going to happen overnight. I am going to have to work harder in order to achieve my desired results. It just seems like this whole losing weight process is going to take ages and that is frustrating and even non-motivating.

I know for a fact that I am not the only one out there who feels this way about their body. It is true that we are all unique and should be happy with the way we look. But a lot of us are not happy. We, including myself, should try and find a way to accept the way we appear because we are stuck with ourselves and our bodies. There is room for change but I think it is important that we start to try and accept our uniqueness!