I can’t go a day watching TV without seeing at least three advertisements for different weight loss programs. Sure, it can be motivational, but it’s also completely misleading. My freshman year of college I gained 18 pounds during my first semester and I didn’t know what to do. I was so unhappy that I let myself get to a point where I hated looking at myself in a mirror. I went online and looked up hundreds of different ways to lose the weight quickly, but nothing seemed right. I bought a pass to the gym near my house and went every day over Christmas break. Every few days I would step on the scale and be discouraged because I wasn’t losing weight “fast enough.”

But then I decided to take a new approach, I put my scale in the closet and never looked back. I found it extremely disheartening for people when all they have is numbers to look at. The numbers don’t matter in the end because it really is about what you see in the mirror, respecting your body and feeling good. Whenever I used to weigh myself, it would always be first thing in the morning, when I had nothing in my stomach. It’s unrealistic to assume that I would stay the same weight the whole day and when I got back on the scale before bed, it was the worst feeling. Tons of girls struggle with body image nowadays but can you blame them? Ads everywhere are telling them they need to to have Barbie proportions in order to be “attractive” and it’s not right. Through personal experience I learned that when you’re dealing with getting in shape and losing weight the best method is to toss the scale aside because it shouldn’t control you.