Growing up, I was a pretty chubby kid. Annual physicals made my stomach churn, but what made them worse were the health forms that were sent home that contained the usual height, weight and BMI information. Of course, being a chubby girl in grade school, the form always said that I was overweight. My mom always used to tell me that it was just baby fat and that I would grow out of it eventually, which I did. Throughout my childhood I played soccer, basketball, did gymnastics, cheerleading, and swam competitively, so my daily activities kept me in a physical state that would help me maintain my weight.
In high school, I dropped every other sport except swimming and began to swim all year round, which was probably the best cardio I could have asked for. My freshman and sophomore year I was an average weight. I fit into size 5 jeans from Hollister, but I still didn’t see myself as very skinny. I couldn’t get the image of what I used to look like out of my head, and I was continually unhappy and compared myself to other girls constantly.
Junior year is when I hit a wall. Out of nowhere, I gained about 15 pounds over the summer. My doctor said that it could have been a thyroid problem, but we weren’t sure, since my weight went down in the fall. Senior year of high school was probably my ideal size. I fit into a size 7 in Hollister jeans, and although the number on the scale was a little high for my liking, I knew that most of it was muscle that I gained from swimming. Yet, I remember still being unhappy with my size and feeling uncomfortable in a bikini that summer.
When college rolled around, I knew that I was going to gain weight because everyone always talks about “the freshman 15.” I stayed home for my freshman and sophomore year, so the impact wasn’t as great, but I noticed a slight weight gain. Now I’m in my junior year of college and am the heaviest I have ever been since I hit puberty. I gained weight so quickly that I don’t fit into the jeans I bought in the fall, and now that summertime is rolling around, I’m finding a hard time fitting into my shorts and tank tops.
Sometimes, I’ll look back at my pictures from high school and think about how I used to complain about being that size. I used to complain about being a size 7 in Hollister jeans, but now I wish I could fit into them. I used to hate the way I looked in my bathing suits, but now I compare it to what I look like in a bathing suit these days and realize that I didn’t look too bad in them before. My mom told me that this is just a fact of life: people gain weight when they go to college because of their lifestyle change and the fact that they are getting older. I just didn’t understand; I thought you were supposed to be gaining weight this rapidly when you turned 30, not in college. Knowing that it could all be downhill from here killed my self-esteem, especially since my family is prone to be on the heavier side.
I take full responsibility for my weight gain. My eating habits weren’t as good as they should have been and I wasn’t really doing any kind of physical activity other than walking around campus to get to my classes, but I’m taking control and getting myself back on track. However, getting myself back on track doesn’t mean that I expect to look the way I did in high school, because I know there’s a very slim chance of that happening. But you know what? That is ok with me. I’m content with not being that skinny again, but I do want to get myself healthy. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to be more accepting of the way that I look. I take pride in things that I find beautiful about myself. My body weight does not define my beauty. Coping with the fact that I won’t be the same weight as I was in high school isn’t going to be easy, but neither is accepting yourself and the way you look, and I already have one foot in the door.
