I'm not anyone special, just your average girl from Arizona. This story isn't meant to be anything extravagant. It's just my story about my journey with losing weight and learning to love myself—all of me. I hope it inspires someone.
From a young age, I struggled with my body. I was always chubby but never considered myself to be extremely overweight. Regardless, I was bullied in school for a long time. A lot of comments were made about my being "fat” and telling me to lay off the potato chips. A group of boys would even tell me that I looked like a dog and would bark at me when I walked by them. This lasted for the majority of my school career. The problem was, I believed them. I hated myself. I went home regularly and just cried and wrote cryptic entries in my journal. Finally, when I was close to graduating high school, I decided that was not the way I wanted to live my life, and I focused on changing the way I saw myself. It took work. It took looking at myself in the mirror every day and learning to love what I saw. Eventually, it worked. My confidence level increased. However, I still hated my body. But not enough to change it—I figured my face was enough. And things started changing for me in great ways, boys came and went, friends came and went, and I was slowly learning how to feel positive about my life and myself. When you learn how to do that, it changes everything.
Fast forward to college: I accepted an internship with Walt Disney World in Florida. I saw this as my chance to get out of my hometown and experience somewhere new. This internship was only supposed to last six months, and then I would return home and move onto something else, but then I met a boy, and life changed. I moved to Florida to spend my life with the person I thought was the love of my life. Sadly about four and a half years later, we broke up. Everyone experiences heartbreak; I am not any big exception to anyone else's heartbreak. But this was a big moment in my life, my self-esteem plummeted, and I thought there was no light at the end of the tunnel and I would never get over this person. However, I made a choice to stay single and focus on myself again. I needed to pick myself back up and I needed to love myself again, and this time my body needed to be part of this. I was victim to relationship weight gain. I was now at my heaviest.
So began my journey to get my body in shape and rebuild my self worth. Shortly after I began changing my eating habits and getting into exercising, I changed roles at my job that required a lot of standing on concrete. I have a condition called Platar Fasciitis in my feet; it just means my arches are high and the muscle is so tight that standing for long periods of time causes this muscle to tear. The pain is excruciating. I could barely stand at work. I saw a doctor and began treatment for this, but it was a setback because I was only allowed to do minimal exercise. I could only ride the stationary bike and wasn't allowed to do anything major that might make my condition worse. This was a long, hard battle. It triggered anxiety that I had never had before, and I was terrified I would be in a wheelchair. I was disappointed because I had set these goals to get in shape. But I didn't let it stop me. I did what I had to do and within six months of treatment, my feet recovered. They will require maintenance for the rest of my life, but I can now be as active on them as I would like to be.
In the end, there's no big secret or trick to how I did it and lost the weight. I just ate the right things and started out small with exercise and continued to increase my activity as my body started changing. So far, I have lost 36 pounds and I feel amazing. Of course, I still have a lot of improving to do. But losing weight was more than just loving the way I look. It's something I am in total control of. Despite the obstacles I faced on this journey, I did not give up, and as my body changed, so did my self worth. I started gaining this power within myself that I never knew I possessed. Once I started seeing changes in the mirror, I felt unstoppable, but this stemmed farther than the fitness sphere—I felt more confident in every aspect of my life. I've come to realize that I am in the best mental state I have ever been in! Now I look in the mirror and I love everything I see. This feeling radiates throughout my life. I am happier, less tired, super energetic, and it gives me the drive to accomplish anything I want out of life! It's been about two years since I started this journey, and it is not easy—I will not say it is—but it's worth it. I made a complete lifestyle change, and there's no turning back now. No one should live with the burden of hating something about herself, whatever it is. The first step is to figure out what you have to do to fix it, because life is too short not to love yourself entirely and live it to the fullest. And not to sound like a broken record you've heard before, but the health benefits that come with eating right and exercising are no lie. Never give up.
