Introduction: Health and Fitness

Self-consciousness. Never being happy with my appearance. Never feeling comfortable in my own skin. Never fitting into clothes someone my age should wear. Knowing from such a young age that I was heading down a dark path.

Those things are what drove me to the desire for health and fitness.  And those looming memories are what keep me from ever wanting to go back.

When I was 8 years old, I was a bit below the average height range of my age. I must've been under 4 feet tall, and weighed over 80 pounds. It's not surprise that I was so heavy: countless snacks I'd smuggle from the freezer, the whopping portions, limited vegetables and proteins, consuming entire frozen pizzas, and very rarely exercising.  I was chubby from the time I was five. 

And those bad habits continued! Eating entire portions at restaurants, having a huge bowl of ice cream on the same day that I had pizza AND cake, never wanting to try vegetables, and never getting off my butt. These things were what lead me to being 4'10 and 165 lbs (1.1 meters and 74 kg) at the age of thirteen.

As an overweight thirteen year old, things were not pretty.  Fortunately, I wasn't teased or made fun of too much.  But from a very, very young age, my weight had been a source of self-consciousness and lead me to feel worthless.  Even the most minor comments about my weight made me angry and depressed.  There were so many things that lead me to want to lose weight, but the main one - dumb and corny and cliché as it sounds - was boys. 
It was so hard when I started to look at boys and talk to boys and they wouldn't give me the time of day.  One day, I came home from youth group crying of embarassment in front of the mirror because I knew that I spent a whole conversation with an attractive young man looking like - THAT. Looking at my red, chubby, tear-stained face that December afternoon after indulging in a 500 calorie piece of cheesecake that would only be a snack, I realized, something had to change. I became determined. I knew that if I could get my weight under control, I would be so much happier. And best of all, boys would actually pay attention to me!  (Spoiler alert: I lost the weight and got three years older and they still don't!) 

It was around then when things got ugly. I struggled a little bit with self-harm and self-hatred, I skipped meals here and there, and I spent day after day in tears wondering if I could ever make it. It was that January of 2011 when things truly started to change. Weighing in at 155 lbs, my journey began.  To start, I tried to acquire a taste for vegetables and made myself eat smaller portions.  I begrudgingly tried to pass up most sweets offered me. If I ate out one day, I tried to eat "in" the next. I walked more, hula-hooped, did jumping-jacks in my room, and lifted weights. 
After losing about ten pounds, I started counting calories, keeping my intake at around 1200 per day.
In a few more months, I got down to around 130. It was June then.  I went through a time when I tried to keep my calories extremely low, around 800 (Not healthy AT ALL!) One night, I cried to my mom because I wasn't losing more.  Finally, she forced me to eat more against my will, and the scale began to move downward. 

By December I was at 125, my goal! I was down 30 pounds since the year prior.
In January (2012) I started running and trying to eat even healthier.  By my 15th birthday I was around 108lbs, and since then I have hovered between 100 and 105.


But the journey hasn't ended.  Ensuring that my weight doesn't get out of control will be a life-long commitment. And, with that, coming to acceptance of myself and my body are still not where I'd hoped to be.  I had this unrealistic view that once I got down to 110 pounds, I would be happy. Boys would like me, my stomach would be flat, I would have the perfect body, and I would never be self-conscious again!

Good one, past self, good one.

Boys still don't give me the time of day, my stomach looks a little bit like a deflated watermelon, and I'm still self-conscious.  But I'm healthier, I've learned better habits, and I've accomplished more than I ever thought I could.

In addition to some of the other topics I'll be talking about this blog, I'm gonna talk a little bit about fitness, health, weight-loss, maintenance, and body-image. My goal is to help people, remember my past experiences, and sort out some things for myself along the way.

To finish this off, things have changed for me a lot, but not in the ways I expected them to. But I do believe that the things that did change truly changed me for the better, and were greater than I ever could have imagined.  If you have similar goals, YOU can achieve them. Little steps, taking things day by day, truly make a world of difference. Stay strong, and you can do anything!