You know when you're ready to have that moment where it all makes sense? Where it all clicks and you see the big picture? Throughout this weight loss journey (some mentioned on this blog and some prior) I have lost 31.5 pounds going from 180 to 148.5. I am really proud of my progress. For the first two years of my high school career I weighed around 149 without diet or exercise. My junior year I upped my weight loss efforts and got down to 133 (for all of two weeks!!) but then I got a job working at Jamba Juice and the freedom of eating out and ballooned to 170 for the majority of my senior year. The summer before college I got back to about 155 but then freshman 15 turned into the freshman 25! Yes at 5 foot 2 I weighed 180! Luckily I realized how unhealthy this really was and dropped 10 pounds...boom 170. I stayed there for quite a while until the middle of my junior year where I decided to give losing weight another try. I got down to about 160 for the summer before senior year and before I came back to school for my final year I got down to about 155. I struggled and tussled between 155 and 160 for a full semester and some change until I finally hit 150 around spring break and just recently 148.5. I tell you all this to say that my whole weight loss journey has been one wild ride of highest highs and the lowest lows. In about two weeks I am graduating college and my initial weight loss goal was 135....looks like I'm not going to get there but I am okay with that. I've re-adjusted my goal for 142-145. At first I was down on myself because this is the first time that my goal hasn't felt SOOO far away and I was sad that I didn't reach it but now I am encouraged. Losing 30 pounds is NO easy task and I know the closer I get to my goal weight the harder it will be. But I will NEVER stop trying.
I always had this mindset that I had to treat myself "less than" until I hit my goal weight. That I wasn't allowed to buy new clothes or celebrate any weight loss victories until everything was official. I allowed myself to hide from the world....with a smile on my face no one could see my disappointment, my low self-esteem, my loneliness. But you know what has changed this? Not losing the weight, but MAKING the journey. Although I do realize that losing the weight is half the battle confidence is the other half. I have always, always been afraid to put myself out there because I was so afraid of being rejected. In my mind I put myself down before someone else could....beat 'em to the punch. Not anymore. I may not be perfect, and I may not be at my goal weight yet but I am still worth the effort. I am worth attractive guys noticing me, I'm worth putting on makeup, I'm worth buying new clothes. The growing of confidence takes time and without making a weight loss journey you can really have an imbalance. I wouldn't want to be 135 right now with 0 self esteem -- whats the point of losing the weight but still feeling like the fact/undesirable girl in the room? And I want to validate myself...I don't want to require a man or anyone else to tell me how great I am....I have to KNOW that I am great. Insecurity is the biggest turn off in girls and guys and I refuse to need someone else to love me instead of me loving myself.
And while I will say I am not 100% percent there I would say I am 80% there (this is a dual journey people haha)and I hope that with completing my weight goal by the end of the summer I will be 100% confident as well. My goal this summer is to get to 135 by the beginning of August (can you say vacation in Hawaii!!!) and I have a plan this summer that I want to act as if I'm 135. I don't know if I'm making sense but what I mean to say is that as of right now (in some ways) I still let my weight hold me back whether it be how outgoing I am or how I interact with guys but this summer I want to abolish that. I don't want to fall for the first guy who shows me some attention (like I always used to do because I felt like no one liked me and I was LUCKY that these guys were interested in me) and I don't want to keep quiet because I'm afraid people will pay attention and notice I'm chubby. If I want things to be different I have to react to them differently or else they will never change. It saddens me to think of how I used to feel:
-i am going to be single for the rest of my life
-no one will want be because i'm not thin
-if i was thin more guys would talk me
-if a guy did talk to me i wondered why he was interested in me...i mean didn't he notice that i wasn't skinny? (yes, he noticed that you aren't a stick and obviously he was okay with that because he still talked to you)
-all the guys that talked to me would eventually stop when they realized how chubby i was and i was lucky that someone was even interested in me
I mean at times I would feel so lonely and helpless and its pains me to think that I ever thought that way. I am thankful I am past that point in my life -- as I read it over it doesn't even make any sense to me. My time is here I know that much. I say that because I used to always say that my time is coming because I was always waiting for something more...like I couldn't live my life until I lost the right amount of weight but I realize now that life was passing me by all along and I wasn't living it. I just wasn't present for it. I kept looking for what the future was gonna be like...all the while ignoring the present. I'm DONE with that. I am good enough for ANY man to want me and just because someone is interested in me doesn't me I have to fall on my knees and thank my lucky stars what I need to do is figure out if I am interested in THEM...something that I never do. I deserve better than that. Just like I deserve to put healthier foods into my body and exercise more. Just like I deserve all the cute clothes I am finally able to start wearing.
I am never giving up. I'm never stopping. And I am going to stop counting myself out in every ones eyes before they can do it to me. I always place myself out of the equation before anybody can do it for me. NO MORE! There may always be someone with a better shoulders, a tighter tummy, or a more toned thighs but no one on this planet has MY personality or my face and that is what makes me original. The reason I don't really have any guy friends is because I always start liking them first and then after I know they don't like me I start to distance myself and figure why would they want to be friends with little chubby ol' me? Um hello!!! EVERYONE would wanna be friends with me (well maybe lol)! Because I am the bomb dot com and from now on I am going to give 100% to this process so I can get 100% of the results and I will treat myself like the great person I am. I have come to peace with that fact that because of my short stature I will always be a little chubby and you know what I'M okay with that...and that's the whole point. This is all about me. About ME being okay with ME.
From this day forward I pledge to give everything I've got to finally getting healthy for good by the beginning of August 2011 and I will let my confidence shine like I'm 135 (got start practicing) until I get there :) Which wont' be long...
