My freshman year had a lot of…firsts. It was the first time I'd ever worn contact lenses, the first time I'd ever told a crush that I was interested….the first time I'd ever been turned down. It was also the first time that I'd ever weighed more than my mother.
During the second semester of my freshman year, when I was fourteen, I weighed 152 pounds. I didn't even realize that I had put on so much weight in just one year; I wasn't sure exactly of the numbers, only that when I looked in the mirror, I suddenly had two chins. That wasn't okay. I feel I should also mention that it was around Valentine's Day, and I had just gone dateless to the dance. I saw pictures of myself in the dress that I thought I looked…OKAY in, and uh…they seemed to have put a reality check on me. I was already realizing that I hated the way I looked, and a couple weeks' worth of events only made it worse.
The second semester was also when I had to take P.E. class, which opened up first off with a quick health unit. Unfortunately, that crush I mentioned up there happened to be in there too…ignoring me as much as he could. With the help of one of my good friends, I did my best to ignore him as well and just pull through the class. I found that the more I learned about the body, and the more we talked about the way food affects it, I became more interested. At one point, our teacher introduced us to a website called Calorieking.com, where we were supposed to look up the caloric content of our favorite foods. Well…that was something.
Microwaveable chimichangas: 440 calories each. I always had two when I got home from school as a snack. Mountain Dew: 170 calories. Little Debbie's Valentine's Day Snack Cakes: 330 calories per serving. All of these might be fine in moderation, but I had become a snack mongrel, and I seemed to always be hungry. I learned from this website that I was eating at least 300 more calories per day than I should…IF I exercised. I also learned that my BMI, or body mass index, was something around 25 or 26. Basically, I was classified as overweight fo my height. This made me think.
I always felt like I was a nerd since I was in 5 th grade. It was at this point I thought, well no wonder that guy rejected me. Not only am I a nerd, I'm a FAT nerd. So, it was time for some change; that day, I decided I was going to go on a diet.
I wasn't exactly sure HOW to diet, so I just started by eating healthier. Would you believe, that's all it took? I didn't even need to count calories like so many of today's diets require. Instead of eating the school lunch, I had a salad and some fruit with milk every day for at least three months. At home, I didn't just reduce my microwaveable meal intake, I stopped having a snack after school. It was only an extra 3 hours…I could wait until dinner. No matter how starving I was, I forced myself to wait. I also had a habit of drinking sodas at night, which I promply stopped.
A few good things came from this. In the first week of my new reformatory plan, I lost two pounds! In a couple of weeks, the hunger urges I felt between meals stopped being so persistent, and it was much easier to resist a less painful stomach.
The gym portion of the P.E. class then began. My friend refused to exercise or participate in any way, for some reason, so I was left on my own here. I admit, at the beginning it was pretty difficult. I found myself out of breath and red in the face very quickly, and I couldn't even finish a mile jog around the gym. My class happened to be filled with skinny, athletic girls; there were a few dancers, some swimmers, two volleyball players, then me and my friend. All of the boys were cocky jocks who thought they were amazing at everything. It was VERY LAME…but I tried my hardest to just focus on myself and what I could do to improve.
With exercise added to my salads, the weight began to come off quicker. I'm proud to say that at the end of the school year, which was over a period of four months, I had slimmed down to 142 pounds. I was already feeling immensely better about myself, but there was more to come. During the summer, I joined my mom, whom I now weighed the same as, on daily mile-long walks with our dog. I also tried some exercise programs on television, ones that didn't require expensive equipment (Gilad's was my favorite). By the beginning of my sophomore year? 5'6” and 136 pounds. Boo ya.
One day around this time, I decided that I wanted to try on the dress I wore to the Valentine's Day dance. I was a little nervous, but I slipped it on and looked in the mirror. I looked ridiculously thin, compared to when I last saw myself in that outfit. I showed my mom, and she exclaimed that I looked great. The next year, I ended up wearing that dress to the 2007 Valentine's Day dance, which marked the 6 month anniversary for me and my boyfriend.
I haven't stopped my attempts to be healthy; while it's difficult to find time to technically exercise with job searches, an amazing boyfriend, who is also my best friend, that I spend a lot of my time with, and building up a portfolio for my future tattoo apprenticeship, my early efforts to reshape myself and my life have given me high energy levels and healthier eating habits. At a final weight of 125 pounds two years later, I think that I proved to myself, and to everyone who ever mocked me for my size rather than helping me out, that it's not impossible, that it doesn't take some super fad diet to lose weight; however, it DOES take a realistic approach to lose it permanently. All it takes is a little time, a little dedication, and some willpower. Dooooo it.
