My weight has always been something I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. I’ve never been able to lose weight and maintain it or stick to a diet for more than a week. But this just passed summer I was finally able to change that.

Since May I’ve lost a total of 40 pounds.

People have been asking me how I did it, and without stating the obvious, ‘Oh I just changed my diet and started exercising!’ The main thing I did was change my point of view.

I stopped wanting to lose weight for the wrong reasons. Previous times that I’ve tried to lose weight it was so that I could fit into cute clothes, or get more guys to notice me, or fit in with the rest of my friends, or any of the other superficial reasons that come along with wanting to lose weight.

But this time I decided I wanted to lose weight for no other reason than to be healthy. How I looked on the outside wasn’t a problem for me, it was how I felt on the inside, and honestly I felt like crap. Potato chips and cookies were a regular part of my diet and I very rarely, if ever, exercised or even went out of my way to go for a walk.

As soon as I lost the first 10 pounds, I was really proud of myself and thought maybe it’s actually possible for me to lose weight and stick to it. After I had lost about 15 or 20 pounds, people started to notice and tell me how great I looked, that was when I got hooked.

Now 40 pounds down I’ve been able to maintain and keep the weight off, but not without difficulty.

Getting through the summer was a lot easier, but since September started new problems have been arising for me. For one, just having to be at school and choose something to eat in the cafeteria.

Here at Mercy there aren’t very many healthy options, usually I have two choices… a Cesar salad or a granola bar.

Yum.

Now that we’re getting into the holidays I’m finding that it’s getting harder and harder to resist temptation when it comes to food.

Right now it’s just cookies, and candy, and pumpkin spice lattes. But soon it’ll be Turkey and stuffing, mac and cheese, cake, brownies…

Ugh.

Of course with the holidays come the colder months and the colder it is outside the less I want to go workout.

This is so hard for me to talk about because I hate sharing anything this personal, but honestly I think part of me is scared that I’ll somehow gain all the weight back. That after everyone has told me that I look so great and they’re so proud me, I’ll just somehow plummet back to the same lifestyle I had before.

Another part of me feels like, am I hypocrite?

Because before I lost the weight I was all about body positivity and loving myself no matter what I weighed. But now here I am so afraid to gain back a couple pounds because of how I might look.

I’d love to end this on a happy note and say, ‘I love myself no matter what I weigh!’

But the truth is right now I don’t, and that’s okay.

Because learning to love yourself is a process, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Slowly day by day I am learning to love myself more, and i look forward to the day when I can truly say i love who I am.