Don't Let Your Body Control You

All right guys, this is going to be a long post so unless you want to hear my rant about self-love you can keep scrolling.

The photo on the left was taken in October 2014 (when I was my heaviest) at that time I hated myself. My whole life I lived to please other people. All the makeup and editing I did was just to fit in and have people like me, I became a performer in an incredibly unhealthy way. I measured my self-worth in the opinion of other people. I channeled the stress I put on myself in every bad habit you could think of. 

Luckily, I managed to snap myself out of it. Through all the wise words of the great adults in my life and my own interactions with people my age, I came to my own conclusion- I was blind. We are given one body and one life and every person is blessed with unique and beautiful traits. 

I feel as humans we naturally compare ourselves to others, but no two of us have the same path. We have to learn to see beauty in everything, including ourselves. That's what helps us grow. Since I've came to that realization I have learned to love myself and improve my quality of life. I turned my life around and stopped stress eating and acting so careless. I did something to better my self and started eating healthier. Soon I started basic exercising to lose fat, and even three years later, I go to the gym almost every day. 

Now, this is not to say that I have not struggled. But as discussed in my previous post I have found that progress is not linear but like a heartline. In 2016 I was so accomplished, having lost 70 lbs I felt invincible. I learned to love myself through that phase of finding out how far I could push my body and slowly incorporating healthy foods to eat. 
This was a beautiful gradual process which many asked me how I did it. I promise you it was off of gradually eating right and building up my body from starting with light cardio to moving to circuits to weightlifting. 

But after seeing all of this progress, I hit a plateau. I could not see myself losing any more weight and every single morning I would get on the scale and stare at my stomach in the mirror. At this time I was down to a weight that I have not been since I was probably about 13 years old.

I cannot tell you how bad it is to do something like this to yourself.

Through that journey I discovered what self-love was and tried to feed my body good things but I forgot to feed my soul. 

Though I was physically in the best shape of my life, I ended up becoming unhealthy mentally and obsessive with appearance. I was working out every day for 2+ hours and stuck to a very strict clean diet. 

At this stage of my life I was 19 about to be 20 and I did not even realize that subconsciously I figured that getting "skinny" would make all of my problems disperse. Now obviously it was a period of growth but it wasn't the only stage of growth I will encounter. 

So, when God added more to my plate over the years, I started feeling very overwhelmed because things fell through and my life took me in another direction. All that I had build myself up to be started crumbling down because I didn't equip myself mentally as I did physically. 

When everything else collapsed around me I felt all I really had at that point to hold onto as an accomplishment was my health. Now, that period of my life shaped me and feel all of it had a purpose... but I'll be real, it was hard. 

The Happy Ending

I have honestly gained probably about 30 pounds back. Physically it sucks, but to be honest I think I'm OK with that. Looking back at myself, I noticed now that I was at a healthy weight but I still kept pushing myself to be smaller to the point where I was trying to morph my body into something that it will never be. This is more apparent now than it was then, as I look back at photos I realized that I saw myself differently than how I really was.

I'm not mad about what's happened because I feel everything in our life happens for a reason and even though I have "let myself go" I've also let myself grow. The service industry has dramatic stress on your body. I still work out but I'm not training for the National Physique Competition, so I know where I stand.

My heart is still on fire for growth so I look forward to taking another journey towards making myself healthy again but this time around I'll be stronger. This time I won't neglect my internal self for my external self.

But ladies (really everyone actually), promise me you'll love yourself during your journey not just at your end destination. STOP judging how you look in photos and just be in love with the moment. If you really feel you need to change something, make it clear. Establish WHY you are doing what you are doing and constantly remind yourself that.