Weight

Weight.

It’s a hefty word. It carries so much emotion, and so many feelings with it. I struggled with my weight, and struggled with accepting it for pretty much my entire life. As soon as I was aware of what it was and how I was different from everyone else, it was game over. From the age of 8 until 24 I was obsessed with being smaller. I didn’t like my body, I didn’t want to be whatever weight I was, I wanted to look like the thinner people around me.

This made me heavily restrict, over exercise, and not take care of myself. I struggled with anorexia for years. Ages 16-24 were filled with disordered thoughts, cardio, fruits and vegetables only. I would also secretly binge on other foods I normally wouldn’t let myself eat. It was the absolute worst time of my life. I couldn’t enjoy anything without thinking about food. I was constantly thinking about how many calories were in my lunch, if I needed to run after dinner, and how I could reduce my intake the next day. I wanted the number on the scale to be as low as humanly possible and somehow that would magically make me like myself.

Only this year did I realize that my weight had nothing to do with my happiness. The number on the scale means literally nothing. It shows me my gravitational relation to the earth. Nothing more, nothing less. I learned that what I needed to change was my mentality. I needed to learn how to love myself as I was. I needed to get to know myself. I still wanted to lose weight but my main goal was to feel happy in my body and to feel healthy for once. After struggling with health issues for most of my life I just wanted to take control back and feel alive again.

Since COVID is a thing and gyms were closed, I started doing HIIT workouts and running outside when it was nice out. After doing HIIT workouts and transitioning to strength workouts I started to feel strong for the first time in my life. I was doing strength exercises more often than cardio workouts. I thought that I was for sure losing weight. My clothes fit differently, I felt more energetic, and happy. I then stepped on the scale and felt demolished that I had lost exactly zero weight. I was so confused. I was eating healthy, I was working out consistently, I was drinking a gallon of water a day, how did I not lose weight??

Your weight does not tell you everything. It doesn’t tell you if you’ve got muscle, water weight, if you’re bloated, nothing. It just tells you what your mass is. That is all. The scale is something that lies to you, it gets in your head, and it made me absolutely obsessed with destroying my body in the name of beauty. I got so many compliments while I was trying to evaporate that I thought I was doing the right thing. I was shrinking, that’s what everyone wants, right? Well now I wasn’t getting any comments even though I was doing things the “healthy way”. My disordered thoughts were going crazy because nothing was happening.

Thankfully, I had taken progress pictures. I pulled up the one I had taken on January 1, and I compared it to the one I had taken that morning. I then realized that, holy crap, I looked a lot different. I wasn’t bloated, I looked happier, and I could tell my body was more muscular. That’s when it hit me. Muscle. I had gained muscle. I realized how much stronger I felt during my workouts, and the fact that I was able to do some exercises I had never been able to do before. I could do 2 pushups from my toes, there were lunges and squats I could do and I could do so many exercises with heavier weights.

My main point of this post is to point out how insignificant weight is. It does not define who you are, it doesn’t affect your personality, it is just a number. Do what makes you feel good, move your body in ways that make you happy. Eat foods that make you feel good, and remember that foods have no moral value. It has taken me a long time to have this mentality, and it won’t happen overnight. It is so incredibly hard when we live in a world with such an unhealthy diet culture.

Remember that social media is not always real, and you can’t compare your life or your body to anybody else. Nobody else has the same body composition, the same biological makeup, the same bone structure as you. Do what makes you feel good and screw what anybody else thinks. I’m at one of my heaviest weights and my confidence has never been higher. I’m stronger than ever, in the best shape of my life and so excited to see where this new journey takes me.