Why I Decided to Get Healthy
The title of this post is very interesting. Notice I said, “To get healthy.” I am not going to deny that losing weight for me is very important, because it is. Right now, I am obese. It is NOT healthy for me to weigh what I weigh at my height. However, it has taken me a very long time to realize that I need to be “healthy” and not what society deems as “beautiful.” It has taken me a LONG time to realize that…
A little bit about my life. I grew up in wonderful Southern California. Like I mention in my “about me” section, I was a very comfortable 135-140 lb girl. I played sports and was very active, so I never really gained weight. I had no problems with my confidence (even though to make myself sound more humble, I would admit otherwise), and getting boys to like me was always easy.
My family put a lot of pressure on me when it came to looks and my physique. They would always tell me I was beautiful, and I could do anything I ever wanted. There were a lot of times my friends and I would judge people that weren’t very “beautiful.” We weren’t obnoxious about it, but we did it none the less. This is what it’s like living in California. You don’t realize it very much while you are there, but your looks seem like they are EVERYTHING. It wasn’t until I moved to Arizona for college, and started gaining weight that I started to see that was true.
I would hate the idea of coming home for the holidays. I was terrified to show anyone I knew back home what I had let myself turn into. My family, while I love them, were also not very kind either. They would sometimes say things like, “Oh, don’t worry Erin, you will be beautiful again, and then you can move on with your life. ” I think the worst thing I heard, was when I brought my current boyfriend home to meet my family, and he was greeted with a, “Oh, it’s so nice of you to date Erin while she is fat…. Come look at these pictures from when she was beautiful. We call this ‘the wall of shame.’” Of course Jeff jumped to my protection and promptly told them he thought I was beautiful, and the comment was met with a giggle and a, “Oh, you don’t have to lie to us, we know the truth.”
The reason I share some of these stories is because it was comments lies like that, that made me believe that my ENTIRE worth was in how much I weighed, or what I looked like. I got to the point where I was scared to interview for jobs, because in my head I thought, “I could apply for this job against an equally qualified person, but because I am fat they will most likely not go with me.” I was scared that Jeff would leave me, because I was “fat” or that he was embarrassed of me, because all of his friends had normal sized girlfriends.
This was of course NOT true… It was all in my head.
I hated myself, and I hated what I had become. It has taken years to psychologically reverse the damage. Years of friends telling me that I am in fact worth something. The way you look does NOT define who you are as a person. It’s taken me accepting myself to move forward with getting HEALTHY and not “BEAUTIFUL.”
It’s an important and critical difference. Changing your life in this way needs to be for the right reasons. You need to deal with your shit, and realize why you are doing what you are doing. I haven’t hit my goals yet, but I imagine that with mental healing paired with physical healing, it is easier for you to keep yourself generally healthy for a longer period of time.
I suppose I’ll end this post with a LOVE YOURSELF and fuck society. We are all beautiful. Seriously.
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