October 14, 2013: #transforming #slowlybutsurely #chubbs"

  When I look at this photo, I'm at a loss for words... I was thin, I was unhealthy, my lifestyle was excessive, I was unhappy... It's hard for me to put into words how I feel when I am reminded of how I used to live my life... Back in high school, back in the earlier years of college... I was so obsessed with the thought of being small that the more I tried to deal with it, the unhappier I became... And honestly, I would have put an emoji to cover my face, but I thought it was important to show how unhappy and how tired I was. Even though I was at such a light weight, it's like it sucked the life out of me to get there.


  Before I had left for Washington, I was buying clothes in size small, Japanese sizes, and even some of those didn't fit to my waist or hip line. I had gone from being one-hundred and seventeen pounds to a "lucky if I'm at 100," and even then, I would suck my stomach as far in as I could... It didn't help that the culture that we're in highlights that being thin is being beautiful. It doesn't help when your friends or your family make comments about your body in regards to your weight. It definitely was not helpful growing up seeing the many different diets that people around me would do in order to shed quick pounds.

  I do know what had triggered me to feel the way I did, but it's not worth mentioning, because it happened again in college. I was stressed with academics. I was stressed with my Army scholarship. Hurtful events of losing my brother and one of my best friends. I was stressed over the heartbreaks I had gone through, and stressed with the heartache I was going through with someone else. I let myself fall subject to verbal and emotional abuse. Almost every day, I was told that I "wasn't small enough" or "not lady enough," or that I "didn't need to eat all of that because I'd regret it."
  I let myself play the role of the victim, but I didn't want to call for help. I went through it every day, eating small portions, and tasteless food, and working out to the point where my body would literally shut down on me and I'd find myself at the emergency room for various factors that all lead to poor nutrition and muscle fatigue. My health was always getting shot down, with every illness that came, the more and more time I spent laying in my apartment, useless to everything else going on in my life. And there were many times that I thought to myself, that there was always an easier way out of this...