The struggle ....

(Pix taken on 8/3/2015)

Its been almost a year since I started my weight loss journey and I have had bad good excellent and terrible days. There have been times I really got into it and others when I just didn't give it my all. During this time, I followed various "fitness" accounts on twitter and IG, then I followed some real life people and their struggles. I made a mistake though. I was looking at their stories and seeing how quickly they were obtaining results and I wasn't. Their stories far from encouraging me, like they were intended, had the opposite effect. I would walk around thinking what I was doing was wrong, not enough etc. I would sabotage my own self and in the end feel worse.

The thing is, we are all different. It wasn't that I wasn't giving it my all, or that they were better than me. They would even post when they had had a bad day.  Every struggle is different, what works for one wont work for another. I, like a friend put it, was looking at how much more I had to go rather than how much I had progressed. So, while on my vacation/retreat, I did just that. I took a whole lot of selfies, something that I usually don't like, and looked at myself in each one, and then I would look for a pic of me from around the same time last year, and I would compare it, and though the differences aren't big, there is a difference and that's what matters. There are results.

So now, I look at those people and feel inspired, it doesn't matter if they lost 75 lbs in 6 months and I lost 10 lbs, The point is there was a loss. The point is, if THEY can do it, there is no reason I cant. It might take me longer, but it will happen, and I should be proud of whatever progress I have made, I should be proud and happy of my body. It may not be what society portrays or has brainwashed most of humanity into believing is "nice", but it is.

There are no ugly people in this world. There really aren't. If we stop and think why we actually think someone is not "cute" its because we have been made to think that the combination of features they possess is not nice to look at. So, as I have said before, to someone out there, I am pretty. To someone out there, I am the right weight (whatever that may be at any given time), I am the right height I am the right kind of pretty. I learned that I should love myself, just how I am, that if I decide to change it for my own well being and nobody else.

I am not a fan of taking selfies or whatever, but if I can inspire someone like all those people have inspired me, then I will do it, not frequently but often enough. It wont be about posting the flattering, it will be about the ugly, flabs of skin that hang, that are not ugly. They show a struggle against myself that I have had for as long as I can remember. I am not ashamed of it anymore. It is who I am...It is my struggle....

...chelitta