At my heaviest, I weighed about 180lbs. The weird thing, for me, about weight-gain is that you don’t realize as the days are passing that you’ve gained that much weight. I had a weird and sudden realization hit me in 2016 when I went to Hawaii. (Think dresses, shorts, bathing suits.) I hated how I looked in the vacation photos. Every photo. I remember thinking it was the angle or the lighting, but in hindsight, I realized it was because I didn’t love my body. Someone, and I wish I was kidding, came up to me and congratulated me on the baby. I’m embarrassed even typing that out. But still, honestly, it isn’t until I lost the weight that I knew how much bigger I had gotten, because nothing else changed. I was dating someone, so it isn’t as though I felt undesired, and my day-to-day activities were the same. I didn’t know I had, over not a long period of time, probably gained about 25-30 pounds.

I didn’t immediately get on a flight back to California and begin dieting. My weight-loss journey is something that’s been through the wringer and brought me strife for my entire life. Unfortunately, many women are trained at a young age to be unsatisfied with our growing bodies and taught to hate ourselves first. (Then we have to teach ourselves, much later, to love ourselves when this should be the default.) This was the case with me. I’ve always been chubby, or thought myself that way, because I wasn’t as thin as other young girls in my class.  So I, also unfortunately, have always lived in a “If only I lost 10 more pounds, then I’d be happy,” world. Weight will fluctuate forever. What’s significant is the confidence you gain when you’re happy with your body. But that won’t always come with weight loss. It comes from somewhere much deeper than that. That’s what this entire website hopefully will help you do — find ways to love yourself just a little more, every day.

Honestly, what I’m going to say might not forever resonate. It isn’t timeless advice. It’s advice that revolves around having time. I lost 30 pounds because I suddenly had the time to. Time to work out, time to cook my own meals, and time to continuously pack my own healthy snacks while I was at school or work. And I did do both, but with the trade-off that I didn’t really have friends or a social life. I got myself into a long-distance relationship so I didn’t worry about dating in a new environment either. Girl, I had the tiiiiiime. Below is what I looked like probably at my smallest.

(April, 2019 – My face is thinner and I’ve lost over 20 pounds)

This is what worked for me.