What Keeps Me Going

Most people have something that they constantly struggle with. For me, that thing has always been my weight. I have tried countless diets and weight loss products, only to end up worse off than I was before. While South Beach has made my goal more attainable, it has still been an uphill battle. I know that if I give up, though, I’ll be right back where I started. That’s a place I never want to visit again.

At my heaviest, I was completely miserable. Only those closest to me knew the extent of my pain; it wasn’t something that I was comfortable sharing. I pretended that nothing was wrong, but I was really dying inside. I was literally being weighed down. I felt depressed, ashamed, and hopeless. I just knew that I would be obese for the rest of my life, and I felt like there was nothing I could do about it. I hated going places because I felt self-conscious. Even though I’m sure very few people noticed I felt like all eyes were on me.

My weight effected how I interacted with people, as well. I wasn’t comfortable approaching others. I am a reasonably intelligent woman, but I never felt sure of myself. I did my best to blend in, never doing anything that would call attention to myself. I’m positive I missed out on making quite a few friends because of my feelings of inadequacy.

One of the things I hated most about my life then was shopping for clothes. I could usually find a pair of jeans and a shirt, but it took me quite a bit of searching. My size limited my clothing options considerably. Shopping for special occasions was emotionally draining. I didn’t feel comfortable in any of the dressy clothes that I tried on. Nothing looked right on me, and sometimes it would take days to find something I was even remotely comfortable wearing. I’ve come to realize now that the problem wasn’t the clothes, but rather how I felt about myself.

What keeps me going each day, continuously striving to lose the weight, is the memory of those feelings that I harbored inside of me. I don’t want to feel that way ever again. Losing weight is hard, but the life I was living before was even harder. I deserve to feel good about myself.