My Struggle With Weight Loss as a teen
By: Emily Vrablic
Tags: Mental Illness, Mental Health Awareness, Life, Life Lessons, Teenagers

My Struggle With Weight Loss as a teen

When I was in 8th grade, one day, I started to get lightheaded in band class. You might be thinking “oh that makes sense because your blowing into an instrument”. Although that’s what me and everyone else was thinking, the lightheaded ness just started to get more scary and frequent. I started calling my parents everyday from school telling them I didn’t feel good. Took days off because I was “sick”. Even though I wasn’t light headed yet, I knew I would be when I got to school. I convinced my dad to take me to the doctor and eventually went. I did a bunch of blood tests and nothing came back. The only thing the doctor found was that I had pre-diabetes. He started talking about how overweight I was without actually saying it. I knew that I needed to lose weight but convinced myself throughout the years that I needed to love myself for who I was. That was definitely something I lost through my weight loss journey. The doctor put me on a diet that changed my whole way of thinking. Losing weight made me more confident in my body but also made me begin to fear food. Labeling food as “bad” and “safe”. Triscuits are a safe food because it’s not unhealthy but also something that I can enjoy on a daily basis. Cheetos are a bad food because it’s so unhealthy and overweight people eat them. The way I thought of food changed so severely that just looking at people makes me now analyze what they eat so that I can look like them. I starve myself to lose weight, praise myself when it happens. Looking at myself in the mirror is so rewarding because of how far I have come but also makes me want to cry because I don’t have the perfect body. No abs, chubby cheeks, stomach. Constant checking my weight to make sure I haven’t gained any but then seeing that I have is so mentally draining daily. It’s all I think about all day long. I hold myself up to such a high standard now in fear of becoming what I used to be. Losing all of the confidence, all of the boys telling me i’m cute and wanting to date me. This is something new to me so losing it would be such a devistation. I’m so proud of how far i’ve come that it makes me find all the little things about myself that are different from other people and hate them. People telling me to “lose weight” and now “gain weight” but I don’t want to gain weight is just so mentally exhausting. I want the perfect body and to be able to eat the foods I want too but that’s just not realistic.

Loving myself is going to be

Waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror to see how happy I am. Not looking at other girls instagram pictures and asking myself “how could I be them” but just smiling and moving on. Being able to eat the foods I want with no shame of guilt. Going on social media and seeing someone fit and being able to move on from seeing that. Being proud of other people but not putting myself down for it. Loving myself and taking care of myself. Not trying to look like other people. Bettering myself is the best thing I can do for myself because no one else can help me with that. I have to do it on my own.