Maybe you've reached your goal weight or maybe you're still in the process, but regardless I say kudos to you! People surely sing your praises and never fail to tell you how cute you look when you wear a new outfit that's a size smaller than the last, but there is one thing you should hear that many relentlessly fail to tell you. That is this, you were beautiful long before you shed some pounds and you'll still be just as beautiful long after.

Here me out. Make no mistake about it, you were fabulous, are fabulous, and will forever be fabulous!

You will soon find that you have changed as a person both outwardly, as well as inwardly. However, the same people around you who were shallow before you lost weight will still be shallow forever after you lose weight. The only difference is now they're actually willing to speak more to you, laugh more at your jokes, and occasionally will look at your just a little while longer.

News flash girl, they weren't worth it then and they sure aren't worth it now.

If they didn't want you before you lost weight, they sure don't deserve you now. You're the same amazing girl now that you were then, with just a tad more confidence. Enough confidence to know that you deserve better.

Now more than ever before, you know you're worth.

If you had to get thinner to get their attention, you don't need their attention.

Losing weight changes you, and yet it doesn't change you all the same. You still have the same insecurities. You'll still scan the room for the girl that's prettier than you and it still won't take you long to find her. You'll still wish you had defined arm muscles, a flatter stomach, & thick thighs from squats for days. The one thing it does change though, is that you know who loved you long before and whose worth loving long after.

It all gets easier as time passes, the saying no to cupcakes, doing those ten extra squats, knowing whose on your team, and realizing how shallow people can be. The one thing that takes that little extra time to get over is saying goodbye to online shopping because now you most definitely have to try everything on.

So here's to ordering a salad when you really wanted that cheeseburger with pickles, mayo, and ketchup. Here's to looking like a fool in your living room doing countless rounds of Zumba, to drinking more water than the Atlantic can hold, to pushing yourself to do five more Russian twists, to t-shirts drenched in sweat, to saying "screw you" to the old you, to falling in love with all that you are and all that you wish to become, to the days you look in the mirror and don't see any change, to getting your butt up and working out anyway, to going shopping and seeing the major change in countless fitting rooms, to shin splints, to apples with peanut butter, to steamed carrots, to sore muscles, to your stinky socks, to getting up every day and doing it all over again. Here's to knowing that you are going to become everything they thought you'd never be, to making them look twice, to making them bat an eye.