Ever since I can remember, being "a big girl" was a normal thing for me. I would get picked on for being overweight and it continued to be like that until about middle school. Around that time, I decided I needed to change. During the summer of my seventh grade year, I started hitting the tracks. I ran every day, at least two miles. All I wanted was for everyone to take back everything they had ever told me about my weight.

It took about a year and I went from weighing 220 pounds to 120 pounds.

The change was drastic, making it almost impossible for anyone not to notice. I entered my eighth-grade year 30 pounds lighter than when I had left for summer vacation. It was such a change that girls that had never even talked to me would stop me in the halls and tell me how good I looked. Boys especially seemed to be talking to me when before they wouldn't even look my way.

It was a pretty different time in my life where I enjoyed the perks of being thin — I confirmed skinny privilege is a thing.

If you plan to lose a significant amount of weight, you will receive more attention from everyone around you whether it be boys or girls. I can not tell you how many times I would receive free stuff because of the way I looked. Everywhere I went, I received mostly unwanted attention. For me, it was really sad to realize how truly superficial this world really is.

Now if we fast forward three years later, I was sitting in a place where I was starting to gain my weight back. I was struggling to keep up with everything dealing with school, clubs, and my job. Everything was gradual with me gaining my weight back. I started running less and less, not watching my diet as much and then simply dropping everything that helped me lose weight.

At 18, I was sitting back at square one with my weight.

After realizing what I had done I had a really hard time coming to terms with it. Doing all this work to lose weight just to gain it all back was a big loss for me. My confidence took a hit and it took me a long time to start anew. When I realized that I can't change the past, but what I can do is change the future I made a change. After so long of letting myself drown in pity, I decided if I did it once I can do it again. Trust me when I say most days I want to stay in bed all day, but I tell myself that in order to be healthy and confident it is something that I NEED to do. Losing weight is really hard and can be discouraging sometimes, but remember that whatever has happened should not affect what you could be doing today.