I feel like every time I see people talking about this, they use the word "journey." I get it, and I'm not trying to make fun of anyone for using those terms. I think people should talk about this with the language they feel best fits their circumstances, but for me, that word felt a bit cliche and inaccurate.

The cover photo of this article is a picture of me at my lightest weight. I weigh a little more than that now, but I also don't view my body as negatively as I did then. This was when I did think of weight loss as a "journey" and that I had reached the end of my own. I feel very differently about myself and the process now.

Maybe this is because I'm still in it, and can't really pinpoint a distinct beginning to my feeling negative about the way I looked. I'm a stocky person. I have broad shoulders and wide hips and I'm also 5"7, so I'm not exactly anyone's idea of petite.

That used to really bug me growing up. I would constantly compare myself to my classmates who were shorter and thinner than I was, and instead of recognizing that bodies are structured differently, I came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. I was thinking this way as long as I can remember, and now realize how unhealthy it was.

I'm around seven or eight here. It's the oldest one I could find on a deep-dive of my mom's Facebook account.

If I think back to when I was younger, I picture myself as a really chubby kid. I always thought I was overweight, and the "your kid is fat. fix it." letters I received at school every year from first grade until junior year certainly didn't help. Don't even get me started on those, I'll yell for hours. However, looking back at pictures from back then, I now realize I had a super warped perception of what my body looked like.

That's not to say I wasn't ever overweight or even bordering obese, because as I got older, that happened. Puberty was tough, and I wasn't blind. I noticed the numbers on the scale increasing steadily and the taunts from other kids confirmed my suspicions.

Around 11 or 12, I actually was a heavier kid. I had a family member ask me if I didn't wear a two-piece bathing suit because I was "too fat" (which was very rude and terrible, but also correct.) A guy in my class offered me food from his lunch every day to poke fun at my size.

Once while buying a skirt for my school uniform, I heard a mother whisper "That big?? Wow" to a sales associate, and then laugh at my expense. While writing that sentence, I instinctively pinched my face around my chin to pick at where my second chin used to be. Needless to say, my views about myself and my body were even more negative because of toxic people around me.

It certainly didn't help that I looked like this for much of the bullied period of my life. Hard yikes. Thanks, puberty.

Even though I felt this way, I wasn't really doing anything about it. For much of my adolescence, I ate like an entire football team. It certainly caught up with me too. By my sophomore year of high school, I was 5"5 and weighed almost 200 pounds.

That was the breaking point for me. The knowledge that if I continued living this way, I'd probably be over 200 pounds by the time I was 16, forced me to make a change. After consulting with a friend of mine, who was a vegan, and watching some very disturbing documentaries, I decided to become a vegetarian.

I deleted most of the pictures of myself from this time, so here is the only picture of me at my heaviest weight that I could find.

That decision marked the first time I saw results. It wasn't much, but the fifteen pounds I lost, to me, were the biggest deal ever. I learned my body didn't digest meat well, and that cutting it out of my diet did wonders for my health. I felt better about myself, but I wasn't done yet.

After the initial change, the weight started to creep back on and my senior year of high school I was getting closer and closer to hitting 190 again. My mom had a lot of success on Weight Watchers, and in January of 2017, I committed to it myself. This was where both my weight and the way I viewed myself took a turn for the better.

In January of my senior year, I weighed 186 pounds. When I graduated in June, that number dropped to 165, a number I hadn't seen since the eighth grade. I was 4 inches taller than I had been at 13 and went from a size 14 to a size eight.

I'd love to tell you I got down to my goal weight after that and the entire time I was losing weight I started to realize that loving myself at any size was the best way to live. I'd love for that to be my reality, but it isn't. I have Body Dysmorphic Disorder, meaning that I have a hard time seeing any change in my size and that negative thoughts and feelings are going to be a part of my life no matter what I look like.

I also stopped caring about what I ate during my first year of college and the summer before that, so about a month ago I was fluctuating between 179 and 180. Here's the good news, though. This time, I saw myself slipping back into old habits, and I'm happy to say that I stopped that from happening.

I'm down six pounds from where I started back in July, and I'm only 15 pounds away from my goal weight. I'm confident that this time, I'll actually get there. I'll keep you posted.

I don't have red hair anymore, but this is pretty much what I look like now.

Regardless, I have a new outlook on the whole thing. I used to think being body positive meant you had to love your body as it was. That it meant you couldn't seek out a diet or exercise regimen, and that you had to either stay where you were or gain weight, otherwise you were a hypocrite.

I don't think that's what it means anymore. Here's how I define it. It's being ok with the process. It's not hating yourself while you work to improve yourself.

It's not thinking that everything in your life will be ok when you hit that goal weight. Being body positive means knowing yourself and taking care of your body by letting it be the best it can be. If you're eating healthy and working out and you can't seem to weigh any less than 200 pounds, that's ok.

If your body does respond to diet and exercise and you lose a bunch of weight, that's ok too. For me, being body positive is about respecting yourself and knowing that Meg who weighs 159 pounds is not a better person than Meg who weighs 174 pounds. She just wears smaller pants.

If you're in a weird place with your own body, I encourage you to do what you feel is best for you to feel better. Nothing happens overnight, and don't expect to wake up and have a six pack because you didn't eat bread yesterday and spent twenty minutes on the elliptical. Instead, take it day by day.

If you can go to bed thinking "I made healthy choices today," that's a win. And remember, losing or gaining weight doesn't make you a better or a worse person. How you treat other people and how you treat yourself is how you should judge your character.

All losing or gaining weight does is make you have to buy new pants. Do what's best for you in your way at your own pace. Then, you get out there and you rock those new pants.