In the social media world, your body means everything. When you take pictures of yourself, you’ll try to show your greatest asset or them guns. It’s just very annoying! Seeing those “people” makes me feel sick (the thought I would have 2 years ago). I now see the good side of people showing off their body, it’s for us to have the motivation becoming one of them.

In the year of 2015, I was having a great time as an exchange student in Virginia, studying at Goochland High School. By saying “having fun”, I meant letting myself go, which means eating accounted onto the list too. I thought I was normal in the point where I kept eating and eating and eating. I just can’t stop eating!!! I then decided to go on a diet (consist of doritos every night)... Yeah, I failed miserably in committing to what I want to do. I let myself go again. Towards my graduation day, I put on my drape, looking FRESH in front of the mirror, until I looked down, all I could see was the bright red color of my drape, instead of my shiny and fancy graduation shoes. It’s at that moment, I knew I f*cked up. Going back home to Vietnam, I started to get a bit stricter with my diet. One of the options I had was to quit breakfast, it did the trick, but not good enough. I then started to stop eating snacks, soft drinks, fast food,... for about a week. I immediately returned to my old self, eating junk food, sleeping, not exercising, and just being lazy. You won’t believe this but I was literally 250 pounds. Yeah, an Asian guy whose height was only 4”3’ and weighed over 250 pounds. I was really disappointed in myself.

In 2016, I was still the same fat, unproductive, nonchalant person that didn’t give a crap about the world. I was at the brink of giving up on being healthy. I was done, but then BOOM! Things turned for the good for me. I started my first day of college in Washington state after receiving a scholarship from Pierce college. I met my old friends from back in Vietnam, we were so happy, but to this day I’m still depressed about my weight. My friend, David was the one who encouraged me to go to the gym with him everyday after classes ended. I was hesitating at first, but my model is YOLO so I accepted his invitation and went to the gym with him.

During my Fall quarter at Pierce, my body started to crave more food which was really hard, but instead of giving in, I started to eat healthier like more vegetable, fruits, chicken, fish and tea. By eating healthier like that, it means less calories will be going into my body, but I still need to exercise. Good thing Pierce college has a gym nearby where I can workout everyday after classes. For the past 6 months since September, I’ve been going to the gym 2 hours each day everyday, do my own workout session, eat healthy, and become more active in both physically and mentally. I thought to myself: “This is not enough for me, I need to exercise more”. This thought of mine made me become more alive, more active and more healthy. In those months, I have lost so much weight, I began my journey from 250 pounds down to 160 pounds. I was mind blown away. Things will never be the same for me anymore, I will now set my goal higher and every time I achieve it, I will set it higher again.

To be honest, being healthy is great, but it’s just very tiring. The first few days, I was really cranky since I stop eating or drinking things that have more than 10 grams of sugar. It took a toll in my daily activity, I became tired very fast. Sounds like something I shouldn’t do anymore, but I sticked with what I believed in and guess what? I feel way healthier now. I feel more active and more alive.

So here’s my advice from the journey I took so you guys can see, if you want to live a healthy lifestyle, want more strength to do extreme things, impress the ladies, then stay with your goal to eat healthy and workout everyday for 2 hours. If not, I guess you can become one of the cliche people out there who loves to sit on the couch all day long and just eat bags of Doritos, sucking your cheesy finger tips… That actually sounds way better than being healthy… but for now, let’s be healthy.