From second grade until my sophomore year, I hated what I saw in the mirror. No one who isn’t truly, noticeably over weight, would have any idea. And I’m not talking about the girls saying, “Ohh, I’m so fat!” No, I’m talking about the kids who get made fun of at school and who are terrified just to take off their shirts—the ones who know the feeling of having absolutely no self-esteem, the ones who understand the feeling (in the pit of your stomach), wanting to just disappear when someone even hints at the fact that you’re overweight.
That’s the life I lived that motivated me to change myself.

People always ask how I did it; when sometimes, they’re the ones who negatively motivated me. It’s funny how people talk to me now that I’m not as overweight. It just makes me laugh how people are f***ing embarrassed to be even talking to someone. People have no idea how it feels to have an eating disorder—unless they have experienced it themselves. Do you know how it feels to have someone take your number one self-conscious factor and throw it in your face so ignorantly? Do you know how it feels to be utterly embarrassed about yourself that you just want to disappear and never see that person again? Do you know how it feels to want to just leave and be with no one when a situation where you have taken your shirt off, or hear that the party you’re going to is a pool party? These things made me want to change myself.
People try to follow in my footsteps to lose weight, but barely any really does because they don’t have the lifetime of motivation. I’m open and willing to help anyone who is willing to help themselves. I’ve had the experience of going from a double extra-large down to a medium—from 290 pounds down to 180. I’d love to share that happiness with anyone who is looking for it. I have the people that broke down my self-esteem to thank for helping me change myself into somewhat of what I want to be.

When people ask me how I got through what I did, I tell them, “The feeling I get at the end of the day knowing I didn’t eat anything I wasn’t supposed to was miles better than the 15 seconds of satisfaction of eating something bad.” When really I’m saying, “The feeling I get at the end of the day knowing that I starved myself so I’d be one step closer to not being called fat really helped me sleep at night.”

Some people look at me as a visionary for doing what I have done; some tell me to write a book. But I just took the troubles of adolescence, the blunt truth young kids say, and the ignorance of high school kids and flipped it around into my own sort of motivation.

The final straw for me, I guess you could say, came freshman year. I was sitting at lunch and my friend came over to the lunch table and he was talking to everyone and I said to him, “Dude, I’ve tried talking to your girlfriend. I want to get closer to her since you’re my bud. I’ve tried talking to her but she won’t really open up.” He didn’t really know what to say and said he’d talk to her. I don’t know why I cared so much why she wouldn’t open up. Then one of my other friends, already sitting at the lunch table, called my other friend over and said, “Dude she won’t talk to him ‘cause he’s fat.” At that moment I don’t know what happened, but I stared at him with confusion.

I don’t know why it affected me so much; I was used to getting s*** from that person. But my whole life of getting made fun of flashed before me and made me feel useless…to everyone. The rest of the day I didn’t talk to anyone. That night, I got home and something sparked. I couldn’t say when or where, but I just stopped eating carbs.

Because my parents knew I wasn’t active, I was getting closer and closer to adolescent diabetes. And that still goes on today. I’m nearing one year passing 110 pounds lost. I don’t know when I’ll stop—and I don’t know if I will.

I’ve had a lot of time to hate the older me and be disgusted with what I looked like. But I’m just scared to get back into that body that made my high school experience a nightmare.

All I’m saying is that becoming what you want to see isn’t impossible, if you just turn those memories you want to forget into some sort of motivation. It’s possible. You just have to put your mind to it, however cliché that sounds.