228 Pounds

Two years ago, I was playing basketball on my driveway. I remember running across the street to pick up the ball and I started gasping for air. I did not run for more than thirty seconds and I felt like my lungs had collapsed.
I went home that day, took off my shirt, and looked at myself in the mirror. I came to the realization that I was fat. I was overweight and my body jiggled in places it shouldn’t. My weight scale said I was 226 pounds and I was not happy with myself.
Since that day, I decided to change. I began to eat healthy and exercise. Eventually, my hard work started to payoff. I would measure my weight everyday and saw the number on the scale gradually decrease. I started to become happy with myself.
However, I became obsessed.
Losing weight became the only thing I cared about. I did whatever I possibly could to minimize the number on my weight scale. Every morning, the first thing I did was check my weight. After every meal, the next thing I did was check my weight. Before I went to bed, the last thing I did was check my weight. Why was this a problem? It was because the number on a weight scale controlled my life.
I began my weight loss journey to become healthy. In contrast, the obsession I developed with this goal was extremely unhealthy for both my body and my mind. I would punish myself if I didn’t lose weight on a particular day. If my weight scale said I gained a little bit of weight, no matter how miniscule, I wouldn’t eat dinner. I would go to bed hungry.
The human body experiences weight fluctuations of up to four pounds throughout a day. A variety of factors, such as fluid intake and bowel movements, contribute to a person’s weight to differ at any point during the day.
I was so fixated with m...

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...od, healthier than a hefty individual, who only eats healthy foods?
The day I stopped valuing my weight was the day I truly became happy. A person’s weight should not define who they are. In the pursuit of health and happiness, weight measurements are a setback. You should not change yourself just because you weigh more than the socially accepted amount. The only reason to change is to make yourself a better person. Do not make your weight an indication of that change.
I recently went on a two mile run. When I jogged back home, I took a look at the basketball net on my driveway. I remembered how only a few years ago, I couldn’t run for longer than thirty seconds. I remembered how I felt fat and how unhappy I was. Finally, I realized that I was more than what my weight told me I was. I was a person who worked hard to change and nothing can take that away from me.