Confidence was the Key to Loosing Weight

Beginning my second year of college, I steadily gained between 10 and 15 pounds a year over the next 3 years. Before 2003, I had never been overweight and always thought that being overweight is something that would hit me in my 30s or 40s, not as soon as my early 20s.

After some initial fretting about my appearance, I allowed myself to ignore the first five or 10 pounds. But soon, my level of discomfort with my appearance brought down my self esteem, and with that downward plunge in positive self confidence, my motivation to make some changes came tumbling down as well. My attitude became- "Why dress up when I can't hide how much weight I've gained anyway? And if I'm not going to dress up, why bother with makeup or styling my hair? And if I rarely styled it, I didn't see the need to spend $50 getting it cut, either. None of these changes happened overnight, so they were hard to catch and stop. Probably with each pound I gained and with each diet attempt that failed, I found myself a little less interested in trying to maintain a reasonably fresh, professional appearance.

At that point, when looking in the mirror, I felt I had come a long way down from the beautiful, fashionable girl I had been just a year or two ago. I didn't look or feel like myself at all. I was spending my prime adult years feeling overweight and ugly.

I dieted once or twice for a week or maybe two. I paid all the fees and joined a gym, vowing to regularly visit Pilates and cardio classes. But regular gym attendance was difficult, not because of scheduling conflicts, but because I was too embarrassed to be seen trying to work out in front of men and women with amazing, rock hard bodies and obvious dedication to exercise. I didn't have either of those things, unfortunately, so I stopped going regularly after a short time and continued gaining weight.

I accepted my failures, blaming them on "bad genes," and a total lack of will power. I believe these negative messages to myself came from my rock-bottom self-esteem. Had I possessed more confidence in myself, I might have replaced that kind of counter-productive self talk with messages like ""It's not a matter of bad genes, it's just bad choices and, thankfully, I can control my choices. I can overcome this."

It took me joining a weight loss program at the encouragement of a neighbor, who was also enrolled in the program, to finally make me see that my genes weren't in control of my weight. I am. I've learned that excess weight is not something I'll be stuck with for the rest of my life because I just can't get in control. I am in control now.

Though I do strongly encourage people to join weight loss groups or programs in order to add some structure to their dieting, I realize it is not necessary for everyone. The main thing that any dieter can do for him or her self is to start practicing positive self talk. Accepting negative self talk that, the kind that sounds like "I'll just be fat forever! There's no point in hanging on to these old 'skinny' pants," is destructive but most importantly, it's untrue. Never allow yourself to hide behind negative self talk that masks itself as the truth. The truth is, you are strong enough to overcome the obstacles that have prevented you from loosing weight in the past and it is never too late to take control.