For today we are suppose to talk about an obstacle we are struggling with and what we are doing to overcome it. To be honest, I think I am pretty lucky, my parents are still paying for my expenses (thank you mom and dad), I am pretty healthy, and I've got a few reliable friends that I can always turn to. The possibility of not getting into medical school is my biggest worry right now, but that surely doesn't count as an obstacle, so I guess I will talk about my insecurities.
As I mentioned in my Day 1 challenge, I was severely bullied in elementary and high school; kids made fun of my chubbiness and my big forehead. Not a day passed by when I would not be teased or harassed; I always just shrugged it off but the damage of those years are quite deep because I still have lots of body image and self-esteem issues today.
I don't like a lot of things about my body and my face, I can list them, but it would just go on and on. I am super critical about my appearence and as a result, I am very self-conscious all the time.
A few years back I started eating healthy and exercising on a daily basis, it gave me a big confidence boost as I lost weight and got fit. However, I reached a point where I was relying on exercise as my sole source of self-confidence. I was becoming obsessed; I would do hot yoga, run 15K, and hit the gym all in one day. If I did not get "enough" exercise, I would be overcome by guilt and shame. I finally realized that I was going overboard when I started experiencing some serious pain in my right hip and my kidneys were getting bruised from too much running (yup that's a real thing......). So I eventually eased off on exercising, cutting back to just one hour of exercise per day, and as a result my self confidence dropped quite a bit as I gained back some of the weight I lost during that period of over exercise.
So what am I doing now to make things better? I guess I am trying to change the way I view things by accepting that certain features of myself cannot be changed, and I just have to embrace them. It's a hard thing to do though because I can't simply change my thought process over night and start loving stuff about me that people teased about for years and years, but I am trying. Lately, playing around with makeup and updating this blog have been giving me a lot of confidence and visiting other bloggers and seeing the confidence and contentment they exude is making me appreciate a more diverse range of beauty. So anyways, that is what I have been struggling with; things are getting better, but it's still going to be a long time until I learn to love the way I look.
As always, thanks reading!
A few years back I started eating healthy and exercising on a daily basis, it gave me a big confidence boost as I lost weight and got fit. However, I reached a point where I was relying on exercise as my sole source of self-confidence. I was becoming obsessed; I would do hot yoga, run 15K, and hit the gym all in one day. If I did not get "enough" exercise, I would be overcome by guilt and shame. I finally realized that I was going overboard when I started experiencing some serious pain in my right hip and my kidneys were getting bruised from too much running (yup that's a real thing......). So I eventually eased off on exercising, cutting back to just one hour of exercise per day, and as a result my self confidence dropped quite a bit as I gained back some of the weight I lost during that period of over exercise.
So what am I doing now to make things better? I guess I am trying to change the way I view things by accepting that certain features of myself cannot be changed, and I just have to embrace them. It's a hard thing to do though because I can't simply change my thought process over night and start loving stuff about me that people teased about for years and years, but I am trying. Lately, playing around with makeup and updating this blog have been giving me a lot of confidence and visiting other bloggers and seeing the confidence and contentment they exude is making me appreciate a more diverse range of beauty. So anyways, that is what I have been struggling with; things are getting better, but it's still going to be a long time until I learn to love the way I look.
As always, thanks reading!
