Okay, there’s no weights on these things, because I’m trying to stop focusing on weight. The fact is that I am beautiful in both of these pics and am not trying to shame my former self or anyone that is that current weight. I am proud of my progress, but not because I lost weight.

The first pic was one of the first times I ever wore something tight and revealing aka stuff “meant” for skinny girls. I was just so happy that I had the confidence to wear something like that, not because I had lost a bit of weight or that I think fat girls need confidence to wear stuff like that, but because it takes confidence to wear stuff like that no matter what weight you are. I got a lot of bad comments that night, but I still wore that dress and still knew I looked damn good.

In the second pic, I’m not happy I have the confidence to wear that dress. I’m smug as fuck because I know I look freaking sexy. My face is just all “look as this bad bitch…”

My biggest progress has been in the past 6-8 months. The first 6 months of my weight loss journey, I lost 40 pounds stat. Over the past 6-8, I’ve only lost 20 because although I’ve been working out and eating healthy, weight loss has not been my priority.

So what was my progress then? Somehow, some way, over the past 6-8 months I’ve made peace with my body. I’ve started to love my body. That’s not to say I don’t have days where I feel gross and think I look like a gorilla, but those days are less and that’s not how I define myself anymore. All things considered, I have a pretty great body image.

I’ve been talking to quite a few girls lately, all of them with “normal” BMIs (I’m still classified as obese…I’d have to be 190 to just be overweight), about our respective body images. This is not meant to pity them or to say I think I am better than them in any way, but they have much worse body images than I do…some even worse I used to although they’ve always been “normal.” They use all the language I’ve basically eliminated from my thinking, like “I just feel soooo fat today” and “if I would just lose x amount of pounds I would be happy with my body” and think of eating healthy as a restrictive diet and working out as a punishment for eating too much. I just want to shake them and scream “you’re beautiful, stop it!!!” and sometimes do, but as well as know, that has to come from within.

So basically, before I start participating in NaNoWriMo at the eleventh hour, I want to pay homage to myself and how I feel about myself and all the work I did, consciously and subconsciously, and all the work everyone else did (Tumblr you have changed my life, seriously).