I have lived many lives at this point. I had many different jobs. Lived in different countries. Had different dreams and life goals. But one thing has never changed for as long as I can remember. My struggle with weight.

For as long as I can remember this issue always was in my life’s spotlight. Even though now I am happy with the way I look, it wasn’t easy getting here and things didn’t just happen. This story is very personal and very few people actually know all I went through because I was overweight. It might sound vain, but this had an enormous emotional toll, which I’m still working on. Depression, anxiety, lack of self-esteem, and hopelessness were always so present in my life, that sometimes I find myself going back to my dark place because that’s where I was for so long.

I have a lot of stories related to my weight loss process and I will soon write a post on emotional eating. For today, I’ll give you a brief overview of my struggle and how I was able to lose weight and get the body I have always wanted without spending money, going on crazy diets, or doing surgery.

Where it all began

I was a normal child until I was two or three. Every time I see my old photos I’m amazed by how cute I was. Yes, I was a very pretty toddler until my allergies kicked in. I had to take a lot of medication and as a result, I gained a lot of weight. I honestly don’t remember a lot from this period, but I recall being bullied as early as kindergarten, but I didn’t really understand that it was because of my weight. Since I didn’t know myself any other way, I thought I was normal.

As time went by, the bullying continued and since I have always been a lady, I responded with violence. They bullied me, I punched them. And that went on until the most magical period of everyone’s life arrived: puberty.

What is going on here?

Once I became a teenager, things got even worse. This is naturally a very confusing time for everyone, and I was trying to understand what was wrong with me, fit in, and lose weight because I hated the way I looked. This also affected one of the most important things in my life: music. While all the Spice Girls, Britney, and Christinas of the world were so happy, had lots of friends and were so perfect. But I was not. I didn’t see myself in any of them. I couldn’t relate to their songs. Until I heard Freak on a Leash by Korn and I could finally see myself belonging somewhere. But that’s another story.

This story is about when I was teen, everyone in the media was skinny and perfect. How my classmate bullied and teased me because of my weight, and how even my family, my mother being the only exception, always had a comment on the way I looked. At this point, I had already lost some weight, or rather I grew up and the weight was better distributed.

It was around this time that I started dieting. The problem was that even though I did follow through with it, I would either get bored or go back to my old eating habits once I got any results. When I was 15, I started practicing kung fu and I lost a lot of weight. I remember being in pretty decent shape in the last year of high school. And then I went to university.

I didn’t cook. I didn’t eat fruit or vegetables. I was addicted to sugar. I stopped exercising. Guess what happened? Yep, I gained a lot of weight, my skin was horrible and I was so unhappy with the way that I looked that I stopped looking myself in the mirror. During my second year, I decided to start exercising again, and since I was always busy, I decided to do it at home and go out for walks and I was able to lose some weight, which I kept pretty much until I graduated.

Now I’m a grown up!

Once I graduated, I decided I was going to lose weight once and for all. So I did the points diet, which was basically keeping an eye on the calories.This was what led me to eat fruit and veggies. I found out that if I ate more ‘healthy food’ I could eat more. And that was a big game changer. I lost a good amount of weight and somehow, even eating copious amounts of sugar during the time I was living in Europe, I maintained it for two years.

Once I went back to Brazil and started working, things didn’t go so well. I was depressed and eating very poorly. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, and I lost a bit of weight with the medication, but I still wasn’t happy with my body or my life. This was by far the darkest period of my life, but it was also when I found out that I could cook.

After a year and a half, I was emotionally exhausted and I decided to move back in with my mom and work as a freelancer. And this is when the real change began.

Want to know how everything happened? Stay tuned for the rest of the story!