'THE' photo

Now, I know that a lot of people say that there was one photo that made them realise they needed to lose weight and although to some extent I had a similar experience - I just removed the photo from my Facebook timeline and put it to the back of my mind. The photo was taken at my Mum's 50th birthday party and only a couple of days before traveling home I'd had my first haircut in months and I simply wasn't looking after myself. However, I sit here now, not having had my haircut since her birthday (at the beginning of March) and, despite being half a stone or so lighter, still find myself trying to push it to the back of my mind, I've got bigger things to worry about after all.

To explain this fully I'm going to need to tell you a bit more about me, I left home after school to live with my partner in Bradford, about a 4 hour journey from my parents, originally in his Mum's house but she kicked us out so we have struggled through 2 years on benefits and are looking at one more year until I get to university in York. Due to living in a place that I was largely responsible for and  being so far from my parents I didn't consider keeping healthy a priority (not that I did when I lived at home so it's no excuse) but, the main difference was that I didn't make any friends decent enough to go out with, therefore no pictures of me from drunken nights out appeared on Facebook, I didn't own a full length mirror, so there was no need to think about it.

However, as I've mentioned before both my Mum and Dad have come into health difficulties due to their diet and lack of exercise and, in order to tackle my own problems, I need to take responsibility for and be reminded of the way I look now, knowing that I don't want to continue looking that way or continue being unhealthy. For that reason, as much as it pains me to do so, I will post the picture, as well as a picture of how I looked after losing half a stone, if I don't then I'll simply continue to ignore and put myself in danger because of my size.

Although for as long as I can remember I have always been bigger (taller, fatter, stronger) than the rest of my female classmates (and in many cases male) my weight is, in my opinion, more out of control now than it has been before. By preventing myself from getting any bigger now and starting to lose weight and get into a healthy routine, I will ultimately be saving myself from health problems further down the line as well as giving myself a much needed confidence boost in order to be the person I should be. A confident, happy and ultimately 'normal' (ah I hate that word) 18 year old.