the dreaded 3 letters LBS.

These 3 letters haunt me everyday when I wake up and I am constantly worried about how much I weigh and what can I do to not weigh so much. It is embarrassing for me to say that I am the heaviest I have been in my life weighing way over the recommended weight for my height according to certain health tables. As a 5'2" woman I should weight in the range of 99-135 and lets just say right now I am no where near that range. I don't think that I personally have a problem with my weight because of the people I see around me, it is because I want to live a long and healthy life and if I continue in this unhealthy state then my life may not be as carefree as I would like.

When I was little I was just that, little and cute. I was always active playing sports and dancing and always being outside. It wasn't until around middle school I guess when I could have been compared to as having a little more than I needed in some areas especially my butt. I am definitely known for having a big butt. Which according to some recent articles that people have been sharing on Facebook I should birth some really smart kids. But I was never the skinny mini girl you would see and I never wanted to be either. I felt like I was in shape, even though others might not have felt the same. I also want to point out that to me being in shape does NOT mean that you are so called "skinny" which I actually don't know what the real definition of skinny is; being in shape to me is being able to exercise and workout and not get out of breathe so easily. Prime example, in high school on the dance team I was one of the biggest girls but I was probably in one of the best shapes out of any of the girls on the team because I actually worked out outside of dance team and ran and played other sports.

Got a little off track there, but getting into high school I was still never the average girl wearing skin tight shirts and pants because they just generally made me uncomfortable. I would rather wear clothes that I was comfortable in and I would also rather people be my friend and talk to me without worrying about that I looked like or was wearing. I would say I didn't have a problem with guys because I did have 3 long relationships from end of middle school until the present, but I bet that if I was skinnier than what I was that more guys might have found me attractive. That kind of sucks in a way because just because I had thicker thighs or a bigger butt didn't make me any less of a funny, smart, and outgoing girl but in some guys' eyes they can't possibly be seen with a girl that someone would call "fat." On the other hand I can look at it in a way that those guys were just missing out, and I didn't need that type of people in my life anyway if they would judge me without even knowing me.

It wasn't until my senior year and start of college that I gained a good amount of weight. I am now a senior in college and I can say that since my junior year of high school I have gained around 35 pounds, I am so embarrassed to say that number, I feel like it is 100. And frankly I don't know how I did gain so much weight. Its obvious that I wasn't working out as much as before because i didn't have dance team practice every afternoon but i did not completely cut exercising out of my daily routine. And of course not having my parents food meant I needed to cook for myself but I never really had a problem with that since I like to cook. So sometimes it is harder for me to pinpoint the exact time that I sort of "let myself go."

A big problem for me is that I know I CAN loose weight because I have done it before, just two years ago I lost 20 pounds and only had a little over 10 to get back to my high school weight. I held it off for about 6 months and then like nothing it all came back. I don't want to make excuses for myself because I know I am only hurting myself in the process but it seems as though I let a lot of things influence and get in the way of exercising or eating right, that it wasn't worth it because it would all come back anyway the day I stopped being so strict. Also being a college student and living away from home I would go home on the weekends and those would be when everything I worked hard for that week just went away because I would eat out with my boyfriend or family and I would have to start back over every Monday when I stood on that scale. It was so discouraging to think that I had worked so hard the previous year to loose weight and I slipped up just a little and I gained it all back so easily. I don't want to have this constant battle anymore and I don't want to have to fight this battle off and on for the rest of my life.

I have since recently made some goals for myself, mostly having deadlines like my sisters wedding, my best friends wedding, and my own wedding! But these deadlines I am telling myself will not be the end of my new lifestyle. I have started a new workout plan that lasts 12 weeks but I will make myself get into the groove of exercising everyday and realizing that it is essential for me to better myself as a person. I have chosen to eat better foods, foods that make me happy not because they are just so good but because they are delicious and are fueling my body with the right ingredients for it to prosper. I have told myself in the last few days that I never want to look into the mirror and see the same person I am seeing today, that over time when I look in the mirror I don't point out my imperfections but look at how far I have came and congratulate myself. I don't want to have to reserve so much time in the morning to trying on clothes because nothing fits me, I want to be confident that the first outfit I put on will be perfect.

Bottom line: I have chosen to better myself and I am hoping that with very big events fast approaching in my life that I make the best choices I possibly can for myself. Hopefully in the semi-near future I can be writing a post about how I have reached my goals and am on to the next goals.

I do believe that everyone should be happy with their bodies, and I don't necessarily believe in the recommended weights for your height. What I do believe in is trying your best to keep your body in the shape that makes you happy and makes your body happy. I am not saying that my goal body weight is i that range because it isn't, my goal body weight is a weight that I know, since I was once at that weight, that I am happy being at. I can exercise with ease and push my body to limits that I couldn't do otherwise. With all of that said today is the start of the rest of my life, as will tomorrow and every day after that.

I'll keep you posted...

How often do you think about privilege?

So some of my blog posts will be about what I am learning in school. I am taking my last two humanities...joy. To add to the excitement there aren't many choices except for foreign languages, histories, english, religions, and women and gender studies. Therefore my last two humanities were a religion class and women and gender studies. My women and gender studies class doesn't leave much to the imagination in the title, we are talking about women and gender on a daily basis. However, we are digging deeper than just talking about women and gender as a whole, we are learning about all of the different possibilities of gender and learning a lot about feminism, which also comes in many forms. Today though, we talked about privilege. How often do you think about privilege? What kind of privileges do you have and what advantages and disadvantages come from them? When I was reading the paper assigned to us I had no idea how many different kind of privileges there are, the paper listed class, gender, religious, and many more. Some of us don't realize as young Americans that on a day to day basis, regardless of the negatives things going on in the country, that we are simply privileged to live in America. Unlike other cultures we can wear what we want, say what we want, eat and pray when we want, and do many other daily tasks that are simply not allowed in other parts of this world.

Most privileges, in my opinion, we are born into. Being white, my family being financially stable, me having access to higher education, being a Christian, were all things listed on that paper that I had no control over when I came into this world. Therefore, I am looked at as having many privileges that were handed to me at birth. Is that my fault though? And really why is there someone to blame for this? Why are there "norms" as to which someone is considered privileged if they meet those "normal" standards? Who developed these "norms" and how have they stayed so true for so many years? Why is it 2015 and not everyone 100% privielged to live in this FREE country?

Class privilege is something that I was born into but just because my parents have money now doesn't meant that they always did. My parents worked extremely hard to get where they are today and had to make a lot of sacrifices in order to give us, my siblings and myself, the best life they imagined for us. I plan on doing the same for my children, living for them before living for myself. Why does everything revolve around money though? Why does there always have to be a dollar sign to everything? Shouldn't it be more important that someone worked really hard to get where they are rather than their net worth?

Race privilege is also something I was born into but is something that I think is completely unfair! Why does it matter what color my skin is as to what privileges I get as a human being? I mean it is 2015 and this stuff is still going on. It goes back again to the fact that it should be about how hard someone works to determine what they deserve in life.

Gender privilege is something that kind of pisses me off. That if you are a male you will get more privileges than a woman and you will also get PAID MORE for doing the SAME job! I could write a whole separate post about how much that infuriates me.

Able-bodied privilege simply means that people who are able to walk for example have more privileges than physically disabled people. I believe that all places should be accessible for EVERY person no matter if abled or disabled.

Those are just some of the privileges we talked about in class today and were listed on the reading assignment, of course there are many more. I simply think that everyone should be equally privileged based on how hard they work towards what they are trying to achieve in life.

Bottom line: If a man and woman are trying to get the same job, the employer should be able to hire one person not even knowing their name, what they look like, where they are from, who they know, and so on. Their qualifications should be all that matters.

Welcome to my blog!

Hi everyone! I am a college student about to graduate and be an Engineer!! I am writing this blog just to share my thoughts on a daily basis, to see what others have to say, and to discuss events happening in the world. Feel free to agree, disagree, or just read. I like to talk a lot so this might give me a way to put it all down into words. After graduating I will be getting married in less than a year along with beginning my career, so you will read about days in the life of a college grad, new engineer, anxious bride-to-be, newlywed, and all of the titles I will be in the future. I hope you enjoy reading my posts!