You know how when you watch The Biggest Loser, the second week is always the bad week? They gain, maintain, or lose only a pound or two. It’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Contestants know this week is notorious for bad numbers on the scale.

The second week when I start making the intention to be healthier is always the bad one for me. My first week, I am full of momentum and motivation to stick to my plan and I feel great and in control. Then the second week hits and suddenly, I have pitched myself off the healthy wagon and am rolling, rolling, rolling down a mountain of unhealthy and bad decisions.

I want to be an all-around healthier person. I don’t want my focus to be on calorie counting or numbers on the scale. I want to embrace intuitive eating and discover what unhealthy habits I need to kick to become the fit, strong girl I know I can be. It’s not so much about being skinny and hating who I am because I’m overweight. It’s about becoming stronger, becoming healthier, and loving who I am because I make good choices – not because of external factors.

I want to stop being ashamed of my body. 

It’s easy to look at the long road I have ahead of me and get so overwhelmed that not even starting feels easier. I know I have the desire and the power to lose all this weight, but I also know all my problems don’t begin and end with being overweight. I think, as I go through this journey, I will begin to be proud of the accomplishments I rack up and the changes I see and feel in my body and my mind but I also know that being overweight does not mean there is anything wrong with me. (And this is where The Biggest Loser fails a LOT.) Does it mean I’m lazy and unambitious? Not in the least! I’ve fallen into this habit of I’ll do this when I lose weight and waiting on that for when I’m thinner and feel better about myself. And by putting things off and being ashamed of what I look like, not celebrating who I am, I am missing out on the brilliant pieces of life.

Do I want to lose weight? Yes. Because I am unhealthy. But I also know I could be unhealthy if I was skinny and fit into those size two jeans with no issue. It’s not about sizes. It’s about overall health and wellness. It’s not about fad diets or writing down every single morsel of food I eat. It’s about understanding nutrition, using foods as fuel, and eliminating the junk that is weighing me down (pun?).

And it’s about focusing on the positives. Like the fact I drank more water than soda this week. And I worked out five days. I ate healthy breakfasts and lunches. Baby steps. I know there’s this crazy idea that the clock strikes midnight, a new year is upon us and suddenly, we are changed people and none of our past behaviors will stay with us in the new year. Load. Of. Baloney. I’m not giving up on my resolutions. I am not giving up on those 50 lbs I want to lose, that 5K I want to train for, or the fact that I want to completely give up soda. Sure, I hit a speed bump this week but that doesn’t mean all is lost. Every week, every day, every hour is a new chance to get back up and try again.

I’m going to keep trying. The other option is to quit and my dreams are worth way more than that.

Starting Weight: 166.6 lbs
Current Weight: 164.8 lbs (down 1.0 lbs this week!)
Weight Lost Total: 1.8 lbs

I decided to take a break from writing my weigh-in posts over the last few weeks of December. I was in full-time holiday mode, enjoying all the treats and sugary goodness this time of year brings. I didn’t step on the scale until the Saturday before New Year’s Eve and that’s when I had to face the music.

The verdict? I gained 4 pounds in 3 weeks.

Not good. Not good at all.

I tend to go overboard during holidays and vacations and take a complete step back from being any semblance of health. I stop exercising. I stop drinking water and eating fresh fruits and veggies. And I binge on anything and everything unhealthy. I know what I am doing and I understand why I am doing it… it’s just too hard to walk away from it when I’m in the midst of it.

But here I am. It is a new year and I am determined to make this a year where I put in the hard work and dedication it takes to lose weight and be an all-around healthier individual. I’m tired of failing and messing up and feeling as if I can’t get this. It’s exhausting and defeating. I’m just ready to stop it.

The excuses have to stop.

I can do it.

I can lose weight. I can revamp my diet. I can stop drinking soda for good. I can become a runner. I can put in the work to achieve this major life goal of mine. I can step outside of my food and exercise comfort zones.

I can do this.

I will do this.

This is something that I cannot fail at. To fail is to believe in the lies that I’m not good enough. To fail is to set myself up for long-term health problems and even more self-esteem issues than I currently have.

And the more I tell myself I can do this, the more I start believing it. And that is the first step in taking control of my health and ignoring the excuses clamoring for attention inside my head.

In the wise words of Molly Maher: No goal is out of my reach.

None.

2013 is going to be a defining year in my journey. I can taste it. I can feel it. I am owning it.

Starting Weight: 166.6 lbs
Current Weight: 165.8 lbs (down 2.2 from last week)
Weight Lost: .8 lbs

I can’t help but remember the one and only time I was super successful at losing weight. It was May of 2007. I was 19 and had recently moved home after an awful year of living in the dorms at USF in Tampa. My mom had started WW in October and was doing amazingly well. I had just started a job at a preschool, working full-time in the infant room, and decided to join my mother. I had about 25 lbs to lose, just a little chunk I wanted to get rid of.

My weight loss story actually began a few months before that, when I started using Sparkpeople to track my food and exercising regularly at the gym on campus. I lost about 10-15 lbs in a few months and people were noticing. I felt good and I loved the compliments.

Fast forward to May when I began Weight Watchers and was down to 125 lbs by July. Just 10 lbs away from my goal. My shirts were x-small, my pants a size four. I had collarbones and tiny shoulders and the beginning of a tiny waist. I was so proud of my reflection, so thrilled at the progress.

And as I think back on that time, when I was so close to hitting my goal weight, I remember how easy it felt. It wasn’t hard. I didn’t cut out all my favorite foods or go on any crazy fasts or train for any races. I just ate sensibly. I indulged when I wanted to. My portion sizes were controlled and my snacking wasn’t out of hand. I exercised regularly and followed the plan. It really wasn’t all that hard.

Of course, over the past five years, I have managed to gain all that weight back, plus a lot extra so there were definitely some flaws. But I credit getting extremely busy with school, work, and internships as to why I ended up gaining the weight. I didn’t learn the behaviors necessary to sustain me when life got crazy.

But still. I remember that girl. I remember how she felt when someone complimented her on her weight loss. I remember how she felt when she had to go down yet another size in clothes. I remember how she tracked her food and exercised regularly. I remember how she indulged sensibly and how she felt when she looked in the mirror. I remember that girl.

I know I have it in me to be that girl again. When it comes down to it, it’s really not hard to lose weight: just eat right, drink lots of water, and exercise. It’s the behavior behind why we have gained the weight that makes things difficult. We have to learn the tools to eat healthy in every situation, to not let those little bumps in the road lead to a downward spiral. For me, it was a two-month plateau and then a hectic life that made me reach for convenience foods, rather than healthy foods.

I still have a box full of clothes that 2007 Stephany could fit into. I refuse to get rid of them. One day, I will be the size I need to be to fit into them. I will be able to slip on those jeans and that shirt and it will be as if I have come full circle. I need to believe I can be that girl again.

Starting Weight: 166.6 lbs
Current Weight: 164 lbs
Weight Lost: 2.6 lbs

I have gone back and forth on whether or not I want to detail my weight loss journey again. On the one hand, I know it is so helpful for me to talk about how I’m doing, where I’m struggling and succeeding. But on the other? I feel like a broken record, continuously recommitting to a healthy lifestyle only to falter a few weeks in. But I decided I’m just going to jump in and start back with weekly recaps of my weight loss journey. Knowing I have to show up every week with a post and update helps keep me motivated and on track.

I have no real plan for how I’m going to talk about my journey. I want this to be more of a stream of consciousness, what I think I need to get out of my system so I can focus on beginning a new week with a plan.

Today, though, I want to talk about why I’m doing this. I don’t want to think about my other failed attempts at losing weight but I want to focus on now, on December 2012, and why I want to lose weight.

I’m doing this because I want to look at my body and feel strong. And skinny. Yes, I’ll just say it. I want to be thin and not in a scary-anorexic way but in a fit way. In the way I was back in the summer of 2007 when I had collarbones and tiny shoulders and my thighs didn’t rub together. Where I could run two miles, NBD, and looked in the mirror and be proud of my reflection. I look in the mirror now and grimace at how far away 2012 Stephany is from 2007 Stephany. I want to feel strong when I look in the mirror. I want to recognize my accomplishments and that comes from adhering to a healthy lifestyle and committing to a regular exercise routine.

I’m doing this because it’s been a goal of mine for so long. I have been trying to lose weight and failure after failure grates on me. I’m slowly learning not to base my self-worth on my pants size but it’s hard. It’s one of my biggest regrets of 2012 – that I let myself go in the weight department and am at a point where I now need to lose 50 pounds. When I first started trying to lose weight, I only had 30-35 pounds to lose. And now I’m at 50. I don’t want that number to crawl up to 60 or 70 or 75. I want to commit to the process now and I want 2013 to be a transformation year for me.

I’m doing this for my long-term health. While I don’t have any complications as of yet, I know if I continue on this unhealthy path, it’s only going to cause problems in the long run. Do you know I was terrified of being told I had diabetes when I got blood work done in September? That’s not a normal reaction for a 24-year-old girl to have! I shouldn’t be worried that I’ll wind up with weight-related health problems while getting blood work! Thankfully, my blood work came back normal.

I’m doing this for vanity’s sake. Because I don’t want to worry every time someone looks at me and then my stomach, that they’ll ask if I’m pregnant. Because I want to wear all my “skinny” clothes that have been sitting in the top of my closet for years now. Because I want to feel comfortable in my own skin and feel good about my reflection. Because I’m tired of feeling fat and all the horrible emotions that feeling dredges up.

I’m doing this because I have been inspired by the weight loss journeys of others. People who have found a way to lose weight and keep it off successfully. Who have completely transformed their worlds and the way they view healthy living. I want to be like my mom and Jessica and Amber and Kelsie. They have inspired me. They have motivated me. They have shown me it can be done.

And I will get it done.

Starting Weight: 166.6 lbs

The past two months have not been the best months for me, healthy-living-wise. I quit Weight Watchers. I stopped writing my #cbdiet posts. And I generally just took a break from all the tracking and struggling and disappointment. This is going to sound backward, I know, but there was this relief once I decided to stop worrying about eating healthy. I think I needed to take the pressure off of struggling so much to live a healthy lifestyle and just live my life without the structure of a meal plan or tracking book.

And while it helped me get through the mess that has been my life for the past two months, it also lead to a nice 10-lb weight gain and all my pants being tight as hell. I’m having back pain and sleep comes fitfully.

But the past two months have been a growing (ha!) experience for me. I don’t want to eat healthily and exercise a lot only because I think my body is disgusting and needs to be skinnier. I want to eat healthily because it’s good for me and makes me feel awesome about myself. I want the extrinsic rewards definitely. I want to be thinner and proud of my body. But I also want the intrinsic because that’s going to carry so much farther than any extrinsic reward.

What I’ve started realizing is that my worth is not determined by the size of my pants. I think this was the biggest part of my downfall before: I was measuring my awesomeness by how well I was following a healthy living plan and losing weight. If I was struggling, it meant there was something fundamentally wrong with me as a person. Which is silly and ridiculous and I am just as amazing, no matter what the scale says.

And, above all, I need to discover what I need to make this healthy living journey a success — and something I can do in the long run. There is nothing wrong with me if I’m not running marathons or drinking daily green smoothies or going on crazy juicing fasts. All of those things are awesome but if they don’t interest me? That’s okay. We don’t all have to take the same path to health and I need to recognize what foods and behaviors and activities that I need to keep me on a path to being healthy and fit.

Losing weight and maintaining a healthy lifestyle have always been a struggle for me. I don’t have the best relationship with food and use it as comfort and reward, instead of something that simply fuels my body. I never want to lose my love for food and the joy it brings me, but I also want to heal this part of me and recognize the ways I sabotage myself in my quest to be a more healthy individual. With every failed journey comes new lessons learned and habits formed. I’ve become a more regular exerciser and I make healthier decisions than I did a year ago. Maybe not every day and maybe I make more unhealthy ones, but I’m doing better.

I’ve learned that, in order for me to stick with this long-term, I have to make small changes. I have to take baby steps and gradually work out the unhealthy stuff and work in the healthy stuff. I know I need to kick my soda habit. (And not replace it with a diet habit. Sorry, but you can’t convince me that diet soda is better than regular stuff. They are both terrible for you.) I need to follow a low-sugar diet. I need to meal plan and stock my fridge with stuff that won’t tempt me to nibble and snack away.

I also know I do better when I’m working towards something and have accountability and community. And so this is my “official” announcement that I am joining this round of the Biggest Blogging Loser. I’m really excited to join in and have something big to work toward because I think this will really help my motivation and keep me pushing when I’m struggling. You can find out all the details here (there’s a $20 fee to join but this goes towards prizes). This round starts on Monday so email Regan if you want to join in, too! I think it is just what I need to stop messing around and get serious.

I’m going to keep chasing after this healthy living thing until I get it right. The option of just completely giving up is not even on the table. I’m not going to let my discouragement of failing again and again keep me from picking myself back up and trying again.