I never wanted to be that person who posts weight loss transformation posts. But because it's more than that, I'm asking you to bear with me (because I'm a writer, this might be long). The first picture is me. High school. Struggling with an eating disorder--one that I convinced myself I didn't have. Because that's what it does: Anorexia convinced me that I wasn't beautiful, and that I didn't have it because what I was doing was normal. It took having my appendix removed my Senior Year and overhearing the ER doctor on the phone to convince me something was wrong. And even then I didn't tell anybody until after my Sophomore year of college. I was convinced nobody wanted to hear about anything else: being raped, struggling with depression, self-harm, and a suicide attempt were enough. I don't know when my eating disorder started: it's so tied up with my rape and my self-harm, that the beginning is unclear and murky. I don't even really know when life changed--sometimes I am still worried that I'm going to fall back into old habits all over again. The picture in the middle was me, January 2015: Last semester of college. That's when this journey of recovery and weight loss actually began. It's restarted many times since then because it's so easy for the voices in my head to convince me that "I'm not worth it. It's not worth it. You're a failure anyway." The last picture is me today: post-workout. I don't know how many total pounds down. But I do know it's 16 pounds since April. Sometimes I still convince myself that I can't do it or that nobody will ever like me anyway, so why bother. But it's not about other people: it's about me. It's about me reclaiming my body for myself. It's about reclaiming it from the guys who raped me, from my eating disorder, from my depression and feelings of worthlessness. I turn 23 on Sunday. And I'm celebrating because to me, 16 pounds is a lot. Because once upon a time, I attempted suicide before my 16th birthday. And now, here I am. Beautiful. Strong. A survivor. #weightlossjourney #healing #recoveryfromanorexia