I am currently struggling with something that I’m sure more than a few of you can relate to: I gained a bunch of weight over the holidays and am trying my darnedest to get rid of it.
I don’t even really know how it happened. It was like I woke up one day and all of a sudden the jeans I used to be able to wear so comfortably became suffocating torture devices. I found myself going head-to-head with the stubborn zippers on my favorite dresses, the ones that used to glide right up so easily. I’m taking all the right steps—eating less, exercising more—but it’s been an agonizingly unfruitful process and the pounds aren’t melting away as quickly as they implanted themselves.
This isn’t going to be an article about how I lost the weight or about my valiant efforts to get back to where I was. I was inspired to write this because I realized that this slight change on the outside caused some major changes on the inside. In the past month, I’ve barely been able to recognize myself—and not just in the mirror.
All of a sudden I was insecure, introverted, and riddled with self-doubt. I also became someone who constantly berated herself, which was disappointing because that is something I always speak out against. I was traveling down a very detrimental path, one that would have caused the Sabrina who started A New Mode a year ago to smack me right across the head, and justly so: I let myself get caught up in the idea that my weight meant everything.
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