Okay, we did sunshine and butterflies yesterday but that’s not the whole story. For those of you who have been following along or those who have read the archives (I love you!!), you know that this journey has not been all good and lovely and biscuits and tea.

I don’t really like biscuits, by the way.

Scones are much tastier with tea.

Or a toasted English Muffin with butter.

I digress.

This post is not meant to nullify any of what I said yesterday but I can’t simply pretend that there haven’t been any negatives.

I’ve struggled. No one loses weight or changes any habit without a struggle.

The biggest of these struggles at the beginning was believing that I could actually do any of this. Looking through my archives, it almost makes me sad how often I made comments wondering how long I could keep the whole thing up and how often I freaked out when one weigh in didn’t look how I thought it ought.

I can see the point where I finally started to believe the whole thing wasn’t a fluke and where I started to actually share about myself, not just my weight.

The second of the struggles and the one that is ongoing is the struggle to eat enough. It annoys me to have to eat so often. I used to eat one or two high calorie meals and then consume most of calories in a day from soda. Reminding myself that I need meals on a regular schedule and making myself keep eating those meals has been hard.

There’s also an emotional element to it, but I’ve discussed that numerous times already. We don’t need to revisit that just yet.

Sleep has also been a struggle for me. I used to be able to sleep for 9-10 hours without waking up once. Now I usually sleep for about 7 but am still tired throughout the day. Sometimes the sleep issues are caused by anxiety, sometimes by pain. It’s just one of those things that I’m working through.

The strangest of the struggles has been how people look at me. I don’t really like to tell people about my weight loss because I can see the moment of them wondering what I looked like before. Please stop imagining me fatter.

Lastly, the most impactful of the struggles has been that in focusing so much on weight loss, other things have fallen by the wayside. I haven’t been pursuing much else (besides boys…) for the last year. I’ve been content with this because it’s been a year of personal growth and change but I’m starting to miss the feeling of learning new music, stepping on stage, being in the land of academia, obsessing over some obscure book, and other things I used to love.

I realize, though, that weight loss is a season and through all of the ups and downs, I’ve continued to be able to lose weight. Despite the struggles, I can keep doing this.