Going Down Two Sizes

When you are losing weight, there will come a beautiful time were you have to go down in dress size. I recently went from a UK size 14 to 10. That means that a lot of my old dresses are too big now. So I’ve asked my lovely mother to fit them down to my current size.

This is a dress from Dorothy Perkins I bought in the start of January 2015, not thinking about my weight loss journey at all. When I got the dress, it was already a bit too big, especially in the bust and waist. Now, months later, I want to use this dress for a friend’s wedding. So my mom fitted the dress down from UK size 14 to 10. The two pictures to the left are from the original size 14 and the two to the right, is after it has been fitted down. In all, the dress lost 12 centimeters around the bust, wait and hips. Uh, and 8 centimeters around the arms. I am so happy! Now it fits perfectly and I love it. A big thank you to my lovely mom! <3

Use yourself as Motivation for your Weight loss!

When I decided to lose weight, I immediately found some old photos of myself from a time were I had much more confidence and was happy with my body and how I looked.

I’ve used this photo as my wallpaper many times, to keep reminding myself what I’m striving for.

I think that when you’re on a weight loss journey, it’s crucial to be motivated and inspired. An old photo of yourself from a time were you had a weight that you felt great, confident and happy about is the best motivator you can find. I’ve read and heard many times that it’s a good thing to visualize what you will look like when you have reached desired weight – what better way to do this, than an old photo of yourself? Then you already know that you are capable of achieving your goal. You also know that your body has been at that desired size before. For me, that has made it a lot easier. Certainly a lot more relatable than a random photo of a beautiful fit woman hanging on my fridge.

The First Before and After Pictures

These pictures are taken some time ago (before in the red bikini is July 2014 and the after picture in purple is from March 2015). I wouldn’t normally post pictures of myself almost naked, but what the heck, it’s only my body.

It shows how much weight I’ve lost and how far I’ve come! Since 11th March I’ve lost more and now weigh 64,4 kg today. Yay! I’ve actually lost 10 kg since December/January! Yay me! I think I have to celebrate later today, maybe with a good workout?
And what the heck happened to my skin? It got so much more even! And a lot of the stretchmarks aren’t that visible anymore (They have actually become lighter than before now). I really like my body now that I’ve lost weight. Before it looked like my body was about to blow up or something.. I also feel so much lighter! Yay!

The Thing About Self-Confidence in Weight Loss

I felt that in the beginning of my weight loss journey, my self-confidence and self-esteem were very low. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a chubby young adult who didn’t like herself at all. It was so easy for me to pick on myself and mention all the parts of my body that I hated. At times, I felt so bad about my looks, that I didn’t want anybody to take pictures of me at parties and I would rather stay at home on the couch than attend a party were other people might make fun of me.

Just before I started to lose weight, I tried this exercise where you look at yourself in the mirror every day and only say positive things about yourself and your body. As the days passed, I started to like myself more and more. I felt more comfortable in my own skin. Even though I hadn’t lost any weight yet, I started dressing differently – more colorful and bright. While in the first half of my weight loss journey, I didn’t actually feel much different, mostly because I simply couldn’t see the weight loss on my body. The scale showed that I’d lost weight, but I felt like my body didn’t show it. That actually made me lose confidence in my training and I thought about quitting. My mom and the rest of my family kept telling me, that they could see that I had lost weight, but I didn’t believe them because I couldn’t see it myself.

It was only when I got my fiancée to take some new pictures of me and I compared them to some old ones, that I realized how much weight I’d actually lost. Omg. My legs, thighs, arms, stomach and head! When I saw those before and after pictures, I also realized how chubby I was before. It made me a bit sad, but so happy that I actually managed to lose half of my goal. After that day, I suddenly became much more confident in myself. I guess I had such a hard time believing it, that I had to see ‘proof’ first. If I had just taken pictures every second week, I would have seen it earlier and spared myself the self-hating. So please, remember to take pictures of yourself, so you can document your process. You don’t have to show the pictures to anybody, just keep them for yourself – as a reminder.

Therefore, the point of this post, is that, self-confidence and self-esteem is tightly connected to our weight or what we think about ourselves. Confidence is greatly about feeling comfortable in your own skin. It doesn’t matter how you look, just what you feel about how you look. Sometimes I see people that ooze confidence and they give out this ultra-positive energy. These people have realized at some point in their lives that, when they are happy and love themselves, so will other people. I want to be one of those happy people that makes other people happy! What can we do to become one of those people?

• Be thankful for what you have
  • First you have to be thankful for what you already have and accept it. When you are thankful, you are giving out positive energy that other people will notice.

• Speak positively
  • This is important! You have to stop using negative words are speaking in that manner. Surround yourself with positive things, speak, and think about all the positive things you have. Try doing a challenge, where you do positive self-talk for seven days. You will see that it gets easier after this. You have to speak positive about yourself, your body and the rest of your life too.

• Love yourself
  • Loving yourself can be hard, especially if you have low self-esteem and you just don’t see any good or positive qualities about yourself. But you are wrong. Everybody had something, that is unique to them. Try to focus on something that you like about yourself instead of the negative, like the fact that you might have beautiful eyes. When you start looking at all the things you like about yourself, you will see that loving the rest is easier.

• Brace yourself with inspiration stuff like happy songs, quotes, art or movies
  • We are humans. Sometimes we fall and sometimes we are negative. We can’t always stay happy and laugh. You can to accept that, but we can still do our best to surround ourselves with positive things, feelings and people. Therefore, it can be a great help to listen to inspirational songs, find wallpapers or inspirational art you can hang on your walls. All this will help remind you to stay positive and strive for your goal.

• Smile more
  • Smiling can actually make you happy, even when you’re not. If you are feeling down or sad and actively want to be happy, just smile, goof around, and you’ll find yourself happy again. When you smile, it can make other people happy too. Smiling is infectious and you could make somebody’s day better just by smiling. Another benefit is that smiling makes you more attractive – so smile more and feel confident! Smiling can also lead to laughter, which is funny. Smiling just feels good, so do it 🙂