My story is really about taking everything I've learned through the years (including my calorie/weight obsessed and disordered upbringing by both parents and grandparents) and letting it go. I've learned it's not about how little you can eat and how much you can exercise. It's about balance, eating healthy to feel good (it's true!) and rebuilding self-confidence. It's about knowing that I don't need perfection, and minimizing my own perfectionist tendencies. And it's about treating myself well so that I am happy and content with how I feel and look, and not trying to fit some definition of what I should look like. I don't need to be the best. I need to be happy with my body and the strength and power it gives to me to live the life I want. This journey has definitely pulled me from the worst I've felt about myself and transformed me into a person who is unwilling to put up with what they don't want, including a job that stressed me out to a body I wasn't treating well. Although I've always exercised and eaten well, I have battled with food as a soothing agent. Now I am beginning to see myself differently. My legs are strong, my butt is lifted (yea!), and I'm toning my entire upper body. It's not about being a certain weight anymore - it's about being toned and feeling like I can conquer the world.