I went through a downwards spiral when I was in my Senior year. I had lost my Best Friend/Girlfriend and because of that I went to the only outlet I knew. Food. I went straight from being a runner to being a food addict. I loved the taste of food and the thought of it being my one and only way of fighting off the sadness made me go back to it time and time again. It didn’t matter if I was hungry or not, I just wanted to eat and be lost. I didn’t want to be in this world we live in and I wanted to just tell everybody to go to hell. It was so hard to stop and eventually it became a habit. In the middle of the night I would find myself at the fridge two or three times before I would finally give up and realize there was no more food. On average I was having about five meals a day and the weight started piling up slowly but surely. 

One day I remember looking in the mirror. It was so scary to see. My baby face was back, I had a bump where my stomach was. My arms were bigger and my thighs were now what people call "Thunder thighs". In total I had gained twenty five pounds. Yea, it seems like that’s not a big number but let me give you some perspective. My height is around 5'3 to 5'4 and the "appropriate" weight for that is around 120. My usual weight was around 125 and that was perfect. Everything was level, I could eat little snacks throughout the day and be fine and I only ate when I was hungry. When I started eating all the time it became an epidemic. I wasn’t snacking anymore I was eating full meals. Every time I ate it was like I had to eat a dinner sized meal every time. My weakness? Spaghetti. I loved the hot foods more than anything and to me spaghetti was an outlet that could almost go with anything. You wanna sit in the hot tub? Let’s have a glass of wine with some good old fashioned spaghetti. Watching a movie? Spaghetti with a Martini, done. You wanna sit in a bath rub and cry? Spaghetti as an outlet but not in a bowl, no sir. I had it in the pot with a fork. 

For months I kept feeding myself this sadness and after six months the mirror broke the spell. I saw someone who was ugly, unwanted, fat, lazy, and just ridiculous. I had let myself get this far and it wasn’t stopping. Every day from then on I got more and more obsessed with the numbers and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for myself. I used to look decent and I was happy with just that. Now I had let myself stoop so low to overeat and let it go. It was one of my lowest points in my life. It’s not the worst but at the time it seemed like it. For months I struggled and struggled. The more I tried to lose the weight the less weight I lost. The numbers were screaming at me and I couldn’t help but not want to go in public or be around my family. Pictures showed that I had gained weight and my style in clothing then didn’t help in any way. It was like I was fourteen again. 

When I was on the verge of leaving for Michigan I had acquired a boyfriend of sorts. We had talked for months and we had talked about possibly having sex sometime if I went up there. Being a responsible person I got on birth control. The name of it? Depo Provera. Its a type of birth control that you have to watch your calcium levels. If you are on it for too long it can make you bones very thin and could cause problems in the future. But it was the easiest Birth control. The doctor that talked to me was so excited but had warned me that it could cause me to gain weight. My heart was beating so fast and hearing that it could cause me to have weight gain made me almost back out. Then she explained that any birth control could make you have weight gain but in the case of Depo Provera, it is harder to control. You just had to watch what you ate. With very little confidence but seeing the benefits to it and how I only had to go to the doctor once every three months to get a tiny shot that prevented me from getting pregnant outweighed everything else so, I started the birth control. 

I have heard some pretty terrible stories from my friends who have been on this type of birth control. One of my closer friends got on it and she gained twenty pounds. She didn’t remember who had told her to get on it....truth? It was me. See during my two years on Depo I had lost all the weight and it had helped me manage it. Everyone else seemed to have bad luck with it but for me it saved me in a way. It made me not want to eat as much and so I started to stay away from the food and got in the habit of eating ONLY when I was hungry. Quickly it had stuck in my brain. In six months I had lost about fifteen pounds. The difference was insane to me. A tiny body loosing fifteen pounds makes a huge difference. As I lost the weight I got back into sports again and started to transition to a healthier lifestyle and not eating as much. 

To this day I am around 125 and I am so happy to be at that weight. I’m no longer on Depo since I am no longer dating anybody. If it weren’t for Depo I don’t know if I would have lost the weight at all. 

So if you are struggling with weight, keep striving to lose it. Sometimes there are solutions that you never knew would work for you. You have to keep moving and trying things out. Not everything works for every single body type. Everyone is different. You just have to find it and stick with it and eventually you will get to where you want to be. Don’t give up, keep going, I promise that eventually it will change for you.