In today’s society, being a teenager (of the female species in my opinion) is pretty difficult. Just walking through a supermarket, onlookers see images of people on the front of the magazines that look super thin with perfect hair, perfectly white teeth and the most stylish clothing. Viewing these sights my entire life made me want to strive to be like the people seen in the magazines or on the television shows because they were portrayed as perfect or the ideal look of a human being. These ideas made complete sense to me until a few summers ago.

I recently just came off of back surgery and I lost ten pounds, but grew almost two inches due to the procedure. After my surgery I looked fairly thin; I never thought I was as thin as everyone else saw. Since my surgery had made me thin, I wanted to maintain this stature and reduce a few pounds in weight. For the first month I stopped eating meat because I heard this helps with weight loss. I became an undercover vegetarian, but my parents never suspected a thing because they were hardly at home to watch what I was eating. Yet, I figured out that my weight was maintaining itself. Why not try something that will get me better results? I wanted to take on the challenge of being a vegan to get rid of these last few pounds. Research showed that this is a good diet and PETA had me pretty convinced when I went on their site. This was a struggle for me because I only ate vegetables throughout the day and my parents cooked meat with everything they ate, I had to make my own batch of everything I wanted to eat. I mean, I felt like I was healthier due to getting rid of the saturated fats in meat and animal by products, but my protein levels were not high due to me not taking a supplement for my protein.

There was one more group I was willing to eliminate out of my diet to lose the pounds to achieve my desired weight, grains. I figured since celebrities do not eat “carbs,” then why should I. No bread, no rice, no spaghetti/pasta, no potatoes, no cereal. By this point, I was eating a bowl of fruit for breakfast, protein shake as a midmorning snack, a salad (only with lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms and carrots) for lunch and mixed vegetables for dinner. This was completely opposite of my previous food routines due to all of the foods and the food groups I had eliminated from my diet. At this time, the only good thing I did for myself was exercising mildly in the mornings, sleeping the correct number of hours at night and drinking a lot of water.

At this point, I was very cranky and the littlest things made me upset. Then my mother had told me she would not let me go back to basketball until I gained weight and actually ate the way I was supposed to. This of course made me upset, but I considered what she said as a threat, not a promise and I continued this for weeks to come.

In August when I came back to school, a lot of people told me that I lost a lot of weight. I did not really think much of it. Then when I got to my last class of the day, my coach had said I looked anorexic. I figured that she was joking, but then I thought about it. People said I was thin before, but the multiple steps I was taking to get even thinner were an extreme. I then realized what she was talking about. My arms and my legs were a lot thinner than they were the previous year. I did not have enough energy to play such a physical game such as basketball. Then, I realized, the only way I can play is to eat right.

I did not want to do this at first because I liked the way I looked at the moment and once I put these various foods back in my diet, my appearance will be molded into something I was completely trying to avoid. But since I grew, and I required more weight, and then I would be able to become an athlete again and regain my muscle mass again, I had to eat something. Fruits and vegetables were not going to cut it. So I began to ease in to eating all of these foods again. I did not enjoy the part of me gaining weight again. Actually the first few weeks were hard because the number on the scale began to make me unhappy. Later, I realized that everyone is built differently and that I should be happy with myself because I am healthy. That I should not worry about the way society portrays women to look, but the way I feel about myself. The only opinion of myself that matters is mine.