I know that some of people on my social media and in real life talk behind my back about my weight... i was made fun of in elementary and middle school to my face about being fat. I was called mean things by people I thought were my friends. Elementary and middle school probably were the worst years ever but it made me realize that those people were right... i was fat and i was doing nothing about it but sitting there being the fat girl. Some of the people i thought i was closest to at home even called me "fat ass" and told me to get off the couch and go play outside. 2016 may have been a bad year but for me it was one of the best years of my life! In February we went shopping for clothes to take with us to South Padre for spring break, as i was trying on clothes i got very discouraged and even start crying because nothing fit right or it mad me look like i was 8 months pregnant. I found a few things that i was confident wearing. I thought then i need to take action and figure out how to lose this weight. In August I started my first day of senior year and i made it my goal on that first day to be healthier and look healthier by graduation. In September i cut out all artificial and added sugars. I was down to only natural sugar. This was probably the hardest part of my 4 month journey! I started eating fruit for breakfast, a sandwich or some vegetables for lunch and lean meats for dinner. I lost 1 pound in 1 month and i felt like it was going to take forever. My mom and i talked to some doctor in Iowa and some doctors at Mayo and they proscribed me an appetite suppressant in October. During October i got my senior pictures done and i hated almost all of them because i still looked fat. This is where i took major action. I started trying to take the long routes throughout the school and getting more steps in per day. By November i had lost 10 pounds! I was so proud of myself but I still looked in the mirror and saw a fat girl. I was back up at Mayo getting a biopsy done on my thyroid because the doctors at Mayo felt a node, when i got weighed there i was down 17 pounds! I am way more energetic than i was before and i feel great! I started at 251 pounds and i am now down to 233 pounds! I looked at pictures from last year and saw this one i told my mom to wait a second and we and put on the same dress and i can really see a difference! Hard work and mean names really gets you somewhere! Thank you to all the people who attended Ballard at the same time I did and called me mean names and made me sad all the time and made me not want to go to school! Your mean words finally mean something to me now!