My Story

Hello there, interwebs!  My name is Paisley.  I'm just your average introverted from-the-South-but-definitely-not-Southern sort of girl, more than a bit of a nerd, obsessed with knitting, traveling, cooking, and enjoying the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains that I live so close to.  My days more often than not involve the company of a handsome ginger, a relentlessly spastic dog, and two very apathetic felines.  I'm an art school alumni lucky enough to be working in my field of study by day, and pursuing my own artistic endeavors whenever possible.  My first creative passion, however, has always been writing, and this blog serves as an outlet for that passion.

I’m not sure when exactly I became a “thick” girl.  I spent most of my life at a pretty average size until a few years ago, eating whatever I wanted, not really focusing on how I was treating my body.  I lived in a city during college where walking was much more practical than driving, and that seemed to keep any significant weight gain at bay, no matter what I chose to eat.  Once I graduated and moved back to the rural South, however, things started to change, and after being back for two years, people started to notice.

I still felt like the same person on the inside and couldn’t see what I’d become on the outside, really, even though none of my pants fit anymore.  Slowly though, I noticed that people treated me with less respect, and I was startled and confused by the definite change.  I got snarky comments from sales people when I went shopping and even more snark from other women in casual settings (my favorite of which remarked publicly at a holiday cookout on how chubby my arms and legs were, and how odd it was that my waist was still pretty small).  There was the brief boyfriend who said he liked my stomach because it was “pretty flat for the most part,” the one who treated me as a “thick girl” novelty date for a while, the one who told me the woman who insulted my body in front of a group of people was “just being very honest,” and plenty of others who just seemed to treat me as a less valuable person to whom they could be condescending because of the extra pounds.  I felt pretty beaten down, to say the least.  After a few family crisis situations ganged up on me all at once, I decided I had had enough, and if I could remove at least one source of stress and frustration from my life, it was time to make a change and focus on that rather than the swirl of chaos around me that I had no means of controlling.  So, I made the decision to become sincere about changing my body.

I lost about 37 pounds over the course of 5 months, gained a ton of muscle, and totally changed the way I went about my life.  I’m still working hard to achieve what I feel is my full potential, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished so far.

I'll eventually realize I can smile and not look like a chipmunk since those cheeks are gone...

Before and at -25 lbs

Before and at -37 pounds.

Notice I'm finally ok with a picture where my arms aren't tucked behind my back?

I want to make one point abundantly clear:  You see the bigger girl in the pictures up there?  I’m no better than her, and I never will be.  I will never be more valuable as a human being than I was 37 pounds ago, nor would I -10 pounds from now, or if I weighed 300 pounds more, and I don’t like that people who have changed their lifestyle as I have get treated as such.

That’s not to say though that I don’t feel better about myself.  Focusing on my fitness has changed who I am entirely.  I wake up in the morning ready to face the day with abundant energy that I still can’t quite believe, I am more confident, and I feel like I am getting so much more out of life every day!  And it wasn’t a difficult thing to do!

I have gotten a ton of questions about my transformation and requests to share what I did to get there, and that’s the point of this blog: to put all that info out there.  If you’re tired of the spiteful comments and feel like there’s no hope for changing yourself, you should know that all you need is a little motivation and an honest desire to see a permanent change in yourself.

Keeping up with the recipes and fitness excursions I pursue here helps keep me motivated, and I hope it can inspire some other people out there as well!