I talk a lot here about the different ways you can tweak your lifestyle to increase your physical health, and at the risk of sounding conceited, I think students can really get a lot from what I write about. Today, however, I want to switch gears just a little and explore a specific area of mental health: body image. Take a moment right now and ask yourself honestly, are there things about your body you don’t like? Have you ever felt self-conscious of the way other people look at you or think about you? If you answered “no” to these questions, you should probably be the one writing this column. But I suspect the vast majority of you can answer “yes” to at least one of these two questions — I know I can.

Sophomore year of high school was a terrible year. I was your classic overweight, hate-the-world, punk-rock-loving 16-year-old. I had been “dieting” for what seemed like all my life. You name it, I’ve been on it. Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, LA Weight Loss, Jenny Craig … been there, done that. None of it worked. Finally, I stumbled across some pictures from a family vacation that year, and that was the last straw. I couldn’t live that way anymore. It was time for a change.

I started watching what I ate instead of following a diet, and hit the gym a couple days a week on top of softball practice. The weight started coming off almost immediately, and so it continued. After that summer, I came back to school a junior, three sizes smaller and with my very first boyfriend. The attention I got was literally intoxicating. Over the next year I continued losing weight slowly but surely, adding more workout sessions and continuing to watch what I ate.

But I was not done yet. I had gotten a little taste of being thin, and it quickly became like a drug I craved. At the end of my junior year of high school, I was that girl. I was hopelessly consumed with my appearance, my mood fluctuating whenever someone posted pictures from that weekend’s party on Webshots (we all remember the days before Facebook, don’t we?).

That summer, things started to fall apart. I weighed myself constantly, usually two or three times a day, and I kept a meticulous record of my calorie intake over the course of the day, never exceeding 1,100 calories. What was really the worst part was that even though I was clearly becoming obsessive about my weight, all I was getting was positive feedback. My boyfriend couldn’t believe how great I looked, my friends were jealous, and my family complemented me constantly, praising me for “my hard work.” But still, it was never enough.

At the end of that summer, I hit rock bottom, and no one had a clue. I broke up with a boy who loved me more than anyone in my life ever has because I had to prove to myself that I could get someone better than him. I became addicted to the attention I got from guys, because it was how I measured my own beauty, and it led me down some very dark and dangerous paths. I worked out obsessively, I picked up smoking cigarettes to curb my appetite, and I occasionally dipped into a friend’s Adderall prescription to suppress my appetite for longer periods of time. It had been two years since things began, and I had gone from a size 16 to a size six. I was the perfect weight for my height, and I still found myself in front of the mirror almost every day pinching pads of fat all over my body, constantly planning how I was going to lose my “next five pounds.” Finally, my parents intervened.

Three years later, and I’m barely the same person I was then. I reached a maintainable weight with the help of counseling and some serious soul-searching. I now hold national certifications to teach group exercise, spinning and yoga. Most recently, I became a nationally certified personal trainer, and I just started training for my first marathon. I don’t say all of this to boast of my success. I say this to show that despite all my success, I still struggle every day with my weight. It is my demon, and while I have found a way to live with it, it will never go away. I don’t write my story here because I think I am special. I write because what I went through is too normal.

Weight loss is a slippery slope, and no matter how much you lose, it will never be enough. If there are any parts of my story that are hitting home for you, please understand that while you are not alone. It is not healthy. You should be going to the gym and eating healthy because it is the right thing to do for your body, not because you want the boy in your math class to notice you. Your body is just that: yours. So do the right things by it, and I promise you, it will love you back.

Christina Zimmerman is a junior in the NHS. She can be reached at zimmerman@thehoya.com. Don’t Sweat It appears every other Friday in The Guide.