You look in the mirror and you hate what you see, so you decide that today will be the last day that you remain a bystander to your own body. You start out slow. You do some basic stretches and exercises in your room and slowly start to improve your diet, but you understand that you can’t do this alone. Maybe someone on the internet can help? You go on to your favorite blogging site and try to find a community that will accept you, but it’s hard finding a weight loss community that isn’t filled with people who have already lost the weight. You want a community full of people like yourself: overweight/obese individuals who have recently started their weight loss journey.

You refine your search results and stumble across blogs that claim to promote body positivity and the Healthy at Every Size movement. These girls look like you and you think you might have found the right group, but you soon discover that this community is far more sinister than you originally thought.

You scroll through thousands of blog posts shaming skinny girls calling them bags of bones, making light of eating disorders, and saying that no man will ever love them because they don’t have the right body type. You keep scrolling only to find a girl who posted a weight loss transformation photo being told that she could only reach that weight if she used drugs or had plastic surgery. You keep scrolling reading countless articles based on pseudo-science and medical advice taken out of context. Then you finally scroll across a pretty picture that tells you to love yourself no matter what you weigh.

It's a sweet sentiment, but you can't get behind it because whether it is the pain in your knees when you walk or stand for too long or the way a flight of stairs makes you winded there is something telling you that you should not settle for this weight. You look at your body in the mirror again and you still hate it. Suddenly you feel like a traitor, and your anxiety starts to swell. Why can't I just be one of those girls that flaunt her body no matter the size? Why can't I love this body no matter what it looks like? Why can't I be like these girls and say I am simply goddess-sized? You have a sinking feeling in your stomach because you’re worried that if you try to celebrate your journey to healthiness that you’ll end up becoming a target for the women who preach body positivity while screaming at a young girl for being too skinny.

While I cannot truthfully tell you that this will not happen to you, I can tell you that the negative comments of others will not take away from your glory. There are communities out there that will help you thrive. You just have to look a little longer and learn to weed out the bull crap.

Your body is yours to command, and if you want to lose weight that is your business and only your business. Do not give in to those nagging little feelings you get when going to the gym every day, as if you are doing something wrong by trying to improve your life. Do not listen to those rude comments when you are tracking calories that say doing that is unhealthy when all you are doing is making sure you are eating healthy. And most importantly, do not get medical advice off of the internet. Doctors go to medical school (and pay thousands of dollars) for a reason.

Lastly, do not give up. No matter what someone comments on your photo, do not give up. No matter what someone says to you when you order a salad instead of a burger, do not give up. No matter how many times you look in the mirror and wonder if you are somehow betraying yourself, do not give up. Because this time next year, you will throw an anniversary party for the day that you decided you will no longer settle for your body and because by then it will be closer to the body that YOU want to have.

I have nothing against body positivity. I do have a problem with people bullying others and then hiding behind the victim card. I do have a problem with people using anorexic and bulimic as insults as if they are not a deadly mental illness. I do have a problem with people who know nothing about health/science/medicine preaching to the impressionable about such things. And I especially have a problem with anyone that thinks it is okay to look at a person and tell them that they are not worthy of love because they don’t fit your ideal of beauty whether that be a size 2 or 22.