Every day I wake up and re-commit to my health. This is a very important step for me. I let the past be the past. I try not to dwell on the mistakes I've made, because those kinds of thoughts only bring me down. I wake up every day with the thought that this is a new day. That today I am going to eat well, I am going to exercise, and I'm going to focus on being healthy and happy.

Strong emotional feelings don't just go away overnight. In fact, they may never go away. The fears of feeling disliked, or that I wasn't going to fit in, all quickly bubbled up to the surface. but it was the choices I made when I was faced with challenges that really mattered. I had to continually tell myself that I was always in control. If someone was pressuring me to do something that I knew was not good for me, I had the power to simply say no. No one can ever take that power away from me. If someone was upset or didn't like me for saying no, that was someone that I really didn't need in my life.