Two years ago, I was playing basketball in my driveway. I remember crossing the street to pick up the ball and starting to pant. I didn't run for more than thirty seconds and I felt like my lungs had collapsed. That day I came home, took off my shirt and looked at myself in the mirror. I realized I was fat. I was overweight and my body was moving in places it wasn't supposed to. My scale said I weighed 226 pounds and I wasn't happy with myself. From that day I decided to change. I started eating healthy and doing physical activity. Finally, my hard work started to pay off. I measured my weight every day and saw the number on the scale gradually decrease. I started to become happy with myself. However, I became obsessed. Losing weight became all that mattered to me. I did everything I could to minimize the number on my scale. Every morning, the first thing I did was check my weight. After every meal, the next thing I did was check my weight. Before going to bed, the last thing I did was check my weight. Why was this a problem? It was because the number on the scale controlled my life. I started my weight loss journey to get healthy. On the contrary, the obsession I developed with this goal was extremely harmful to both my body and my mind. I would punish myself if I didn't lose weight on a particular day. If my scale said I gained a little weight, no matter how minuscule, I wouldn't eat dinner. I went to bed hungry. The human body experiences weight fluctuations of up to four pounds throughout the day. A variety of factors, such as fluid intake and bowel movements, contribute to a person's weight differing at any time of the day. I was so fixated on m...... half of paper ......od, healthier than a robust individual, who only eats healthy foods? The day I stopped valuing my weight was the day I became truly happy. A person's weight should not define who they are. In the pursuit of health and happiness, measuring weight represents a setback. You shouldn't change yourself just because you weigh more than the socially accepted amount. The only reason to change is to become a better person. Don't make your weight an indication of that change. I recently went on a two mile run. When I was running home, I took a look at the basketball net in my driveway. I remembered that just a few years ago I couldn't run for more than thirty seconds. I remembered how fat I felt and how unhappy I was. Eventually, I realized that I was more than what my weight told me I was. I was a person who worked hard to change and nothing can take that away from me.