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I am no health professional. What I am is an ordinary human who, like many others, has suffered the blows of weight gain. I’ve gone on every possible website looking for miraculous ways to lose 10 kilos in a week, I’ve started, but never completed, multiple fad diets and I’ve talked to all kinds of people about the topic.

It all started in my senior year of high school. I had always been very sporty, playing for my school’s soccer and field hockey teams since the fifth grade. But I decided to put these activities to rest when I began the International Baccalaureate diploma, thinking I would need more time for school work. It went well at first, but my new sedentary lifestyle, as well as my sleep deprivation, were soon and sure to catch up with me.

It took me a year to realize that I could no longer eat the five slices of pizza, two Big Mac burgers or five rolls of sushi like I could before. I had always been skinny and never had to think twice before putting something in my mouth because I never put on weight. When my friends asked me if they looked fat as they tried on new clothes, I couldn’t understand why they worried so much.

This was until I saw pictures of myself on Facebook. A double chin accompanied my every smile. Then I put on my bikini for October break. I couldn’t sunbathe without two conspicuous rolls of flesh rising like little sand dunes above my tummy. I was spending the break with a very skinny friend, who I later learned was suffering from anorexia. I noticed the way her face scrunched up as she saw me eat, the way her eyes went back and forth from my face to my stomach every time we talked. Soon, I began seeing myself the same way I knew she saw me.

I have always loved myself. But at that time, I lost my confidence to the point where I stopped taking myself seriously because I thought nobody else would. Not only did I feel this way, but I observed certain people treating me with the same mentality. I know it had to do partly with the way I felt about myself but, looking back, the shift in how some people treated me was partly due to my weight gain.

Fact #1: These are the people you must distance yourself from. If they can’t take you in your tougher times, you must walk away. They’ll make you feel like you have a problem. Everyone gains weight at some point. But not everyone judges you for it and changes the way they treat you.

Fact #2: You are also to blame. Putting on weight definitely plays a big role in your self-esteem, which in turn alters your personality. The way people treat you can be a result of your physique, but I firmly believe that a greater part has to do with how you treat others. If you give in to your weight gain and start wearing your oldest ugliest hoodie — because who cares, you’re already ugly — then your personality will show this. You are what you believe you are.

From my personal experience, I was not able to lose weight until I was finally at peace with myself. Until I realized that I didn’t have to lose weight for other people, but for myself, I had the mentality that I had to lose it quickly in order for people to treat me well again. If I lost weight, I’d finally feel better about myself and be able to be outgoing.

This led me to pressure myself and create workout and healthy eating calendars on a weekly basis. I was never able to follow through with them, and started an ongoing cycle of ruining my diet during the week, and continuing to ruin it because I had already started. On Sundays, I’d binge to the point where I felt like vomiting and be half-comforted by my internal voice telling me, tomorrow’s Monday, you’ll eat less.

Sometimes I’d feel so guilty about my binge-eating that the next day I’d promise myself I wouldn’t eat anything. It’s a good thing that I love food too much to deprive myself for long. It got to the point where I’d go an entire day only eating a pita bread and a piece of fruit at night. If I was hungry, I felt accomplished and proud of myself, I was a step closer to skinny. But the next day I’d wake up starving and would be quick to binge on anything in the kitchen. I revolved around this guilty cycle for months.

Until summer vacation, when I finally had time to sleep, relax and focus on myself. I started cooking my own meals and reading a lot about healthy eating, rather than fast ways to lose weight. I started going to the gym with my friends. The days I couldn’t, I’d do exercises at home with my sister that focused not on dieting, but rather adopting a healthy, balanced lifestyle. I also started doing Bikram or Hot Yoga at least four times a week. It wasn’t about the weight loss anymore. Instead, it was about the rewarding feeling each training session gave me.

I stopped craving sugar every hour. I started taking two pieces of cake for dessert instead of the usual four. I became mindful of my body and started going out less. Not because I forced myself to stay home, but because I didn’t want to go and subject my body to alcohol and chips. Most importantly, I stopped living a life that revolved around weighing myself many times a day and feeling guilty for everything that I put in my mouth.

What I want you to get out of this article is that there is no easy, quick fix to weight problems. In fact, fad diets and weight obsession will push you further and further away from your goals. Your life will revolve around the scale and around comparing yourself to other fitter beings. But food is not your enemy.

In a world where almost everything, from entertainment to shopping, is immediate, it's easy to get carried away and to want fast results from weight loss. But getting to your ideal weight won’t happen overnight; it requires time, energy and lots of perseverance. This is because you have to change your lifestyle, which can’t be done in a matter of days.

If you never go to the gym, don’t start by making yourself go every day for two hours. You’ll get bored and will be making excuses by Wednesday. Don’t give up because you can’t do a full push-up like your exercise plan wants you to. I used to be able to do two push-ups. Last summer, I could do 30 and keep on going with my workout. Consistency is key.

Once you get started for real, organizing yourself to do exercise for at least 30 minutes, three times a week, you’ll start feeling better. Your body will start rejecting the foods it used to require. Your body will begin a healing process. But this will take a while. Give it at least a week or two before you feel it. Slowly but surely, you’ll start changing your body for good.

Work hard for two or three months and the results will already inspire you to keep going. Work hard for a year, and you’ll change your lifestyle for a lifetime. If there’s one thing I'd want a reader to remember, it's to take it one step at a time.