I had a harsh wake up call about my weight and it honestly shook me more than anything has in a long time. I know it sounds shallow and cruel and I have been wrestling with the guilt ever since, but this is the truth that keeps repeating in my mind. I am overweight and I have been trying to lose weight for years. I have had small wins here and there, but I am still clinically obese and I feel the health effects, the insecurity and the anxiety every single day.

My weight loss harsh wake up call was seeing how ugly my sister is.

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My sister is also obese, but she is much closer to the morbidly obese range. I have not seen her in almost five years. We are not very close and even though we follow each other on social media, I almost never look at her page. Yesterday her Instagram profile popped up and I clicked without thinking. I was just casually scrolling until I landed on one of her selfies and everything inside me froze. I stared at that picture for a long time before I even realized I was holding my breath.

Her face is my face. It is the same shape. The same roundness. The same heaviness around the cheeks and jawline. It hit me so hard that my stomach dropped. I realized that part of the reason we resemble each other so much is because of our weight and our shared genetics. I know this sounds horrible, but she is considered the unattractive one in our family. Growing up everyone kind of tiptoed around it. Seeing her and suddenly seeing myself in her was a shock that felt almost physical.

I am not proud of this reaction. It feels cruel and shallow and petty, but the moment felt like looking at a version of myself that I have been trying to run from for years. It forced me to confront my own body image issues, my self esteem and the way I judge myself every time I look in the mirror. It pushed every insecurity about beauty, weight, health, aging, and self worth right to the surface.

I feel terrible saying that I think my own sister is unattractive. It makes me feel like an awful person, but it is also tied to something deeper. She does not take care of herself. Her hair has been overdyed so much that it looks brittle and stringy. She recently got several face piercings that do not suit her in my opinion. She looks exhausted and sad in most of her pictures. Seeing her like that scared me because I saw a future version of myself, and it triggered this intense fear that I could end up looking and feeling the same way if I do not change.

I am supposed to see her in a little over a year and instead of being excited about reconnecting, all I can think about is how terrified I am that people will look at us and see the resemblance. It is pushing me to finally commit to losing weight in a healthy, consistent way and to take better care of my body and my mental health. I know weight loss will not fix everything. I know it will not magically erase our shared features. But I hope that if I put in the effort, I will at least feel more confident and less haunted by the comparison.

I know how harsh all of this sounds. I know I sound judgmental and unkind. But I also know that this moment shook something awake inside me and made me face the truth about how I see myself. I am trying to turn that fear into motivation instead of self hatred. I want to heal. I want to grow. And I want to stop feeling so ashamed of my reflection.

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