My Life Story and first post

First things first, who am I? 
My name is Andrew Ujvary, That's me ^ July 2013 and That ^ is me as of last week. I was 218 pounds on the left and 192 on the right.
 I'm a Human Kinetics major who has intentions of becoming a Strength and Conditioning Coach. I'm a Precision Nutrition Certified Nutrition Coach, although I'm not yet practicing. I bartend part time to pay the bills, and I'm a frequenter of the hockey rink and the weight room.
The question of who I am is a lot deeper than the simple description of my limited education, and a few of my hobbies. I am a young man who has often struggled with my weight, depression, and my body image. I can say that most likely, sports and exercise have saved my life. I was never morbidly obese, my physical health was not optimal and I had weighed 238 pounds at my heaviest, yet it was not a huge risk factor for me. What sports and exercise did for me was give me my mental health back and give my life direction,

What is this blog about?
First of all I'm going to start with what this blog isn't. This blog is NOT a fitness or nutrition blog, I am not going to talk about my training and may very have very limited discussion about my diet.
This blog is about documenting the changes in my mental health throughout my weight loss. That being said, I have not reached my goal yet. I still have about 12 pounds until I reach my goal as I write this. Some of the subjects I look forward to talking about are changes in my perspectives on vanity, social comparisons and judgement, and how others treat me.

My Life Story.
My whole life, I wanted to be lean and strong. I wanted to be muscular with bicep veins and a six pack. I wanted to be like the guys in the movies. I wanted to be an athlete... Instead I was chubby. All through elementary school my friends were all lean, and fast. We played sports and I was always being out run or getting deked out. I started playing goalie in soccer, which I was decent at, but I wanted to be the one shooting instead of just standing in net. I desperately wanted to play hockey, but my family couldn't afford it growing up. I eventually shied away from team sports to skateboard. All of highschool was spent at the skatepark. Once again, I was surrounded by lean, athletic looking people. I think a part of me felt that if I was around them and did what they did, that I would eventually end up like them.
So I did what they did. I skateboarded every day I could with them. I drank beer when they drank beer, I ate what they ate (lots of junk food and beer). These were the naturally thin types. I was not. I got fatter.
One thing I didn't realize for the longest time was how judgmental the skateboard scene was. We had a name for the gym nuts "Chongos". It was something we used to put a negative light on the people who put effort into the way they looked and concerned themselves with being strong. In our minds, they were douchebags.

For a long time, this was ingrained in my mind. If you train for aesthetics, you are a douche.

Enter the gym.
I fell in love. The feeling of accomplishment, the control over my own body. I bulked right up. I was religious. Group project at school? It can wait, it's gym time. Party with my friends? Only once a month. Social life? Fuck it. For 6 months I lived the gym. The one issue. I never got the hang of fat loss. I was strong, I put 200 pounds on my deadlift in that time. But I was still fat.
Grad Year life changed. I developed the YOLO mindset and didn't want to miss out on anything associated with the grad party life. I drank every weekend. I smoked. I gave up the gym.
One night at a party, a "friend" of mine told me "You're just always gonna be fat. It's just how you are"... That was one of the most devastating things anyone had ever told me. To this day, every time I lose another pound, I say a little  "Fuck you" in my head to this person.

First relationship.
After I graduated highschool I started seeing my first girlfriend. She was a lovely girl and I still have nothing bad to say about her to this day. I'm going to condense this part considerably as I could go on and on about this part of my life, but I'll save it for another day. The short version of what happened during this time. 1- I realized I was depressed. 2- I got fat. 3- I got dumped. 4- I developed a pack a day habit.

After my breakup, I managed to become a comfort eater, and a heavy weed smoker. I started having suicidal thoughts and spent most of my time in bed. I went to the seven eleven most nights and ate a myriad of processed junk foods.

I said earlier that my life was saved by sports and exercise. My life was probably saved by my therapist. She was amazing. She was the one who helped give me the push to get my life started. If it wasn't for her, I probably wouldn't have discovered how much I love physical activity. Thanks to this woman, I quit smoking, and started getting control of my health which lead to me getting control over my mind. Over the next year there would be ups and downs and I eventually I would decide to go back to school.

University.
I've always been bright. I did well in school and I could make sense of most concepts faster than most. Socially, I've been a little challenged. I still don't deal well with crowds and new people... great qualities for a bar tender to have. I made a few friends and spent my whole first year drinking way too much in order to compensate for the social awkwardness I felt. I got extra fat. Screw the freshman 15, I put on the freshman 30. I was 238 pounds before I decided to take control. Eventually I lost some weight but never really felt like I was in control until the beginning of this semester which is a year and a half after my heaviest weigh in.
Now that I've posted my whole life story, I feel like I can get into the interesting stuff.

The Interesting Stuff: Misconceptions.
Today I weigh in at 192 pounds. I'm not ripped, but for the first time in my life, I have the beginnings of ab definition. A few dimples that resemble abs. This is huge to me. For the first time in my life, I just want to be shirtless. I want to wear a speed-o at the beach. Basically, I'm confident...
That being said, It wasn't as ground breaking as I thought it would be. Growing up, I always thought, "If I can just get lean, then life will be so much better".
But why?
What is it that gives the expectation that something so superficial could make life better? I am still the same person. I still like the same things that I liked before. There was a little bit of a boost in confidence, but nothing too drastic. I haven't started meeting more women, I still feel shy and awkward around new people.
Nothing changed.

I actually had an unsettling realization. When I showed people my before and after picture from above, the most common response was "I'm so proud of you". I like to think I've accomplished a good number of things in my life. I get excited about it and when I tell people, they generally say "good for you" or "that's great" or some derivative of those comments. I don't know the last time I set a deadlift PR and had someone tell me that they were proud of me. I don't know the last time I scored multiple goals in a hockey game and had someone say they were proud of me. I have gotten A's on papers and haven't been told that someone was proud of me. I was told "that's awesome".
Why is this means for "proud"? Is it that I look closer to the body that society expects?
It feels cheap.

While I have worked my ass off (literally) to get to where I am, this isn't what I expected.