When Your World Feels Small

How to Build a Life Bigger Than the Scale

When I was 243 pounds, my world was so small.

Not because I wanted it to be. Not because I didn’t have dreams or hopes or ideas about what my life could be.

But because I was tired.

All the time.

Tired in my body.
Tired in my mind.
Tired in my spirit.

And when you’re that tired, you don’t build a big life. You just can’t. You’re barely surviving.

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I spent hours in bed. Struggling to get up in the mornings. Taking two-hour naps every afternoon. Scrolling on my phone late into the night, not even enjoying it, just watching time pass.

If I’m honest, I barely remember what I did most days.

And that’s really sad, because now I can see how much life I missed. How much time I’ll never get back.

Here’s something important, though.

I didn’t change my life because I hated myself. I didn’t wake up one day and decide I needed to “fix” my body.

I started to realize…

“I deserve to feel better than this.”

“I deserve energy.”

“I deserve a life that feels full.”

Even in the body I had. Especially in the body I had.

So I started taking care of myself. It started with little things like a pedicure and buying a new hairbrush. I started putting on makeup and wearing a bra. Then I had Stitch Fix help me start dressing my body with beautiful clothes that actually fit.

The small things started to snowball into letting myself enjoy things again and letting myself take up space again. And that’s when I was ready for the transformation on the outside to match what was happening on the inside.

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When I was deep in my weight loss journey, I was all in.

Every ounce of energy went into building new habits and rewriting old patterns.

But here’s something no one really talks about.

When you finally reach the goal and when the scale shows the number you’ve been dreaming of…

It might not be quite the high you imagined. I know it wasn’t for me.

For so long, losing weight had been my purpose. And when that was done, I had to figure out who I was without it.

I remember thinking, “Is this it? Is this what I worked so hard for?”

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That’s when pickleball walked into my life.

Not as another workout or another thing to optimize. Not as something I “should” be doing. But as something I wanted to do.

Pickleball is something fun to do with friends, a way to meet new people, and a challenge for the mind and body. It was something that made me forget about calories and steps and numbers and tracking.

It was something that made me feel alive!

Pickleball gave me somewhere to put my energy again. Somewhere to grow. Somewhere to belong. Somewhere to play.

And in ways I didn’t see coming, it gave me purpose again.

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Because here’s what I know now.

Getting healthy matters. I am endlessly grateful for the health I have found after losing 125 pounds.

But health can’t be the end goal. There has to be more than a number on the scale, a jean size, or stellar bloodwork.

We have to have a life worth living. The goal should be a life filled with purpose, connection, and joy.

For me, that includes pickleball. You’ll have to figure out what your new life looks like, but I want to encourage you to start exploring this goal now. You don’t have wait until you’re at your goal weight. We all deserve a full life, right now, just as you are!

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I made a new video about this, about how pickleball helped me find joy and purpose after weight loss and why “active fun” matters so much more than we realize.

🎥 Watch it here:

And more than anything, I hope this reminds you:

You don’t have to wait for someday.

You’re allowed to enjoy your life now.

You’re allowed to take up space now.

You’re allowed to have fun now.

I want that for all of us.

❤️ Meghann