She spent years struggling with her weight, but now a teenager from Sherwood Park has transformed her life after bullying led her to self-harm.
At her heaviest, Kiersten Zimmermann weighed nearly 235 pounds.
“My 13-year-old self probably would have thought I would end up on ‘My 600-pound Life’ or something,” she said.
The bullying was constant – both in person and online.
“I had a lot of people who just made fun of me based on how I looked. They didn’t know who I was,” Zimmermann explained.
“It would get to me a lot of the time. I mean, I would come home and cry sometimes. Especially because I had no confidence back then. I thought what they were saying was true. I was a whale, or extremely obese, or a waste of air.”
She tried every diet in search of a way to lose weight. At some points, she tried starving herself.
“I thought maybe if I don’t eat for a couple days maybe I’ll drop three pounds and I’ll look better than I did the day before.”
But those experiments never ended well. When she couldn’t take it any longer, Zimmermann would binge-eat in the pantry when her family wasn’t looking.
Eventually she hit rock bottom and she resorted to self-harm. The move shocked her mother.
“When I found she was cutting, because I saw it on her arms, I just… I literally couldn’t breathe,” Sherri Zimmermann said.
“Maybe this’ll make me feel better,” Kiersten told herself at the time.
“Or maybe this will let the pain go away and maybe this will stop. If they see the marks on my arms, they’ll just stop bullying me.”
Zimmermann’s parents quickly brought her to a counsellor and stopped the cutting.
One day, she was eating a pizza pocket while babysitting and one of the kids called her fat. It flipped a switch.
“People always say kids are honest,” she said. “That was the day that I started changing my life.”
Recently, she posted a video on YouTube shining a light on her troubles.
“I always had an issue with weight. Many days I would cry,” she said in the video, letting hand-written signs speak for her.
“I tried eating right, working out, weight-loss pills, tried not eating. It seemed like nothing worked. Even cutting to help – don’t do it OK?” The next sign read.
Watch below: Zimmermann shares her weight loss story
In January 2012, she started working out and eating healthy with the support of her family. Her journey is documented in the video.
Changing her mindset made all the difference, and the pounds started coming off. Zimmermann became a weightlifter.
“Once people started to see my transformation, the bullying slowly started to stop.”
At age 18, she has lost nearly 100 pounds and wants to inspire others through her social media profiles, including Instagram where she has nearly 20,000 followers.
Her transformation has made her dad proud.
“To see your child succeed in the face of adversity, that makes you burst with pride like nobody’s business,” Gary Zimmermann said.
Zimmermann graduated early from high school and is currently working on getting her personal training certificate, hoping to help children with weight loss.
The video Zimmermann posted on YouTube has been viewed nearly 85,000 times in just one month and the comments section is flooded with positivity from other young girls looking up to her.
“I’ve had so many people say ‘you motivated me to start eating healthy,’” she explained. “It’s amazing to feel that I do have that power, especially on young girls and teenagers.”
Her goal is to compete in an all-natural body-building competition in October.
“I wouldn’t change any of the bullying that happened to me, the pain I felt and the tears I cried. All of that made me who I am today – a strong, confident, motivated young woman who is determined to help others accomplish their goals in life.”
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