Sometimes, life gets the better of you and things don't go how you may have planned. It's easy to say that you want things out of your life, but reality typically looks a lot different. For me, life knocked me down over and over for a few years and I found myself in a depressive, miserable state. During this time I felt alone, and I was battling an injury that led to a lot of weight gain. According to The National Library of Medicine, there is a direct link between depression and weight gain, specifically in women. (Sutin, et. al., 2012) I found it really hard to lose weight and feel happy in my own body during this time and it made the depression worse. I didn't want to get out of the house, I didn't enjoy any of the things I once enjoyed and overall I just wanted to be alone and sleep most of the time. One of the ways I began to combat this depression was exercise. Medical News Today states that " An expansive analysis of existing research concludes that