l always thought I was fat. I struggled with my body image for as long as I can remember. I was a size 13 in High School and hated it. Most of my friends were very thin and the ones that weren't, well I believed they were more beautiful than me. I thought I was the ugliest and the fattest person in the world and that's all I knew. But when I look back at pictures, I see everything so differently now. A few years of therapy and adult perspective certainly change things. The reality is that I wasn't that heavy and I actually looked pretty great. Besides my hair being a curly mess, I see someone who was full of personality, popular in school, a good student and just a few pounds overweight. But at home, there was no one around to bolster my self esteem. My mother put me on a "diet" when I was 8 years old. I can remember the day when she tried to sneak skim milk to me. I knew she was doing it and I pretended to hate it, even though it really didn't taste that bad. Hearing the words "You can't have that" or "Look how skinny your cousin is" haunt me to this day...Always being compared and never accepted or praised for who I was.

The yo yo dieting could have been avoided altogether if only I knew then that beauty is inside and out, that I control my own destiny, that being "full-figured" was/is OK and that being happy and healthy is all that really matters. It took me 52 years to throw away the yo yo hopefully this time for good....