I’m 21 years old and I have been struggling with my weight since elementary school. I was thin as a younger child, but around 4th and 5th grade I began gaining weight. I never really noticed much until middle school. Then in 9th grade I went on my first “diet,” which basically was just portion control. I was in the 190s and lost down to the high 160s. Everyone kept complimenting me and for some reason that made me freak out and I wore really baggy clothes and restarted up my previous eating habits. It may sound weird but I think my weight was a bit of a security blanket…I didn’t want all that attention. My senior year in high school I topped out at around 215. I went on slim fast and lost to 185. Then over my freshman year instead of the freshman 15 I lost another 5! But I am sad to say I never got to the 170s! The lowest I got was 180.2. Then the summer after I gained back to 207. Then in the fall of 2008 I went to Greece and ate more food than I have ever in my whole life. Donuts AND cereal for breakfast, all the fruit I could eat for snacks, and heavy meals with tons of bread drenched in olive oil. And if that wasn’t enough we walked almost every night and got the best Gyros ever! So basically I ate four meals a day and logically what happened? Oh yeah I LOST 10 POUNDS!!!! Haha! 197 when I came back…mainly due to the fact all I drank was water and I walked EVERYWHERE (three miles to get to the gyro restaurant). So I guess that’s how they do it over there :) Then I stayed at 197 until last summer when I started hanging out with friends who ate fast food all the time. It was okay during the summer, because I worked 40 hours a week doing outside labor and kept the weight gain at bay. But then school started and the job stopped and my muscles shrunk back to their non existence and I gained weight again with my terrible eating habits. So I gained to a whopping 220.6. But NO MORE! My goal is to get to 160 and run a half marathon in October…and even more importantly have a healthy relationship with food and exercise :)