Hi there! My name's Michelle and I'm a student from Gloucester. I study at Exeter, I love cats, writing, Doctor Who, and Lord of the Rings, I have a lovely older sister whom I adore, and I'm officially fed up with being fat.

I can't remember not feeling fat, but I do remember not being fat. Looking back at photos I know that when I was a young child I was fairly slim, and until I was thirteen, a relatively normal weight. I never felt normal though - my best friend at that age was very tall and thin and only weighed about a stone more than me, despite being half a foot taller. All of the other girls in my class seemed to be composed from fluff and air from what they weighed.

My problem was that I just loved to eat sweets. I ate chocolate bar after chocolate bar. I've never had any sense of proportion, and the more I could ate of it, the more I needed to satisfy my sugar cravings. I spent (and still spend) vast amounts of time planning which sweets or chocolates I am going to purchase and consume. And God, when I think about the money I must have spent on food over the years...

I made endless bargains with myself about how 'if I ever got to twelve stone, I'd just stop eating forever and get thin' but I got to all the dreaded weights, and past them, and kept on eating, and finally here I am, over fifteen stone and still trying to kid myself that I haven't got that much weight to lose.

Well, I have. I want to lose around a third of myself and get to ten stone seven. And more than that, I want to have a healthy relationship with food, where I can eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm not, where I don't eat for comfort or out of boredom, where I eat three proper meals as opposed to one or two meals and a million unhealthy snacks.

Welcome! I just read your post on the binge stories thread and it had me in stitches. So, then I decided I wanted to read everything you've posted to date (since it's all of 7 posts), which is how I found this post!

Anyway, I completely agree about the money I have spent on food!! I actually screwed up and paid all of my bills this week. Not a screw up you would like to think, but it has left me with 51 cents in my bank account. So, I have had to bring my lunch every day! And, I'm really scraping my cabinets for food ideas. The amazing thing is, I can normally spend about $300 a week on going out. Swear it. I can and do. The fact that I haven't spent a dime this week (though, I've exhausted $10 on my work meal card and a $20 Starbuck's gift card) is really an eye opener.

I'd probably own my own home if I wasn't such an eater!!!!

I'm with you. Seriously. Let's lay off the food purchases and save ourselves some waistline and money!

Hello! I'm glad I could amuse. Yes, I was giggling the whole time I wrote it, though also weirdly close to tears. Hopefully in a few months I'll be able solely to laugh at it - I guess the fact that I'm only just coming around to normality is why it still upsets me a little. It's so funny and strange that buying food has become some kind of espionage!

I am sure that a huge amount of the debt I have at the moment is down to all my secret purchase and consumption of food!