I honestly can't recall a time that I didn't feel overweight. As a young child, until about the age of 7 or 8, my mother would make noises when I ate. She would moo or oink, or smack her lips, and often told me I was chewing like a 'cow on it's cud.' I was always a 'bigger' kid, but it was muscle, not fat, something my dad tried to remind me of constantly. I guess a mother's words hold more weight at that age...
When I was about 10, I developed some kind of obsession with food. My mother had a fascination with dressing me like an 'adult' because I had an adult's body. My grandmother bought me cutesy two piece outfits, which looked great on me...except I was a 10 year old who looked 16. From that point on, I was extremely mindful of how I ate. All I heard at home was 'Are you putting on a little weight? You don't want to get pudgey. Boys don't like pudgey girls.'
At 12, I started putting on weight. I got heavy the Christmas break of 5th grade and remember desperately wanting to do something about it over the summer. So, I stopped eating and didn't sleep for two weeks straight - I stayed up all night exercising and planning on how to get out of dinner. I dropped the weight and then some. I stayed off until high school, when I gained the Freshman Flub. I tapered off at a respectable size 12, but always thought of myself as fat. Looking back at the pictures of me, I was frikken
but could never accept it.
Then I got pregnant junior year of high school, compulsively ate to ease the anxiety and fear, gained a hundred pounds and have been actually fat ever since...