I must admit, I've always had low self-esteem. Ever since I was small. There were days I thought I looked ok but there were some where when I looked in the mirror, I'd see an ugly reflection.
Weight had always been a problem in my family. My mum and dad would weigh me often from when I was even seven. I remember my dad telling me I should have been 25kg when I was actually 30.
Since I was five I had known about how food will make you fat. My mum gave me a Kit Kat once before school and I asked her if I would become fat if I ate it. Ever since then I used to ask her the same question, receiving the same answer: no.
It's ironic that in the end I became fat. Well, okay, I didn't really. I was never actually overweight but I still didn't like the way I looked.
I started gaining weight at the end of year five, age ten. That was the time I started walking home from school and staying home by myself until the parents came home from work. When I'd come home, I'd eat everything I could find: cake bars, biscuits, chocolate, haribos and crisps.
Even after this extreme snacking would I still feel hungry. I'd hide food and eat it secretly too. My younger sister was known as the skinny one. Everybody would call her that. I was just known as the chubby girl with the sweet tooth.
During year seven and eight it became even worse. I was lying to my mum about my weight; telling her I weighed much less than I did. My eyes were always on mirrors, seeing how fat I looked. I always compared my weight to my friends. I envied the skinny girls in my class. If I had a genie, I swore to myself my only wish would be to be skinny.
I was never strong enough to actually lose the weight. I would eat bacon bagels most days, a shortbread cookie at break, lunch with dessert, a massive amount of snacks at home, dinner and another dessert.
One day, I decided to change. I drew a table of things I wanted to do to lose weight. 20g of bran flakes at breakfast, a bowl of soup for lunch and dinner with an apple. I restricted all high calorie food like sweets and chocolate. I stopped snacking completely. In the first few weeks, I lost 4kg.
This was the beginning.
