I was always a naturally thin child. But I remember becoming aware of people's weight at a very young age, and then turning it inward and seeing my own weight. The problem was, I saw my own weight as much heavier than it really was. I saw my body as something hideous and disgusting. A few well-intended, but thoughtless comments made by my relatives- around the age I hit puberty, and I ended up with a full-blown eating disorder.

I remember thinking of myself as "fat" about the time I began developing a more womanly shape, when I started developing "curves" and around the time I started REALLY noticing boys. I was ten or eleven. I didn't completely come to this way of thinking by myself. I remember relatives and friends of my parents making comments about me getting "chubby"; about how if I were to ever "get fat" that my bottom would be the size of a "caboose".

Mind you, at the time, I was still very thin and was naturally that way! I hadn't gained any "extra" weight and didn't LOOK overweight at all! Those thoughtless comments and overly critical "observations" threw me into a tailspin. So, at the very young age of eleven, I started my first "diet". I truly don't know which is worse- the fact that I began that diet at such a young age, or the fact that my parents didn't notice that I had started obsessing about food and what I ate.

My mother always had a weight problem whenever I was growing up, and so I found a plethora of dieting books in our home book-cases, and found plenty more to cause me to worry and obsess about my weight! It didn't help that if my weight *did* fluctuate a few pounds or so (especially during "that" time of the month!), my parents noticed and would say something. It would be many years before I would finally admit to them that I had struggled with an eating disorder!

By the time I was thirteen- I was skipping meals, getting out of bed in the middle of the night to weight myself or obsessively exercise, checking out dieting books from the library, and also constantly worrying about my weight. I would refuse to eat cake at someone's birthday party, because I didn't know how long it would take to burn the calories back off. I drank nothing but water and tea with artificial sweetner, refusing to drink anything that might add any calories to my diet!

By the time I was fifteen- a junior in high-school- I was skipping all meals except dinner, and picking at dinner, telling my parents I had eaten at school earlier in the day.

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