I spent my whole single life trying to be thin just to find someone who'd love me once I got fat.

It's about not rewarding your children with food, not always celebrating with food. I do think it's important to find other ways to comfort our children and ourselves, to work other ways of celebrating and rewarding.

Don't be so damn hard on yourself. Yeah, you screwed up. You're not perfect, fine. Learn from it. But don't punish yourself. Be kind to you, even when you screw up. You'll bounce back eventually. You'll make up for it.

I already knew to eat clean and listen to my body, to only eat when I was in a calm mental state. Everyone knew. But when you're fat in the head, it's never about knowing the answers. It's about living them.

My therapist told me I need to learn to love myself. It sounds easy enough, but really, how do you just wake up one day and learn that? It feels like something you should just do involuntarily, like swallowing or blinking, but now I have to work on it. It feels so forced. I mean, I know I went to a good school, and people tell me I'm smart and creative, but I don't KNOW that. I don't know how to make myself feel that.

I hated the reflection in the mirror. I wanted so much to be someone else... I thought that if I was thinner, the rest of my life would change.

With relationships, I always had a reason why some time in the future would be better for me than it was that day. When I was fat, I thought I'd feel pretty when I was thin, and when I was thin, I thought I'd be happier if I was more toned and muscular and had more money to look more coordinated. I wasn't comfortable in my own skin unless there was a man there to tell me just how radiant that skin looked. I was a victim of low self-esteem and had the Soon syndrome bad. I was running toward a brighter future, unaware of the mirages I'd created in the distance.