I had never been a “small” girl. I was always shorter then everyone else and people thought that meant I should be skinnier. My thighs were always bigger because I started playing running sports when I was 9.

The first time I starved myself I was 13. It was after a boy in my class jokingly called me fat. I weighed 108lbs. I got over that shortly and returned back to a normal lifestyle. 

It all started right before I turned 16-I had went away on spring break in Arizona with my family and while I was there I ate junk food, fast food, and all around fattening food.

When I got home I had gained 7 pounds! But I didn’t think much of it because I had just started lacrosse practice everyday and figured it was muscle weight.

Now, my entire life I had always been athletic. Since I was 10 I’ve played several sports and have always had a fast metabolism with the ability to eat whatever I wanted. My freshman year I went to Burger King EVERY SINGLE DAY! I know, disgusting. But I still never gained weight.

Because I wasn’t use to gaining, my 7 pounds very quickly became 18, and that’s when I realized I needed to change. My stomach circumference was 29 inches and my BMI was just about 24.

I decided to change my lifestyle around. I began exercising outside of seasonal sports practices. Very slowly I began cutting down my excessive snacking. And very slowly, I began to lose the weight.

I didn’t have a problem until my senior year. I wasn’t losing weight fast enough. My workout and dieting habits had become obsessive and I was weighing myself more than 10 times a day. Depending on what my weight was, I would decide how much or, anything at all, I would eat.

This led to my depression. I began cutting myself, had many emotional break downs and was always exhausted. But I worked out and starved myself so that my net worth was 400-600 calories a day because I didn’t have the energy to do anything except go to school. 

As each month went by, I was getting worse and worse; I was lying about what I ate, I was throwing food away, I started a thinspiration/pro-ana tumblr to keep myself inspired to keep up that lifestyle. I bought my cousin’s [needed] ADD pills from him because one of the main side affects was appetite lose. I also started taking dieting pills which led to heart problems.

At the end of June 2011, I had started another crash diet and decided not to weigh myself until it was over-something extremely hard for me to do. But day one passed by, than day two, than I went on vacation in Florida where there was no scale and by the time I got back, I didn’t want to weigh myself. For the first time in a long time, I felt free. 

A few weeks before I started college, I decided that I wanted to change. I didn’t want to starve myself and hate myself anymore. I wanted to be happy and to enjoy the new life that was starting for me. 

The first thing I did was throw away my scale. I would step on my scale 10+ times a day. It controlled my life. So to get better, I knew I had to get rid of the scale.

Slowly I started eating more. It was difficult because I was gaining weight, but I had to remind myself I was so much more then my weight and that if I wanted to be happy again I had to get past the horrible thoughts that plagued me.

Now, I’m on a quest to be the healthiest me I can be. I will eat as healthy as I can, but not feel guilty if I have ice cream. I will work out because I like running, and boxing, and sweating, and not because it means more calories burned. I will not weigh or measure myself (because I’m afraid of falling back where I started) but feel good knowing I’m being good to my body.

Overcoming my eating disorder has taught me to love every single inch of my body: from the skin condition on my arms to my big thighs. 

This is my vow:

No more stepping on the scale 5+ times a day, no more feeling guilty about eating the smallest thing, no more starving myself for hours at end, no more killing myself with exercise, no more hating myself and ruining my life. I will eat right and healthy. I will exercise because I love it, and if I walk my running path, that’s ok, I’m allowed a break. I will be healthy and I will be happy.