I was a fat girl. In middle school, I asked my mom if I could go to fat camp. I wanted to lose weight and for once in my young life be a skinny girl, so away I went. I clearly remember that first mortifying day when all of us kids lined up – girls in leotards, boys in swim trunks – to take our “before” photos. We got weighed and measured, our fat pinched, every unwanted inch discerned. Our “calories in” were counted to the milli-bite, and “calories out” were tracked with every step and jump in the exercise of our choice. That set me up for a lifetime of this-or-that new diet fad or fitness routine in my never-ending quest to be thin – to have that perfect body that every girl but me seemed to have. One summer in high school I decided to drink nothing but orange juice for a month. I tried my hand at bulimia in college along with several of my girlfriends, but wasn’t dedicated enough to stick with it. As with most women on this journey, I yo-yo’ed between 3 clothes sizes – my skinny clothes, my fat clothes, and my average clothes.
