My sister tried so many different kinds of diets. She tried fasting, calorie counting, intermittent fasting, liquid fasting etc. It brought her to 59 kg, that was her lowest weight, for some reason in my child eyes she was still overweight even though it’s a pretty low weight for someone who is 175 cm tall. She was the first person who mentioned calories to me, I felt very smart, because I was in my 4th grade back then and I told all of my classmates what calorie are. I started looking at packaged foods and checking the number, but I had no idea what to do with the information.
One of my classmates was a girl who was very skinny, I never seen anyone as skinny as her then. She was very active and she has very good genes. In fourth grade I started to have more average body, I was very muscular, because I loved being active and I was still very fit, but because I started to grow up, I started eating more sweets, I liked savoury things too, but I mostly craved something sweet. My mom could pack me some sweet snacks for school, but they were still in small portions and I still had good lunches.
Once when I was at school, someone mentioned word 4n0r3x14, I didn’t know that word at all. I asked for the meaning and one of my classmates said “it’s just girls who are very skinny, because they don’t eat”, I don’t know what happened in my brain, but I got so interested in it, I thought about that word a lot and for some reason I started being very interested in it.
In my fifth grade our school opened a buffet. There were so many snacks, sweets, chips, candies, popcorn and other things. Everyone wanted to get something between classes and because I started getting a bit of pocket money, I sometimes bought something as well. I remember how I once bought a lot of candies for money that was given to me to pay for something else and I started crying because of it in class. I didn’t understand why did I choose to waste my money on something that I just wanted instead of something that I needed.
To this point I would still eat normally, I would eat until I felt full and if I couldn’t finish my snack or lunch, I would not care about what I eat. I like homemade food, but I also really loved treating myself with something “unhealthy”. It all started changing when I began to notice more and more how my classmates eat and what are the differences between my and others eating habits. I noticed that I steadied eating more not just than I used to, but also more than my classmates. I stopped leaving my lunches unfinished and often asked for more. I would finish my snacks and either buy myself more snacks or just ate from classmates who didn’t want to finish their food. At that moment I started slowly gaining weight. My body started developing, I was one of the first if not first girl who started wearing a bra. At that time nobody mentioned my weight, because I was still in a normal weight.
One day I decided to try not to eat for a whole day, I was holding for few hours, but then I gave in and ate more than normally. I had few attempts of not eating, but because I do not have any self control (till this day), I just never locked in.
The first time I remember what my weight was, was when I was in a sixth grade. We moved to a different house and I felt like a big change happened in my life, I started getting to school by myself and I had to start waking up on my own. I began to be more self dependent, even though I still had a lot of things I would run with to my parents. My weight was 52,3 kg and my height was 160cm then. I was shocked, I never weighed more than 46 to that point, when I weighed under 50, I would not care about my weight, I knew my weight before only because of medical checkups and now it stepped on a scale by my own will and the number frightened me. I decided that now is a time to start an action and for some reason I thought that starving is right one.
