I'm a 5' 3.5'', 29-year-old, mixed Vietnamese/German-Irish woman.
When I was a little kid, I was a stick, but then sometime around fourth grade I was labeled and called fat by my peers once puberty hit. My parents didn't really help me much in this department as they'd chide me that if I ate too much I could be overweight or comment that I was gaining weight during these years. This caused me to compare my thicker body-type to my thin Asian cousins whereas my Caucasian cousins were always a little thicker. It just set me down this downward spiral of low self-esteem.
I reached my max height by the time I was 13, and even though I weighed at the time 135lb throughout middle and high school, I still saw myself as not as pretty as the skinnier girls. I finally got my self-esteem up in college where suddenly I was considered pretty awesome by peers and was no longer in the toxic environment of my grade school peers. I was popular, funny, happy...fast forward to after college. I took a blow when my long-time, 3+year boyfriend who talked of marriage and engagement left me for a stripper and then my next long-time boyfriend of 3+ years admitted to me he no longer found me attractive after I ballooned up to 190lbs on the depo-shot.
I lost 45lbs in one year after the last ex and wear clothes smaller than I ever did in our relationship or even when I was in middle school. I'm still losing weight much to the joy and praise of my friends, family, and co-workers. But I don't have the heart to tell them I only lost the weight because some days I feel so depressed that I eat very little, and I still see the fat, unattractive girl in the mirror.
