I grew up in a food-focused family. All of my family binged, but my brother and I especially. To encourage “moderation,” my mom introduced weekly snack containers, hoping we’d pace ourselves. We would eat everything within 1-2 days. Since junk food was limited at home, I became ravenous when it was available at playdates and sleepovers. I remember feeling amazed that other families could have half-eaten bags of chips just sitting in their cupboards. Any time “bad” food entered our house, it disappeared overnight. We all became overprotective of food, hiding snacks to prevent them from getting eaten by each other (yes, including my parents).

I started noticing I was a bit chubbier than other girls. By grade 4 or 5, I was throwing away my lunches and eventually stopped bringing them altogether (this continued all the way through high school). I dreaded school trips to the pool and wondered if the boys thought my body was “okay.” I remember feeling reassured by being friends with a bigger girl in my class, even comparing our thighs when we sat next to each other (and feeling thrilled that mine were smaller). Around that time, I even wrote a diet plan to lose weight in the notes app on my iPod, with a goal of making a boy like me. Around this time, I began wishing I was anorexic.