I was told that the reason I was getting psychologically abused for my body was because I was fat, and I was fat because I ate too much food. I started restricting in hopes that I could finally be liked, be accepted, and feel OK. I never ever would have called it an eating disorder (ED). I just thought I was trying to be pretty, normal, and healthy. Since culture contends that beauty, normalcy, and health are synonymous with thinness, I skipped meals often and waited for the day when I would emerge from the cocoon of my fatness and finally become the real thin me. At the age of 10 or 11, I started starving myself for the first time, while also doing two to three hours of exercise a day. This type of behavior continued for another decade. My ED was never detected because doctors rarely suspect fat people struggle with this illness and because emaciation (and whiteness, it seemed) was part of ED diagnostic criteria things I never was and never would be.
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As the Fat Daughter of Immigrants, Dieting was a Toxic Component of Assimilation - Refinery29
