My poor relationship with my body began when I was around 17. I was active and played sports but was never concerned with what I ate. I was borderline overweight and comments from well-meaning family members and banter with friends led to a deep-rooted insecurity inside of me. 

I had a very low self-esteem and I felt like I needed to control other aspects of my life to feel like I was good enough. Criticism of my body as I was growing up, being compared to a sibling who was naturally thin, friends who made jokes about my weight resulted in a lot of unhappiness with my body.

I started to hate my body and desperately wanted to lose weight. When I was 18, I started my first weight loss attempt. I did it in a healthy way - I got into endurance sports and found out about Rock The Naked Truth when I was still doing triathlons. However, I gained the weight back after I stopped being as conscious about what I was eating.

The second time I tried to lose weight was when the downward spiral started. Someone introduced a new fad diet to me. I stuck to it religiously and lost weight very quickly. But it wasn't enough and I wanted to be even skinnier. I slowly started eating less and less. I avoided social events because I was scared of losing self-control. I felt lethargic and sad all the time.

Then my breaking point came - my first binge eating session. The first one was harmless and I just told myself I'll "get back on track" tomorrow. Then began the downward spiral where I lost ALL CONTROL around food. Nothing I ate seemed to satisfy my hunger, I was constantly craving chocolate and snacks and I binge ate multiple times in a week. By binge eating I mean I ate to the point of being physically sick. It lasted for a couple of months.

Then I started reading up on intuitive eating and how to heal my relationship with food. Now I can proudly say that food no longer has that kind of power over me and I no longer base my self-worth on the size of my body. I've gained a lot of knowledge during my binge eating phase and it pains me that people around me are still talking about new diets and ways to lose weight.

I believe that the more we try to control food, the more it controls us. I hope to be able to spread this message to people so that they won't have to go through the same process as I did!