I used be really big, or at least I thought I was really big. I hated that I was so much fluffier than my friends and that boys liked them and not me. At that age, getting other people to like me (boys and girls) was of utmost importance and I guess that’s when I did everything I could to lose weight and get smaller. I restricted myself to an apple a day and when I “slipped up” and ate more than that, I resorted to “feeding the toilet bowl”.

It was only when I started to paddle and made many more friends that I realised people don’t really care about how you look. They care about who you are and how you project yourself and somehow people who loved themselves and were confident in their own skin had many more friends.

There are still many things I wish i could change about the way I look, but now when I look in the mirror at least I’m not filled with self-loathing.

I call it a work in progress.