I remember when I was a little girl and I was so spoiled with gifts from my mom and dad. I was the youngest and the only girl so how could they resist me. I was so lovable. I played games with my mom and dad, such as solitaire and spades at night when they weren't too tired. I knew they loved me. Being spoiled, I ate quite a bit and watched television. Instead of playing with my parents, television was my next favorite activity. This helped me to gain a considerable amount of weight. I had issues with finding clothes just about everytime I go shopping.

When I was in the forth grade, my school required us to wear uniforms and this helped to put a strain on my relationship with my parents. When I went shopping with my mom, she would get so upset when I couldn't find clothes that wouldn't fit me correctly that she would poke me in the stomach and tell me I needed to lose weight. I would go to the car crying while she purchased some clothes that were too big or small for me to stop the fighting. She would tell my dad about our shopping trip when we got home and my dad would tease me. He would say, I am going to be so big that I will not be able to walk out the front door of my house. They told me that I was going to have diabetes and other health problems. Their comments hurt me so badly.

When I was in middle school, I remember going to the park with my brother and dad. My brother was training for football and my dad thought it would be good for me if I trained with him because I was so fat. My dad would always make me run laps around the park with my brother and do exercises with him. It got to the point where I would tell him I didn't want to go to the park so he would trick me into going. I hated him at that time. I would kick, scream and cry. I hated him for this. He would tell me that since I was a certain age that I should have been able to run certain amounts of laps and I couldn't because I was not as physically fit as my brother who was training for football.

I know my parents just wanted me to take those comments as constructive criticism and lose weight, but the comments had the opposite effect on me. I grew bigger and bigger. While I never weighed over 240 lbs, I was still bigger than I needed to be. I would buy sweets and hide them in my room. When I asked my dad to stop making fun of me, he wouldn't let me speak. He would cut me off in the midst of my sentence. There were different times in my life when I tried to lose weight, but I would think about my parent's comments and I would eat more. I would allow myself to get bigger. At this time in my life at the age of ten, I believed that what I had to say was not important.