Backstory

I've always been overweight. All my life.
I was a really big baby by Indian standards and by those same standards always FAT. We are not a polite people. We stare, give unsolicited advice to lose weight and claim 'you could be so pretty if you weren't so big'. The irony of it is that as a child I actually wasn't overweight. Up until the 10th grade I was well within my healthy range. I also sort of knew that I was perfectly healthy. So everytime the issue of my weight came up, I actually would say that as long as I am healthy my weight isn't an issue. I've been defensive about it for as long as I can remember. Chitu and I came up with some pretty innovative comebacks for nosy friends of mom's and cruel classmates.

In the 10th, we went on hikes regularly. I hadn't worn jeans since I was kid but I borrowed a pair from a friend for the first hike. I couldn't believe how I looked in it. I was being told that I was fat but here I was in these jeans that I thought I looked great in. Oh yeah, I was 60 kgs (132 lbs) 'fat'.

The problem began after the 10th. My activity level dropped from 60 mins everyday to nothing ata ll. My summer was spent in Saudia Arabia with my dad and we had nothing to do but eat. So four months later, I had put on 20 lbs atleast. The next year was spent putting on more pounds. The 12th brought some weight loss but for the most part I was still really heavy. I took that weight with me to U of M. I lost some my freshman year, more junior year then gained a little back my senior year to a fairly overweight 5'3".

I regret not being able to enjoy being slim when I was. I fought really hard to be proud of things about me that didn't involve the way I looked like being smart. But when I put on all that weight after the 10th there wasn't anything to be happy about and things that I had been proud of didn't seem to help. I was struggling with a lack of schedule and didn't do well in the 11th and 12th grades at all. College didn't get much better. My grades were terrible, I was overweight and generally speaking, miserable.