Like many people, I have struggled with my weight and body image for much of my short life. I was never diagnosed with any type of eating disorder. I was never considered underweight. Most people never even noticed when I was in the midst of my worst struggles with food. The hard fact of the matter is that eating disorders start out long before the person is underweight. Much of the time, they affect people who are actually at a healthy weight, but being at a healthy weight does not always mean someone is okay.

Middle school is a hard time for most kids. You're growing up, taking harder classes, and becoming more self-aware as the seventh grade catapults you into the height of awkwardness. It can be hard to feel like you're in control of anything in your own life at that time. With parents, teachers, and coaches dictating every second of your day, kids can get desperate to feel like they're in control of anything. Those feelings coupled with ruthless 13 and 14 year-olds relentlessly pointing out your every flaw can form some unhealthy coping habits.

Growing up, I thought it was normal for people to be unsatisfied with their bodies. Many adult women in my life have always been concerned with their weight and how their outer appearance looks. Being an impressionable 14 year-old, I fell into the "monkey-see, monkey-do" trap that so many girls do. You see your mom or your friend look into the mirror and sigh in exasperation, saying "I'm so fat!" and they equate the word "fat" with the word "ugly." You see them get on a scale and frown, and start and end millions of diets, and no matter what your size is, you begin to equate the words "skinny" with being good and "fat" with being bad. The thinner, the better, and you want to be better, and if you can't control your classes, your bullies, or your bedtime, at least you can control your plate.

It started out because I forgot my lunch money one day. I decided to challenge myself, taking pride in the fact that I could go from breakfast until dinner without eating anything. I became obsessed with the scale we keep in our dining room. I would weigh myself religiously three or more times a day, and get excited if the numbers went down. I felt disciplined, powerful, and accomplished when I realized that food was the one thing I felt I could control.

The powerful feeling didn't last for long, though. Middle school kids are cruel. The kids in my class noticed when I would skip lunch, and they started using it against me. I was already as thin as a rail, so the kids started calling me more names than they did before. They would point out my noticeably thinning hair and dry skin, and laugh at me, making anorexia jokes about me. The jokes and names were incessant; they equated eating disorders with promiscuity and I was dubbed the class whore, and it only got worse with each meal I skipped. I would read magazines and watch TV shows and think "that girl is skinnier than me and that's why she's pretty; that's why she's happy and I'm not."

My self-esteem dwindled until it was nonexistent. Instead of using my food to empower me, I started using it to punish myself. Bad grade on a test? No breakfast. Someone's making fun of you? Well, they must be right about whatever they're saying, so no lunch either. Although I never became underweight, strategically starving myself started to affect me physically as well as emotionally. By the middle of eighth grade, I was constantly exhausted. My stomach had shrank, so even when I would feel like I was starving, I could barely finish one plate of dinner, the only meal I would let myself eat regularly during the week. Every time I would try to eat anything, I would feel sick to my stomach, as if I would throw it up any minute. I started developing regular chest pains and felt like I had a hard time breathing. I had a teacher call me out on skipping lunch during the week and threaten to call my parents if I didn't start eating. I felt like a slave to the scale because I couldn't seem to lose any more weight; I was stuck at 107lbs and I felt like a weakling for not being able to get any lower. I was still considered a healthy weight from a medical perspective, but I felt anything but healthy.

The day I first made myself throw up a meal, I knew I had to make a change. I had decided to actually eat breakfast and immediately regretted it. After I threw up, I cried. I called my mom at work and told her I was going to stay home from school because I was sick. I needed to take a day to sort my life out. I cried all morning because it had all finally hit me. I started out wanting to have control over my plate and ended up letting my plate control me.

I vowed to start eating again, but even to this day whenever I eat anything, I hear the whisper in the back of my mind, "are you sure you deserve that?" I gathered up the courage and learned to fight back against it, though. I made it a point to start eating three meals a day again. It was not as hard as it could have been for me, because I stopped my developing eating disorders before they were able to truly take over my life, and I am thankful for that, because many people are not as lucky to have a wake-up call as early-on as I did.

I started reading up on the body positivity movement online. As I read stories of people learning to love their bodies, I started learning how to accept myself too. It took a lot of time and effort on my part to overcome my unhealthy relationship with myself that ultimately affected the relationships I had with not only other people, but with food, as well. At one point, actually, I ended up going a little overboard and became a bit irresponsible with my eating habits. I would gorge myself with junk food because I would think "I didn't eat forever, so now I deserve to eat everything all the time!" If you have a problem, doing the opposite of it doesn't always solve the conflict; sometimes it just makes your problem escalate to the other extreme. Over the course of my time in high school, I went from skinny, sad, and starving to average-weight, happy, and full, by the time I was ending my senior year.

I am in my second year of college now, and I have news for all the 14 year-olds like me: I'm more consistently happy with myself, my body, and my eating habits now at a size 10 than I ever was at a size 0. It's all about balance: I don't starve myself, but I don't constantly overeat, like I did for a while after my battle against the scale. Neither is good for anyone. Don't kick yourself for eating that piece of cheesecake, but you probably shouldn't challenge yourself to eat the entire thing in one sitting, either.

I always see people arguing over which is better: a thinner or thicker body, and my answer is neither. If you or anyone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, please remember this mantra: "though it's easier said than done, the best body is a happy one."