I started to become aware of my body, its bigness, and the so-called problem with its bigness only when others began pointing it out to me. At five years old, I was voted “Heaviest Kid” in class after my peers and I were weighed (literally weighed, like on a scale in front of everyone) in part of some sort of deranged school-superlative activity. That same year, my gymnastics coach told my mom I was too big for the sport. When I was seven, my doctor put me on a diet.

At age nine, I had to wear my soccer coach’s jersey during games because the uniform company didn’t make my size—which, in terms of humiliation level, is the wearable athletic equipment equivalent of accidentally calling a teacher “Mommy” in front of the whole class. My elderly female neighbor commented on my “developing figure” when I was ten. A year later, the boys in my class began commenting on it, too.