Until recently, I never felt anything realistic about my weight. When I was a normal-sized and healthy child, I was starved, forced to exercise in humiliating ways, and told that I was fat. Of course I believed it. The people telling me that were incredibly attractive people with lots of charisma and popularity.

When I began to gain weight in my teens, I loathed my new curves, though I was young and strong and beautiful. I was good at dancing and music, but I struggled to keep my confidence on stage.

By the time I was actually overweight as an adult, I had developed the body dysmorphia of the narcissists’ daughter. I had been called fat for 25 years when I wasn’t. My body image was intrinsically connected to the myriad issues with food, weight, exercise, and health that my caregivers brought to the table.

Many people with dysmorphia think they are heavy when they are not, but I somehow felt slender and attractive when I was gaining steadily to weigh over 200 pounds. In retrospect, I think I was using intoxication and attraction from others to boost my self-esteem instead. I did not have any capacity to pragmatically focus on my own self-care during that time.

When I really started to examine the issues, I realized I was binge eating because I had been starved in the past. I was eating all of the things that I was never allowed to eat before, and I was enjoying them as I was never allowed to enjoy anything before. I realized my love of creative cooking without recipes had its roots in trying to scrape together enough ingredients to survive. These realizations had previously been unconscious because I believed that I was fat and didn’t need to eat more food.

There were also a lot of issues that were connected to being sexually attractive and being made sexually available to adults when I was a child. That’s an entirely different situation, but not unconnected. It’s easy to understand why I would subconsciously try to make myself less attractive to adults when I was not safe.

I live in a society that makes lots of assumptions about people who are overweight, and I understand it. I was trained to make the same assumptions about myself and my reasons for being overweight. I must be lazy, and I don’t exercise, and I don’t know how to eat. I must have health problems, and I don’t have any self-esteem.

After believing these toxic chunks of information for a long time, I realized that other people’s perceptions don’t actually apply to my reasons for being overweight. I move my body, and I love walking, hiking, dancing, and gardening. My husband and I cook fresh and flavorful meals that are often balanced and nutritious, with some luxurious treats thrown in. I am in good health for many of the things that I want to do, and my confidence has returned along with my authentic identity.

I am not excusing myself from the work of becoming physically healthier, and I am not condoning being overweight. For myself and my experiences, I had to learn to love myself at my current weight. Nothing can happen to change my exterior until that self-love is readily accessible, believable, and usable as a productive force for self-care.